More people should know about "Cleanfeed"

Cleanfeed is an internet site blocking software used by BT and other ISPs to mask out web sites in UK. It was started by BT in 2004 and extended to other ISPs in 2007.

It allows the Internet Watch Foundation (find them here) to collect complaints and pass these to the ISPs who then block access to the web sites. Typically this means blocking child sex abuse, obscene material and racial hatred sites.

New attack by MPAA

Enter the MPA, an international arm of the USA MPAA representing the movie studios. In june 2011 they took BT to court to try to get sites hosting or indexing copyright infringing files - movies etc - blocked. Specifically they are targeting a site called Newzbin which indexes the files on the internet Usenet system. Many copyright infringing files are on Usenet for downloading by others.

Our UK Digital Economy Act passed last year gives rights holders the right to identify downloaders of infringing material by forcing ISPs to provide their name and address found from the IP number they are allocated. But the DEA does not provide any legal basis for rights owners to pursue the "pirates" that host files for downloading.
See this report from the BBC.

No one knows!

A survey in 2007-8 showed 62% of UK users are unaware of the existence of Cleanfeed and the IWF. 61% don't trust BT and 65% don't trust the IWF because the system implements "silent censorship" - that is you don't know about sites which are blocked and cannot therefore complain about it. Most users would prefer an "open censorship" model where a help message is shown when users try to access a blocked site, and 57% want an "unblock" request form.

So there we are, drifting into censorship of the internet, with little public debate or knowledge. We have to have a bigger discussion about this. A separate report just issued by the OSCE (find it here) clearly found that existing approaches to web control (like the "three strikes and you are off" law are against many agreed human rights agreements which fundamentally say that open internet access is a human right.