Just to make the point about porn-blocking filters even more concrete, I’ve discovered that my blog post on porn-blocking has been automatically blocked by Strathmore University’s system (thanks to @LucyPurdon for pointing it out). Strathmore University is in Kenya, and I don’t know much about it, but the implication of the message is clear: the blog post was blocked because the system saw too many mentions of the word pornography – I’m still not clear about the proxies issue, though.

What does all this imply? Well, it shows the limitations of an automated system: analysing my blog post would indeed find I mention the word ‘pornography’ rather a lot – appropriately, as I’m discussing how we deal with pornography on the net – but it certainly doesn’t make the post pornographic. Any automated system will have that kind of a limitation… and will therefore block a whole swathe of material that is educational, informative and directly relevant to important issues. Automatically block things this way and you will drastically reduce access to information about crucial subject – sex is just one of them. Cutting down access to information, as well as all the freedom of speech issues, will leave kids less well informed, and less able to deal with these issues. Education is the key – and filters will and do(!) reduce that.

One key thing to note: the Strathmore University system is at least transparent – it tells you why a site is blocked, which might at least give you some way to get around it. Many systems (for example the way that many ISPs implement the IWF’s blacklist) are not transparent: you don’t know why you can’t get access to a site, either getting a ‘site not found’ message or even nothing. With those systems, there’s even more of a problem – and I have a feeling that those are the systems that David Cameron is likely to push….

Porn-blocking filters not only don’t work in their own terms, they’re actually damaging!