Government ministers are looking to move away from proposals to censor porn by default, after technical and ethical concerns were raised.
Earlier this month, a cross-party Parliamentary inquiry backed up proposals dating back to 2010 to enforce a network-level ‘Opt-In’ system, going beyond the “active choice” model launched by ISPs BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin last October. This would provide a “clean internet feed” as standard, requiring users to specifically request access to “adult” content – an approach which has been criticised as “censorship”.
Instead, Hunt wants ISPs to be forced into providing customers with an “active choice” for filtering porn, which would see end users given the simple task of selecting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ if they wanted access to adult content.
The DCMS offered no specifics, however, in its official line. “It is vital we do all we can to protect children from inappropriate material online,” a DCMS spokesperson said.
“We are looking at a range of options for increasing child protection online and we will be bringing forward proposals later this year.”
A spokesperson from the Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA) told TechWeekEurope it stood by its belief that the opt-out model was weak.
“In terms of the pieces in the Sun and Mail, we believe that default filtering of content that customers have to opt out of is ineffective and unnecessary. Like the Government, we feel that active choice … is a better way forward,” the spokesperson said.
Yet Tory MP Claire Perry has been railing against a lighter touch from government, saying the current opt-in proposals did not go far enough. She wants to see stringent age-checking processes enforced. “Our kids deserve more than empty phrases like civil liberties. If there’s no age check there then we’re not solving the problem,” Perry said.
Are you fluent in the language of the Internet? Try our quiz!
Fourth quarter results beat Wall Street expectations, as overall sales rise 6 percent, but EU…
Hate speech non-profit that defeated Elon Musk's lawsuit, warns X's Community Notes is failing to…
Good luck. Russia demands Google pay a fine worth more than the world's total GDP,…
Google Cloud signs up Spotify, Paramount Global as early customers of its first ARM-based cloud…
Facebook parent Meta warns of 'significant acceleration' in expenditures on AI infrastructure as revenue, profits…
Microsoft says Azure cloud revenues up 33 percent for September quarter as capital expenditures surge…
View Comments
If you are looking for full parental control that monitors and controls everything kids do online (such as Facebook), as well as blocks inappropriate websites, and does linguistic analysis to
watch out for dangerous behavior - such as internet predators or cyberbullying -
check out McGruff SafeGuard's Parental Control system:
http://www.GoMcgruff.com
McGruff “The Crime Dog” - Take A Bite Out of Crime - is well known in the US for family safety.
For iPad/iPhone parental control, check out http://www.GoMcGruff.com/browser