Current Insight Community Cases

Essential Datacenter Tips On Application Performance Monitoring

The Importance Of Skilled Immigrants To The American Economy

Help A New Kind of Music Label Revolutionize The Industry

Mandates To Buy American Should Be More Carefully Considered

Navigating The New Business World After This Recession

Check out our CwF + RtB experiment.
Brought to you by Floor64 and the Techdirt crew.

stories filed under: "block"
(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Oct 13th 2009 1:13pm


Filed Under:
block, india, skype

Companies:
skype



Indian Intelligence Officials Want To Block Skype

from the as-if-there-aren't-alternatives dept

Skype and other VoIP tools have become quite useful for reaching people around the world. I know that, recently, when my wife happened to be in India on a trip, being able to call her via Skype was incredibly useful. It's a good thing she's back now, as reader Shailendra alerts us to the news that Indian intelligence officials are once again asking the government to consider banning Skype. The reason I say "once again" is that I remember similar proposals from a few years back that went nowhere. The official concern, of course, is that "bad people" may use Skype to communicate in a way that can't easily be tapped or traced. But that's going to happen no matter what. If Skype is banned, people will still figure out a way to use it, or they'll migrate to some other tool. Banning Skype or other VoIP providers isn't fixing a problem, it's pretending a problem doesn't really exist.

13 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Mon, Dec 8th 2008 1:18am


Filed Under:
block, uk, wikipedia



UK ISPs Block Wikipedia Page; Cause Problem With UK Editing

from the unintended-consequences dept

One of the big problems with the idea of various governments around the world coming up with "blacklists" that ISPs have to block access to, is that it will always create huge questions over borderline content. At least if there's a lawsuit that involves taking down specific illegal content, there's due process to determine if the content is actually illegal. But handing that authority to a single entity with no outstanding review process seems quite dangerous. And, now, it's resulted in a variety of UK ISPs, who subscribe to Internet Watch Foundation UK's blacklist, to block a particular page on Wikipedia. The page itself is about an album, Virgin Killer, from the German band Scorpions. Apparently, the cover of the album includes a photo that many feel is child pornography.

However, in blocking out this page, there have been some unintended consequences. Apparently, the way that the ISPs are blocking access to the page involves a transparent proxy, that effectively routes all customers through a very small number of IP addresses -- and that's causing a second problem. Many of the users of those ISPs are now banned from editing any Wikipedia article. Basically, if anyone from those IPs gets on the banned list, it now affects every user, and that's what's happened for at least a segment of the UK population at this point.

And, of course, this action hasn't done anything to prevent or slow down the spread of a potentially illegal image. Because of the attempted block -- The Register notes the image is still available on Amazon's UK site -- plenty of others are also posting the image to point out how silly it is to set up such a block. Once again, this demonstrates the futility of such filtering systems. If certain content is illegal, go after it with laws -- not a secretive filtering process that will create unintended consequences with no warning.

24 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..
San Francisco Music Tech 2009
15% off discount for Techdirt Readers



Popular Posts
Poll

Which Internet Concern Worries You The Most?

 

 

 

 

 

 


Add Techdirt RSS To Your Reader
rss Add Techdirt to your Bloglines
Add Techdirt to your Google Add Techdirt to your My Yahoo
Add Techdirt to your Netvibes Add Techdirt to your Newsgator
Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Older Stuff

Tuesday

1:56pm: Jury Says Fictional Character Can Be Libelous (28)
12:44pm: Spam King Alan Ralsky Gets Four Years In Jail (27)
11:39am: Publishers Getting The Wrong Message Over eBook Piracy (39)
10:28am: Calling For An Independent Invention Defense In Patents (26)
9:12am: Microsoft Tries To Silence Revelation Of Bing Cashback Flaws; Leads To Revelation Of Other Problems (41)
8:03am: Don't Blame Facebook For Some Kids Beating Up Another Student (61)
6:46am: Hulu Telling Sites To Stop Embedding So Much (44)
5:00am: Once Again, If The Gov't Has Data, It Will Be Abused (42)
2:53am: As Expected, Social Networking Generation Running For Office Face Their Permanent Record Online (31)
12:55am: IMAX Sues Cinemark For Building Competing System... While Being An IMAX Customer (14)

Monday

10:26pm: Filmmaker Allowed To Use The Name Rin Tin Tin To Describe Rin Tin Tin (6)
8:25pm: Senators Begin Questioning ACTA Secrecy (32)
6:34pm: Brazil E-Voting Machines Not Hacked... But Van Eck Phreaking Allowed Hacker To Record Votes (15)
5:08pm: FCC Doesn't Think The Lack Of Competition Is A Major Barrier To Broadband? (36)
3:49pm: Heads Of Major Movies Studios Claiming They Just Want To Help Poor Indie Films Harmed By Piracy (47)
2:38pm: USPTO Convinced By Amazon That Online Gift Giving Patent Is Legit (19)
1:31pm: Tiburon Approves Recording Every Car That Enters/Leaves... Despite More Evidence Of Traffic Camera Abuse In UK (90)
12:18pm: Label Exec Arrested For Not Using Twitter To Disperse Crowd At Mall To See Singer (53)
11:01am: Spanish Court Dismisses Complaint From Nintendo Against Counterfiet DS Cartridges, Since They Add Functionality (12)
9:55am: Dear PR People: If Your Exec Has A Comment, Our Comments Are Open (25)
8:44am: What Kind Of Mickey Mouse (And Donald Duck) Lawsuits Are These? (23)
7:30am: Prosecutors Ending Lawsuit Against Lori Drew (13)
6:06am: Dear Rupert: You Don't Succeed By Making Life More Difficult For Users (70)
4:20am: ESPN Writer Suspended From Twitter (59)
2:10am: School Can't Handle Critical Community Message Board; Sends Legal Nastygram (21)

Friday

7:39pm: Liberian Laws Are A Secret Due To Copyright; Even The Gov't Doesn't Have Them (43)
6:56pm: Lily Allen: It's Ok To Sell My Counterfeit CDs, Just Don't Give My Music For Free (97)
6:10pm: EFF Looks To Bust Bogus Podcasting Patent; Needs Prior Art (34)
5:28pm: Google Blocking Set Top Boxes From Showing YouTube Unless They Pay Up? (65)
4:44pm: Entertainment Industry: Yes, Please Keep Negotiating Secret Copyright Treaty To Save Our Asses (43)
More arrow
Quick Links
Close
E-mail It