Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The death of Harringay online?
Or possibly not the death but at least a malady.
I noticed on one of the other messageboards that I post on that there were complaints that the site was being blocked by one of the overarching "porn" filters that the current government are trying to force through.
Some further reading suggests that one of the categories of websites to be blocked will be discussion boards.
At the moment only o2 provide a way of checking which urls are and aren't blocked. If you go the o2 url checker and enter in this website you will find it's blocked under the parental controls category. This is described as opt-in but that is really just semantics and it will be enabled by default.
As I'm sure of you will be aware, a large proportion of users never bother changing from the default settings so we will soon see whole tranches of websites blocked with litttle or no accountability.
Personally I have written to David Lammy on the issue of these filters and await his response. I would encourage people to look a bit more into this and, if you feel concerned about this huge amount of censorship that is about to be introduced, write to your MP to question it.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Using the opendns DNS servers is a far better filter. Community site categorising. I thought O2 Broadband were sold to Sky? In fact I know they were.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Ooh la la! C'est la vie.
One thing folks could try is to click on the link Andrew provides and request a reclassification. I imagine the more requests, the more likely we are to be unblocked.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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No chance Phil K
And if it ever were to happen, a 'John McMullan is Innocent' campaign on the bridges of norf London would ensue.
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Grief, just looking at this a bit more and came up with this from The Independent a couple of days ago:
BT’s Internet filter provides parents with the option of blocking access to ‘gay and lesbian lifestyle’ content, as well as information on abortion, STIs and contraception.
Full article at http://hgyol.in/1cpAgFN
Here's how similar controls work with BT. Users have the choice of setting the level of filtering. I guess we'd get swept in to the social networking category along with Facebook and Twitter (according to Andrew's O2 checker link). I guess therefore that we're as likely to be affected by these changes as those two sites are.
For more on the issue of ISP blocking in general, it's worth reading the Open Rights Group Blog.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I bet it's because 'gay' is in the URL.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Harvey on
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Haha..I think you're probably right
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Fortunately, I can still access the website of the Scunthorpe Telegraph
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and no problems with arsenal.com
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Or the Cockfosters Daily News
What a stupid mess...
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They employ some people to categorise sites, like how Yahoo used to categorise the Internet. HarringayOnline comes under the same category as StackOverflow so I always have access to it from work... which can be a little distracting.
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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And I suppose if Immanuel Kant were pronounced as he should be, he'd struggle to find a place in Wikipedia.
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It is both better, and worse, than you think.
It's worse because the default blocking controls required by the government under the stalking horse of "protecting children from pornography" are incredibly wide:
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sleepwalking-into-censorship
One of the default blocks is Web Forums. Nothing to do with "gay" in the title...the default assumption is that any user-contributed content is suspect. A safe web is apparently a Corporate/Goverment PR web.
It's better because as an O2 customer who opted out of blocks years ago for completely innocuous reasons (the dodgiest websites I access are particularly geeky editions of xkcd), I can still access HOL and other supposed blocked sites via O2
So I'm pretty sure that
1) even if the default blocks have been extended, people who have already opted out aren't affected
2) the default blocks are so stringent there won't be any stigma attached to opting out
3) the default blocks are so stringent any new Internet users will immediately opt out because half the web has gone
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