One of the shortest ways to explain what's happening is that firstly people who sign
up for a new broadband account will be offered the chance to activate internet filtering
on their accounts. What we understand from the past couple of weeks is that the box that
says yes I'd like these filters to be installed will be pre-ticked and I think what will likely
happen after that is that the user will be offered a series of categories that they may
like to see filtered from their internet and that could include pornography which is getting
the most attention, but also could include other things like forums, alcohol sites, or
sites related to self-harm and so on.
This filter is very little or nothing about porn what it is is the first introduction,
in the UK in fact, just about the first in a democratic country anywhere of an internet
censorship mechanism and that's the real worry.
It's about introducing a mechanism that can then grow and be modified and believe me the
next step from voluntary filtering must be mandatory filtering. The voluntary filtering
won't do the job that Gail and Claire Perry and David Cameron say it's going to do. It
won't protect children, in fact it will probably do the opposite.
What's being offered is a choice and I'm all for choices. This is enabling parents to make
a choice as to whether or not they want material filtered, it's not going to take the material
away, it's still going to be there but you have a choice or whether or not you want it
coming down the pipes into your home. I think that's a fantastic idea and I'm all for choice
and nobody's saying people can or cannot see what they want to.
Every house that has children in it also has adults in it and adults, some adults watch
porn, I have a child, myself and my partner sometimes enjoy watching porn as is our right,
we're adults. Is Gail suggesting, is David Cameron suggesting, is Claire Perry suggesting...
So opt-in, what's the big deal? Opt-in, if you want to watch your porn nobody's saying
you can't watch your porn. All you have to do is a tick a box, is that such a big deal?
Then what point is the filter?
That your child when you are not around can not watch women being gagged, spat upon, that's
the use of it.
Gail you don't seem to understand how the filter works. You don't get to opt in and
out everyday, it's a one-off you switch on or you switch off. It's not a switch you can
turn on and off.
All they need to do is filter pornographic websites that have porn or other adult content.
It's not a big censorship issue, all it is is very simply about doing the same thing
that happened a few years ago, putting the dirty magazines on the top shelf.
Peter let's come to you. It's not an internet censorship issues.
Well that's a nice idea. I appreciate the idea that we need to protect the internet
for what it's good for but it's absolutely not possible to say it's easy to select a
list of websites that we think the BBFC thinks are pornographic and just to filter those
out and that's for two reasons. Firstly, there will be mistakes in the categorisation, there
will be mistakes in how these things decide what to be blocked and secondly, these filters
are designed to catch more than just pornography. The list of categories of what these will
block are far broader than pornography and one of the reasons so many websites are caught
accidentally on mobile networks is that it covers forums, sites related to alcohol so
bars, restaurants websites are blocked. It catches things are tenuously mention tobacco
or even filtering things related to sects, with a c and a t, to do with esoteric content.
So it's really important that we remember this is not just about defining an easy list
on violent pornography there's a much broader effort here to define more categories that
we think people between the ages between 7-18 should or shouldn't be looking at.