40 
The popular ISP part of BSkyB is about to implement an ISP-level porn block, which it’s introducing under the guise of a selfless plan to protect the kids of the nation from seeing very bad things happening to people’s bottoms online.
Speaking about the move in a blog post, Sky’s Lyssa McGowan said: “…while computer-based parental controls are important tools for parents, on their own they are not sufficient in protecting kids who are accessing the net through a growing range of devices such as games consoles, tablets and smartphones.”
Announcing what Sky calls a “whole-home” solution, McGowan goes on to say that all web content will begin to be filtered at “household-level” by Sky later this year, with parents asked to choose what sort of material they’d like entering their pipes. It’ll basically be a form of the controversial “opt-in” solution that’s so far failed to be implemented across the board.
Parents will also be given a set of reporting tools, which will let them know when their child learns the appropriate IT skills required to change the settings itself. So they can change them back again. [Sky via The Register]
Image credit: Sad computer user from Shutterstock
ISPs Blocking Porn Sites Is a Total Kick In the Nuts
Fileserve Blocked by UK ISPs Over a Single Porn URL Report
ISP Porn Blocks Don't Even Work Properly
I’m a sky customer, I won’t be for much longer.
Same here, I will be leaving Sky Broadband for this reason alone.
I do not want any ISP, monitoring my traffic, blocking the sites I receive, opt in or otherwise.
No thanks.
Absolutely and you better believe they won’t be doing a similar thing for their TV service.
I too am a sky customer who will now be leaving them. Looking after children isn’t a corporate responsibility – it’s a parental responsibility. So why is this being forced on me, rather than being opt-in?
Agree with you all. I’m not a Sky customer, but if I was, I would leave too.
This won’t work. Things like this never do. Even if it is deployed successfully, people will find ways around it.
I can’t help but imagine the drop in customer numbers too.
It’s implemented irritatingly in mobile networks and seems to have stuck well enough.
why is no one thinking of the children.
http://goo.gl/LGTKA
That’s the way we are going in the UK, everything we do, watch, read or think will be regulated. Of course it’s “for the children”
Also a Sky Broadband customer here. No kids in the household so what are they trying to protect? They already block some torrent sites (understandable because illegal) But if I want to pay/watch free porn on the internet. What the hell is stopping me?
Erectile disfunction. Sore hands. Shame.
Lol.
I agree it annoys me that they wont even let you disable the parental controls on their TV service. Can’t even flick between two different 18 (non smutty) films without having to input a pin every time. Thats a pain if I’m watching an old movie while I wait for another to start.
i whole heartily disagree with this!
i don’t want to have to set up the TOR network just so i can watch porn at home!
Sky is implementing this “whole-home” system, to stop access to pornography.
But they are also setting up a “whore-home” facility to easily enable access to skanks.
I wonder if they’ll block all their bongo channels at transponder level for their pay TV services?
No, of course they won’t.
Maybe this has been brought around quicker now that Sky have oversold there cheap, unlimited broadband service on too many exchanges. All that streaming of videos of an adult nature must be using a heap of bandwidth!
I was a SKY broadband customer (now with Virgin) but I don’t understand the problem here. If you want porn then opt-in, if not then leave it opt-ed out.
If you think the isp’s / areas of government aren’t monitoring what you access already then I think you’re slightly deluded.
I think the matter of the subject is people would rather tell a person on the phone to block all porn traffic to their house rather than ring sky up when their partner isn’t around and polity ask the telephone sales person can i have access to porn please. it is forcing what they believe on people by arranging it in away where a higher % of people will feel too “ashamed” or shy to ask for access to porn for a quick knuckle shuffle.
p.s i was a sky customer but switched to virgin 100mb late last year
So you think it’s a bad idea because some people will be too ashamed or shy?
The whole idea is to protect youngsters from seeing porn (personally I don’t think it will because they’ll find ways around it if they want and nobody ever finds porn by accident) so the theory is good even if the implementation will be a typical snafu.
I’m over 18 but still live at home with my parents and our sky service Is in their name and now I have to have an awkward conversation with my step dad as to why he shouldn’t block it!
or get your own broadband and stop leeching off your parents
Of course your right ISP/gov are almost certainly monitoring to some degree but I think the problem people have is this should not be down to a corporation but to the parents. Then you also got the situation were what if a parent(s) say perhaps want access to pornography, then what are they meant to do phone up Sky every time and ask for access to porn? I think you can see how ridiculous this is.
If they are that bothered about children accessing Pornography why not dump this section of their available channels? Thank F**k I’m not a Sky customer.
ADULT
900: Playboy TV
901: Adult Channel
902: PlayboyTV Chat
903: Television X
904: redhot Amateur
905: redhot Mums
906: Babestation
907: redhot 18s
909: Lucky Star
910: Red Light 1
911: TVX Brits
912: Studio 66 TV 1
913: Climax
914: Extreme
915: ExGirlfriends
916: Cheeky Chat
917: Filth
919: Dirty Talk
920: Blue Tube
921: UK Swingers
923: XXXCESS
924: playboy Lesbian
925: XXXFirst Timers
926: XXX Mums
927: Studio 66 TV 4
930: XXX Gay
931: xxXpanded TV
932: Red Light 3
933: Red Light 4
934: Red Light Rio
936: Essex Babes
937: GirlGirl
938: Studio 66 TV 2
939: Storm
940: Sportxxx Girls
941: Studio 66 TV 3
942: Live XXX Babes
You mean you didn’t type this from memory?
Fair one!
What about the god channel? If they want to block inappropriate things That should be blocked!
I’d love to know who watches the “RELIGION” section on the sky EPG. It baffles me, saying that who watches Renault TV?
and while were at it, who actually watches babe station, and who rings in?? Im sure there are lots of cheaper thrills to be had on teh interweb?
Renualt tv is probably on in every Renault showroom around the world, other than that youd have to be quite bonkers to actually watch it
They most certainly have nobody’s protection in mind. I strongly believe this is just an excuse to implement a traffic monitoring/controlling/whatever layer on their service. It’s a powerful and dangerous precedent. Once the basic framework for monitoring/blocking is set, all kind of orwellian actions will be one big step closer.
People, please keep in mind that no big corporation sees us as valuable people who should be protected for hteir own good. This kind of thinking goes agains the very actions that allow a corporation to be successful enough to grow big. They all see us as assets.
It’s already bad enough with Google censoring searches. And now this move from Sky. (Why can’t Safe Search settings on Google be turned off completely instead of stuck at ‘moderate’. I’m the only person in my household, I’m forty odd. I don’t need protecting.)
It’s about time they sorted this out properly, like if you have a Google account and can prove you’re the age of 18+ you should get completely unfiltered results. Otherwise if you can’t prove you’re 18+, or aren’t signed in, you get filtered results.
Google’s new image search filtering is far too severe and certainly isn’t “Off” when it says it is, and now this from Sky. Again, if you’re a Sky customer and can prove you’re 18+ there should be a login restriction to remove a filter from your ROUTER, if you have kids.
I don’t like the direction censoring of the Internet is going. I certainly don’t think cutting content out at the source is the way forward.
No where in that blog post does it say that they will “Automatically block porn at ISP level”, yet another stupid misleading pageview grabbing headline.
Yep they don’t use that phrase. I guess the information for the article is based around this bit: “That’s why we’ve been investigating ways to help provide a ‘whole-home’ solution in which web content can be filtered out not by a particular device, but at a household-level” as that would imply, to me anyway, that it would be blocked at an ISP level at some point.
Block porn, rapes and pregnancy rates go up.
wow, missed that scientific study, do you have a link to it?
Do you have to opt-in to have stuff filtered, or do you have to opt-in for it to be unfiltered?
If it’s the former, I don’t see the problem. Yes, it is the parents responsibility to control what their children are doing on the Internet. But what’s wrong with a company providing a service that will help them do that? As long as they are clear it’s not a foolproof solution, and that it’s still important to keep an eye on what your kids are doing.
If you don’t want it filtered, don’t opt in. Parents who want to prevent their kids looking at adult material, but want to be able to see it themselves will just have to find a different way to achieve that.
I’ll never be a Sky customer, for a variety of reasons, and don’t plan on having kids but I can see why this would be attractive to parents as it means they don’t have to worry about policing what their little darlings are looking at online (plus not to mention that many kids are more tech savvy than their parents so they won’t have to worry about learning a new skill).
However, I wonder what would happen if little Timmy was caught looking at porn after circumventing the block. Will his angry parents be able to sue Sky for failing to live up to their promise to protect the kids?
Protect kids from what? I watched porn since I was like 12 and so has every person I know….. it’s natural, I don’t see why Sex is some Taboo.
I don’t think I used sarcasm correctly as I’m actually against this kind of thing (nothing wrong with a bit of porn or sex) lol
In addition to the fact that they never once said about automatic on filtering, they have recently clarified that parents will be given an “active choice” and then if they chose to opt in, they will have to decide what sort of things they want filtered. From the sounds of it, they are simply offering the option of filtering that they currently offer to new subscribers to everyone.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/02/isp-sky-broadband-uk-to-launch-network-level-adult-website-filtering.html
Crisis averted. Fapulous.
You can already block either domains or words via the router which is accessible by the owner, the point being YOU should control what YOUR child can access
and you thought Sky was going to be bad
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2274388/MI5-install-black-box-spy-devices-monitor-UK-internet-traffic.html#axzz2JgYB758T
If this happens i’ll just download terrabytes worth of porn out of spite.
Why not for once listen to customers and put it to a vote and see if it would be a service we want?
If you log into your sky router you can block access using words or web addresses, it’s not a company’s responsibility to say what your child can and can’t access it’s yours!
And yet we have 24 hr licensing laws and gambling online.
This country is fucked.
Pure and simply.