UK Government Plans To Block Internet Porn

Pornographic sites will be blocked from home computers by default, as the UK government urges ISPs to protect children from online sexual content.

Anyone wanting to access such material would need to opt-in via their ISP, explained Communications minister Ed Vaizey in an interview with The Sunday Times.

Describing children’s easy access to adult images as “a very serious matter,” he called for ISPs to employ the opt-in system voluntarily. However, he said the government would legislate if ISPs fail to abide by the request.

“We are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have a new communications bill in the next couple of years,” added Vaizey.

Age rating system

The move followed Conservative MP Claire Perry’s call for ISPs to apply an age rating system to pornographic sites last month. She claimed adult material is “one of the most widely available forms of content of the internet”.

According to Ofcom, there has been an increase in the number of children aged five to seven using the Internet at home, while children aged 12-15 tend to surf the web without adult supervision.

“Four in every five children aged 14 to 16 admitted to regularly accessing explicit photographs and footage,“ Perry wrote on the Politics.co.uk website.

The government’s current plan is to hold a discussion with ISPs regarding age verification.

BT demanded to block file-sharing site

The attempt to force ISPs to censor online content is not limited to only pornography.

Recently, the Motion Picture Association, which represents Hollywood studios outside the US, demanded that BT block access to Newzbin2 – an offshore website that offers access to pirated content via its Usenet indexing service.

The MPA is using Section 97A of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act to protect its property rights by filing an injuction against Internet intermediaries.

According to the UK’s Digital Economy Act, ISPs are also required to hand over the IP addresses of anyone caught committing online copyright infringement to rights holders.

The law has attracted strong opposition, with ISPs and rights activists alike complaining that the Act’s measures did not receive sufficient scrutiny when the bill was passing through Parliament.