cleanfeed and wikipedia

[Ian Batten]

On 10 Dec 08, at 0859, Clive D. W. Feather wrote:

>
> Actually, it's the ISPs rather than their customers.
>
> Imagine that this picture had been reported by a newspaper  
> journalist and the IWF hadn't added it to the list. There would be  
> newspaper stories about "ISPs still let you see child porn".  
> Questions in the House. Etc.

Well, I think we can assume that ``porn shock!'' is a route that the  
Express would be reluctant to go down given its owner's other  
interests, difficult for the Sun and the Star and impossible for the  
Sport, so you'd be left with the Mail and the Mirror plus the  
qualities.  This story has run in the Graun with a generally sceptical  
tone, the Torygraph ditto, and so far as I can tell hasn't figured in  
the Mail or Mirror at all.  Since the IWF have now said ``it's  
illegal, but you should pass it anyway'', if there were a story to be  
written in excitable tones then it pretty much writes itself.


>
> Do you think that the board of BT, or C&W, or Virgin Media, really  
> have the enthusiasm for this argument? Do you think that the  
> majority of their shareholders are actually interested in defending  
> the right to look at unpleasant material?

Actually, I think the outcome is pretty bad for them.  Up until  
yesterday, they could rely on the argument that they were taking their  
guidance on legality from an organisation that was tasked by  
government with providing a list of illegal material.   Everything  
that was reported to the IWF and assessed as illegal would be blocked  
by the ISPs.  IWF possess trained staff and police permission to do  
that assessing, which ISPs don't.  So the use of the IWF list was  
certainly the best and probably the only legal route that an ISP had  
to meet its obligations.

As of today, the IWF have created a new class of images: those that  
are reported to the IWF, assessed as illegal, and then _not_ placed  
into the blacklist by virtue of other considerations, currently  
unspecified.  Suppose that a newspaper were to run that story  
(``Wikipedia Cult Freetards Force Porn Fighters To Allow Porn!'' or  
``ISPs Allow Known Illegal Material''): how is that better than your  
example at the outset?

When I get home, I assume that BT will have listed the block on the  
page in question.  Which means that I am now able to download, over a  
BT connection protected by the IWF blocklist, an image which the IWF  
themselves deem to be illegal.   I'm not saying that BT are going to  
be suddenly converted into cyber-libertrians, but I'd say they were  
worse off than they were yesterday.


>
> But where should they draw the line? Assuming that courts have  
> convicted on the basis of images with characteristics X, Y, and Z,  
> should the IWF exclude images with those characteristics because  
> they *might* not be prosecuted?

I think I've read that, in some contexts, courts have got upset about  
large collections of photographs of _clothed_ children.

> Isn't that having the IWF playing judge and jury, just the way you  
> don't want?
>
> Would you care to specify - and justify on a basis that you'd be  
> happy to defend in front of a Select Committee - an alternative  
> policy?

Firstly, what problem are we trying to solve?.  ``You'' (meaning ISP  
people) had a problem when Inspector French turned up, because back  
then you were all running store and forward Usenet servers and the bad  
stuff action was over in alt.binaries.  Your concern, rightly, was  
that the police would turn up at Demon Towers and haul away your  
machines.  SafetyNet, then IWF, gave you the protection you needed: SN/ 
IWF would determine what was illegal, notify you, and provided you  
then took timely action the police agreed to play nice.

Which is all well and good.  But as you yourself said,

> It was BT who spent far too much money on a blocking system that any  
> 12 year old can work around and made a big fuss about how  
> responsible they were.
>
> It was Vernon Coaker and his cronies, probably egged on by the  
> despicable John Carr, who decided to coerce all consumer ISPs into  
> installing such blocking systems. I don't believe IWF had anything  
> to do with that - they were already making the list available to  
> those who wanted to go that way.

So now you're operating a filter for reasons that aren't about your  
direct legal risk, because data at rest child porn in the UK is, for  
practical purposes, a small and solved problem.  It's now about (a)  
reputational risk and (b) keeping government happy.  But the SN/IWF  
system for Usenet worked, in that it really did provide a mechanism to  
scrub the content off your disks.  The current system doesn't really  
work, because (a) the content is travelling by http anyway and (b)  
anyone with two braincells can bypass the filter.

So before we consider the policy for the filter, someone needs to set  
out the objectives for the filter.  And that's very, very unclear.

ian