by Guest

contribution by Peter Bradwell

Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, this week confirmed that he is discussing a voluntary website blocking scheme with Internet Service Providers and copyright lobbyists.

There are plenty of reasons why so many people think this is a bad idea and why it won’t work.



It has been labelled the ‘Great Firewall of Britain‘ and ‘Hadrian’s Firewall‘ on Twitter.

We’ve been focusing on two of the main issues.

First, it would hand decisions about what we are and are not allowed to see to businesses. In a ‘self-regulatory’ scheme, proper democratic accountability and judicial oversight are bypassed.

Second, in practical terms it manages the impressive feat of being pointless and dangerous. ‘Web blocking’ is superficially attractive. Some information is illegal and harmful. Blocking promises to stop people getting it. So blocking is good. If that was the case you wouldn’t find anybody opposing it. But web blocking is just superficial.

If the aim is to stop people downloading things they have not paid for, or to improve artists incomes, or to stop sites selling other people’s music, it won’t work. But it will lead to mistakes that see legitimate traffic disrupted.

Identifying what people are not allowed to see is a difficult task. Who should decide which sites require blocking? On what grounds? With what democratic and judicial oversight? Meetings involving only ISPs and rights-holders can’t answer these questions. Ed Vaizey has promised us that consumer organisations will be ‘involved’. Let’s hope so. As things stand, discussions without those voices continue.

Furthermore, practically it is not easy to ensure only the ‘right’ traffic is blocked. Legitimate traffic will be screwed up when the wrong sites are accidentally put on the – secret – block list. In Australia, a dentist and a kennel were apparently placed on a planned list aimed at blocking child abuse images.

It is also easy to circumvent blocking. The people doing anything seriously wrong – for example people selling content they don’t own the rights to – will take about four seconds to find ways to swat away blocking measures. Users will take about nine seconds to find other ways to get things they want. It will involve such highly complex tools as ‘Google’.

We need a moratorium on demands for damaging copyright enforcement measures like website blocking. At best it is a cosmetic measure that allows policy makers to pretend they are doing something proactive. At worst, it is actively dangerous in creating an infrastructure of unaccountable censorship.

We are asking people to write to their MPs to voice their concerns. Over 1,500 already have; you can join them here.

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Peter Bradwell is a campaigner at the Open Rights Group