Porn Filters

^^^ Excellent post. Well said.

(05-03-2014 23:07 )Digital Dave Wrote:  ^^^ Excellent post. Well said.

Errm, whoosh, wipes brow, that was bit of a rant.

I take nothing back but I'll admit it was bit of a rant.

Ermm. OFCOM, yeah, rubbish.

Perfectly put Captain Vimes. Good to hear it loud and clear from someone in the "engage brain first" camp. Too bad that's not the widespread attitude. Hence why the tabloids are able to thrive...

Meant to post this earlier in the week.
Not specifically related to the porn filters, but Mumsnet have had an undue influence on the introduction of these filters, and this week earned the dubious honour of being one of the first websites to be hacked using the 'heartbleed' security vulnerability.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27028101

Sometimes karma is a bitch

On a sorta related topic, news today that the 'vcap' anti-piracy scheme is due to launch next year.
Under this scheme, net users found to be downloading/uploading copyrighted material will recieve a series of 'warning' letters from their ISP. Up to four such letters will be sent in a year, after which ... nothing, nada, zilch All seems a bit pointless, not quite what the music and movie authorities wanted!

What may be interesting is how accurate the monitoring will be. Apparently it will only cover peer-to-peer downloads i.e torrents, but torrents can also contain legitimate material. When the file-sharing sites began running scared after the Megaupload shutdown, some began removing legitimate babeshow videos, flagging them as 'potential' copyright material. Will legit torrent users get victimised in a similar way, and what if people are sharing material like babeshow videos, will it trigger a warning?
Then again, with no sanctions, who really cares

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/ne...thing.html

http://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-and-copy...em-140719/

according to ofcom less than one in seven new broadband customers have opted to use the default porn filters. That's a piss-poor take up and shows another serious lack of judgement on cameron's part. it should also tell ofcom that if so few people are bothered about that how many would really be bothered about full nudity on late night tv.

(23-07-2014 12:28 )m100 Wrote:  according to ofcom less than one in seven new broadband customers have opted to use the default porn filters. That's a piss-poor take up

But do we know how many new broadband customers have young children anyway? Because without knowing that how can we assess whether the take up is poor or not?

(23-07-2014 12:28 )m100 Wrote:  That's a piss-poor take up

Not really, because it's based on new broadband customers and experience shows that most people who use the parental controls don't activate them immediately anyway.

Look at difference between Talktalk (who already had the filters for 2 years before the Cameron policy) and the other major ISPs.

Talktalk - 36% take up
Sky - 8%
BT - 5%
Virgin Media - 4%

^^^ Not sure I agree with your reasoning there.
The whole point of this campaign was to conspicuously offer the filters (and have them pre-selected as active) to new customers at the point of sign-up to make them more 'visible' to customers, and therefore increase the take up. Clearly that has failed dramatically, as the vast majority of new customers have actively chosen to disable the filters.
Therefore, 'piss poor take up' seems an absolutely correct summary to me.

(26-07-2014 19:29 )munch1917 Wrote:  the vast majority of new customers have actively chosen to disable the filters.

But as Talktalk's experience demonstrates, many of those who actively choose to disable the filters still enable them in the longer run.