2009/2/20 Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org:
David is right, if they haven't a clue about techniques to manage a modern website - techniques that are over ten years old - then they are quite simply not fit to manage any sort of filtering blacklist.
I have not, and would not, actively seek out child pornography. However, I have a clue about how the modern Internet works. Any semi-intelligent publisher of child pornography is going to use things like hidden services on Tor. The IWF has zero impact on that; they might as well have a mission to target drug dealers who advertise in local newspapers.
Brian.
Blaming the wrong people there.
The IWF effectively has two missions.
1)Contact UK based ISPs and get them to take down illegal content. This was their initial mission and by most accounts they are fairly good at it.
2)Provide a list of material that can be fed into cleenfeed derived systems and provide some level of blocking against certain types of illegal content on non UK based sites. This they do. However cleenfeed was not their idea (blame BT for that) and if they hadn't started providing a list again there was the threat that the government would.