Did anyone in England ever hear of George Orwell? One would think there would still be a few Brits around who remember the civil servant turned author. Orwellian is the first adjective that jumps to mind, followed by imbecile. Start with the noble goal of protecting children from pornography, hire programmers to write algorithms that filter content, and what do you get? One in five British web sites are blocked by David Cameron's silly porn filters including a Porsche dealer and a political blogs, Guido Fawkes and SheRights.com.
The Porsche dealer, Philip Raby remarked, " 'we must have lost some business and, of course, it doesn't look great telling people the site is not suitable for under 18s!"
Guido Fawkes Editor Paul Staines said: "We would really appreciate it if TalkTalk would remove us from their block list. The only people who block us are them and the Chinese government."
Don't associate Guido Fawkes with Occupy Wall Street, Staines is a pretty conventional British conservative and SheRights is a pretty conventional American feminist blog.
Motherboard points to a lack of transparency as to how the filters are set and herein lies the danger. Would anyone trust the Obama administration with a free hand to regulate web content aside from most MSNBC hosts?
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