2017-03-21

Think of the Children (again)

Once again, the nanny state is on about censoring the internet because "Think of the Children".

See ISP review article (here).

I have said it all before, but it it may be worth explaining a bit about what AAISP do here.

Firstly, all of our customers are adults, we do not sell to minors at all. And all broadband customers have actively selected that they want no filtering. So I suspect we comply with even these latest suggestions.

But there is a lot that our adult customers can do to take responsibility for their children using the Internet. Remember, if you have teenage kids that want to access porn, they will always be able to - it is not clear that there is evidence that this does any harm to be honest, and a solution to any harm (such as skewed ideas on relationships) is better education - talk to your kids, explain that porn is fiction just like thrillers on TV, and sci-fi. Talk to them about relationships.

However, for younger children, every computer system these days provides a range of "parental controls". Indeed, sometimes it is hard to set up a machine with these turned off! Use these tools.

Also, you can set up additional free and even paid for tools if you need - just search for them!

We can also help - we can set the default DNS servers on your broadband to be OpenDNS, which allows you to set up DNS level filtering that will help stop young children stumbling across the more dodgy parts of the Internet. If you are unsure, call us and ask for help (or chat on the web page, or irc, or email, or SMS). The only thing we don't do is filtering in the connection we provide to you.

Ultimately, as our customer, you are in control of your computers and have access to a range of tools to help.

5 comments:

  1. I do like the "Those responsible for providing filtering and blocking services need to be transparent about which sites they block and why" section though - but I can't see that getting into the final draft...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There also needs to be accountability and recourse for wrong blocking.

      Delete
    2. And it needs to be accessible recourse - if you need to put up an £10,000,000 bond to get your site instantly unblocked, or wait 30 days, it's not accessible to the average site owner.

      Delete
  2. James has got the right idea, browse with your eyes shut for extra safety.

    ReplyDelete
  3. As you correctly say there is not a lot of evidence that children are harmed by porn. However there is a mountain of evidence about authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is a mental problem! A belief in tradition and authority is associated with lowered levels of one of the main personality traits called openness or even in some papers intellect. Then there are the direct studies of authoritarianism. This very excellent book by an academic who is giving it away for free as a public service covers the research. If you haven't got a lot of time look at chapter three to start. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

    It explains the screwed up thinking that this blog is often moaning about. Providing children with an authoritarian upbringing , as the book explains, damages their cognitive abilities. So yes we should think of the children.��

    ReplyDelete

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