UK ISPs v. US ISPs (was RE: Network Level Content Blocking)

Sat Jun 9 21:28:35 UTC 2007

On Saturday 09 June 2007 16:43, Sean Donelan wrote:
[...]
> Is a centralized filtering solution better or worse than a decentralized
> filtering solution?
[...]

In my opinion, it is not. With centralized, who gets to decide what is 
filtered and why? I don't beleive a governmental entity should have to treat 
it's *adult* citizens like children. with de-centralized, it is the user's 
perrogative what gets filtered and what doesn't - if the user doesn't want 
their them or their children seeing certain content, then filtering is their 
option. As well as it gives the user power over *WHAT* gets filtered and 
*WHY*.

From my view, ISPs should continue their role as "passing the packets" and not 
say what their users can or cannot view. It's when ISPs start interfering 
with what their users do is when we will run into legal, political and 
otherwise issues that I'm sure none of us want to see.

And with ISP level filtering: what's to say a legitamate page won't get caught 
in the filter? i.e. if a news article is covering a child pornography story, 
what's to stop the filter from picking up on that and blocking the news site 
due to a false-positive?