BT Censorship

[Sir Sixx]

Hi all,

Back in November 2003 I was approached to create a web site. An amateur picture-posting site, a porn site.
I was unsure as to whether I should do it or not but after talking to the people involved I decided that they were being honest and upfront about their reasons for wanting to do the site and I would give it a go.

The site has gone from strength to strength and has a good user base, I maintain the site and do upgrades every now and then and I am proud of the work I have done on the site but can’t really tell anyone about it because of its subject matter.

However, after 8 months of smooth running the site is now having a problem.

Read this:

BT says it is blocking up to 20,000 attempts each day to access child porn.
Its figures provide the first firm evidence of the extent of web paedophilia and BT is targeting the porn with its Clean Feed system.
The Internet Watch Foundation called the figures "staggering" and said children were being abused in order to supply the hardcore images.
Police officials said the extent of the online porn problem was "extremely disturbing".

BT said in its first three weeks its new system, which bars access to particular sites, registered nearly 250,000 attempts to view web pages containing images of child pornography.
That represents an average of about 10,000 requests each day.
Anyone trying to access such a site would be presented with a message reading "Website not found".
Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT retail, said the company was blocking access to hundreds of sites which had been identified by the Internet Watch Foundation.
But he said BT did not track those trying to log onto the sites or pass their details on to police.
And he said the company had no way of telling how many users were navigating to such sites by accident.
"We don't know their motives or who does it and honestly we don't want to know," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
A BT spokesman added: "It could be that one dedicated pervert is making hundreds of attempts to get on websites each day."
Currently the technology is only blocking BT Retail's 2.5 million internet customers from viewing child porn sites but Mr Danon said the company would make it available to other internet service providers on a non-commercial basis.
Home Office minister Paul Goggins said the figures revealed by BT were "deeply shocking" and he said he hoped other service providers would take up the offer of using BT's blocking technology.
He told the Today programme: "Every image of a child that appears on the internet is an image of a child that's abused."
The BBC's Neil Bennett said even allowing for some people making repeated attempts, it is clear thousands of people are trying to see such material daily.
BT is only one of the main service providers in the UK and police leaders are calling on others to block paedophile websites.
Websites assessed by the IWF as "illegal to view" under the 1978 Child Protection Act were targeted by BT.
The IWF keeps a real-time live database which is updated every time an illegal site is found. At any one time there are thousands of sites on the database.

As you can guess the site is being blocked.
There is and has never been any child porn on this site, the people running the site are very careful and they have assured me that there have never been any kids or young adults posted on the site.
The owners have e-mailed the IWF and asked them why the site is listed and asked them what content of the web site is causing the problem as they want to remove whatever it is. The have received no reply. The owner’s have also told me that if the site is deemed to be a child porn site they will shut it down, but there seems to be no justification for blocking the site and no answer as to why it is being blocked. !

In my 10+ years of surfing the web I have only ever come across two web sites with child porn on them and I reported them both to the IWF. Surprisingly the IWF came back to me on one of the sites and told me it wasn’t illegal which shocked me.
When you look at the figures that are being touted by BT you have to wonder if there are more sites being blocked than should be. My fear is that this is the beginning of the big push for censorship of the web. Don't get me wrong, if i thought that they were using the site for child porn or if there were any pictures on the site that i thought were of anyone under 18 i would shut down the site myself, regardless of what the owners said. It's not like they could take me to court over it
I’d appreciate your thoughts on the subject.

[Markp.com]

Are there legal disclaimers on the site stating that all the "models" involved are over 18, and could the people behind the site prove this in court?

If so, I think you could have a strong legal case on your hands.

[bratok]

What's the URL? kidding...

Concurrent maybe?

[Sir Sixx]

Hi,

The rules of the site say:

• No underage, animal, scat, rape, or incest, etc...
  Do not post links to any of the above.
  You and anyone in the photos must be at least 18, and must be able & willing to provide proof of age for anyone depicted in the photos you post, if requested.

I also registered the site with the Internet Content Rating Association and placed the content advisor on the web site.

I really don't have a problem with BT doing this kind of thing but i do have a problem with:
[list=a]
Sites that dont have child porn being targeted.
The path that this takes us all down.[/list=a]

In all honesty if your were a sick pervert who wanted to look at kids you would just move away from BT. For things to change the law has to stop paedophiles and stop protecting them! But thats a different subject.

[Markp.com]

Just seems like a case of mistaken identity... if your site (or anything for that matter) is being accused of something that its not, then it should be simple to prove.

I think you need to start making phone calls and pestering people.

[killerdhawk]

If you know that this site that you maintain is in the clear, then I say defend it. Regardless what we may think of a site's content, these is no reason why we should stand by and let it be accused of something that it isn't. Like you're saying, this could be the first step in the censoring in the web. All we have to do is blur the lines between what is acceptable porn and what isn't to start us down the path of censorship.

I've begun to notice it in some newspapers too. The titles on child porn stories are getting much vaguer, it starting to get to the point where it's no longer "Person Found With Child Porn on Computer", but "Person found with Porn on Computer".

I really don't like that quote that was released. They say that their system counted 250,000 attempts but they can't say how many unique attempts? I know they've got this whole thing about not maintaining a database of who's accessing these websites. But if you're releasing these kind s of figures, then you really have got to be checking how many people are involved in these attempts. Tehre's probably a couple people using a crawler or something to access a lot of pages inflating that number.

I've got a question about the site, how does it work? So people submit photos that are then automatically uploaded, or are they submitted to the site's owners who then check it over and if it's ok, then you manually add it in?

[vampstko]

ok first off without a url i can't do much for background.. if the mods get mad at me sry but

go here
post in the newbie section ..there is a couple guys there Kevin and tigger that should be able to answer you questions..i have ran across many child porn sites and well..i report them and if that dosen't work i ..well... help them come down...

Sorry vamps, can't have the link here, please PM it.

[Sir Sixx]

Hi,

There is no verification on the site, pictures are uploaded automatically. I have voiced my opinion on this issue with the owners!
However all IP address are logged and if someone was to upload child porn I would know who they are and report them.

Thanks for the link vampstko hope you don’t get in trouble!
I wont ask how you took them down but I do remember a group called the White Knights who were very pro active on this front, I wanted to join them but they were impossible to locate.

I’ve just contacted the web host to see what they say.

We will see but this is a big issue I think. What’s next your ISP blocking web sites who are not affiliated to them? Blocking other ISP web sites so you cant move to a different ISP. Far too much power I think!

[vampstko]

sorry marky ..he got the link ..as as far as pulling them down..lets just say i have friends that like to hack and attack sites

[flipshark]

Originally posted by Sir Sixx

• No underage, animal, scat, rape, or incest, etc...
  Do not post links to any of the above.
  You and anyone in the photos must be at least 18, and must be able & willing to provide proof of age for anyone depicted in the photos you post, if requested.

I also registered the site with the Internet Content Rating Association and placed the content advisor on the web site.

I think you just stated your problem right there without even knowing it.

You can be blocked for linking to any of the above. Now the poster may not necessarily post anything illegal on your site, but you could link to their site which links to illegal images. You now indirectly linked to illegal porn.

Further, you are taking a huge risk by promoting porn that is not yours. If even one image does not have a url on it, (more specifically a url that points to a site that can provide you with a record holder proving the model is 18) it can be considered illegal by some agencies. Especially non-law entities like the ICRA etc.

I think everyone can spot child pornography. However spotting the difference between a 16 or 17 year old (still illegal) and an 18 or 19 year old (not illegal) is much more difficult.

Say someone posts a pic of a 25 year old, legal in almost all countries. The women looks like she could be anywhere from 16-25 years of age. This "legal" pic is posted on your website. There is no way to prove she was 25 at the time of photography (no url or record holder available), how can an agency tell if the women was 16 or 25??

The porn is not yours, you have no proof she is 25, however they are not going to give you the benefit of the doubt and risk it being a 16 year old.

I'm sorry, but I 100% agree that unless you put stricter guidlines and controls on your site. It should be blocked. You say you have an IP to catch bad guys, well IPs can be faked, masked, hidden, alternated, changed on dialup, or proxied. So it stops nothing.

As for ICRA, that only works when IE has the site blocked, other than that it doesn't do or prove much.

You say your site never linked to or showed illegal stuff. Well unless you examined every pic, visited every link posted and check every link on their site. You could have linked without knowing it.

Just my opinion.

[fatguygoesnutzoid]

a free-for-all porn posting site doesn't really sound like a legally smart idea.