A nation-wide pornography block? That’s what one UK politician is gunning for. Ed Vaizey, conservative parliament member and communications minister, is looking to block access to legal pornography, making access to the stuff an opt-in–rather than opt-out–model.
Those interested in looking at adult content will have to contact their Internet providers. Doing so will add them to a “porn surfing whitelist”–a lot more work than the average Internet surfer is currently used to undergoing in order to see naked people.
The move is being pushed as an attempt to block children from seeing adult content. According to a recent study, one in three kids in the UK under the age of ten has seen pornography on the Internet (which, for those of you non-techy folks out there, means that one in three kids in the UK under the age of ten has seen the Internet).
How possible is such a country-wide block? Not very, according to pretty much every ISP in the country. Here’s an example, quoted by the BBC, “Unfortunately, It’s technically not possible to completely block this stuff.
And here’s something from the Internet Watch Foundation, “You end up with a system that’s either hugely expensive and a losing battle because there are millions of these sites or it’s just not effective. The cost of putting these systems in place outweigh the benefits, to my mind.”
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