pornwall

PC GamesN brings the so-called "Pornwall" to my attention.

It is one of those most insidious censorship schemes. The dreaded opt-out. Because it's harmless right? Anyone can just opt-out. So it's just fine, no harm done.

Fortunately, even if this mandated filter system is here to stay with it's mollycoddling of users who don't want to accidentally happen across something untoward on the Internet lest their foolishness or lust get ahold of them ... it would be really easy for public outcry to change the current plan for filters being opt-out by requiring ISPs to inform their customers of exactly how to use these systems and requiring ISPs to default to turning the filters off.

It's such a simple and basic piece of consumer advocacy that can be applied to any sort of censorship. This is the digital age! We could even finally un-censor bleeped-out television for anyone who didn't care with very little infrastructural and logistic cost. The same systems that check whether or not you paid for PPV content can check for whether or not to interpret the ride-along signals as audio over-rides (bleeps or silence) or ignore them for uncensored content. Charge users a one-time fee to have their box replaced with one that contains an internal, opt-in censorship system and watch the cash roll in as your cheap, over-priced, import cable boxes earn you an extra 5 to 30 off of every customer.

According the the Open Rights Group, here are the main things that will be blocked by the UK government's proposed "pornblocker", which will be mandatory for all internet service providers:

pornography

violent material

extremist and terrorist related content

anorexia and eating disorder websites

suicide related websites

alcohol

smoking

web forums

esoteric material [WHAT EVEN IS "ESOTERIC MATERIAL"??]

web blocking circumvention tools

Users do have the option of un-ticking all of these boxes, but can you even imagine what this is going to be like for people who either don't know how to switch off the pornwall, or who erroneously think it's a good idea to leave it on?