Prime Minister David Cameron is set to announce the Government’s response to the Bailey report on the sexualisation of children this afternoon. Among the measures he is expected to outline is an agreement with BT, Virgin, Sky, and TalkTalk to offer new customers the opportunity to block adult content on their computers, smartphones, and mobile devices.
The ISPs, however, said only that they would provide information for new customers on the ways in which parents can protect their children online.
A spokesperson for Virgin Media told MacUser that: ‘Virgin Media is committed to protecting our customers and their families online and, alongside BT, Sky and TalkTalk, we have developed a code of practice to encourage an active choice about parental controls. When people join Virgin Media we will proactively communicate details around parental controls, enabling customers to make well-informed choices about the technical and behavioural steps they can take to protect their families online. The code of practice has been developed after consultation with parents’ groups and children’s charities.’
Early reports in some of this morning’s media claimed that the ISPs would require customers who wanted to view adult content to ‘opt-in’ to allow it. Other reports claimed that content-blocking would be offered on an ‘opt-in’ basis.
It’s not clear how ISPs would block content if that’s what a customer wanted. Talk Talk introduced a system earlier this year, called HomeSafe, which is designed to protect against malware at the network level and also gives customers the option of blocking content like pornography, gambling, and violence. HomeSafe uses a blacklist of sites which are filtered when that option is switched on. But, as Talk Talk admits, the blacklist isn’t, and can’t ever be, comprehensive. And it doesn’t prevent sites from popping up in search engine results, nor the search engine’s cache of the site being viewed.
Additionally, HomeSafe only works for websites, and not peer-to-peer file sharing, email, or instant messaging. And, as it operates at the network level, it affects all devices connected to an account. That could include, for example, tenants in a house or flat where the landlord has implemented it.
Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group said: ‘There is a world of difference between offering sensible child safety, and trying to persuade adults to live with layers of censorship.
‘The devil is therefore in the detail, and how “options” are presented. Will adults be asked if they need parental controls, or if they want to switch adult content on? We will oppose anything designed to induce adults to live with “censorware” which would inevitably deny them access to commentary, health and medical advice.’
