The UK telephone and internetprovider BT is blocking the access for its customers to an unknown number of websites since 21 June 2004, allegedly containing images of child pornography. So far, BT has not disclosed any information about the banned sites and the precise technical way in which the filtering is deployed, raising serious questions about large scale private censorship on the internet.

The software BT has developed to filter out the unwanted websites is called Cleanfeed, and was developed in collaboration with the Internet Watch Foundation. Both the association of UK internetproviders and the European umbrella organisation of internetproviders (Euro ISPA) have demanded more information about the exact nature of the blocking. The Internet Watch Foundation does not provide any information on its website or its annual reports on Cleanfeed or on the block-list of websites that they have developed. As a hotline, the mission statement of the Internet Watch Foundation is not limited exclusively to the battle against child abuse, but also aims to minimise the availability of "adult material that potentially breaches the Obscene Publications Act in the UK."

Under this Obscene Publications Act (texts from 1959 and 1964) the term 'indecency' is introduced and understood by courts to mean something that "offends against the modesty of the average man, offending against recognised standards of propriety at the lower end of the scale". According to the UK digital rights organisation Liberty, this means the definition depends on circumstances and current, sometimes local standards. "This vagueness is dangerous. Posters for causes such as animal rights, which are deliberately intended to shock their audience, have sometimes had to contend with indecency prosecutions."

So far, BT only released a figure about the attempts to access those banned websites in the first 3 weeks of the trial. They allegedly blocked 230,000 intended visits (not visitors), but caused confusion by also saying on the radio the number was twice as high, namely 20,000 URL requests per day. The UK provider association immediately responded with a series of questions and a high level of concern. What exactly was BT registering, the unique visitors, hits or even hits per image on a website? Did BT take into account that there was no error-message, so people trying to access a banned site would probably retry at least once? And that maybe this would increase the statistics by a factor of at least 2?

According to Richard Nash from Euro ISPA it is irresponsible for providers to block websites for their users. In stead of trying to make child pornography invisible, the responsible thing would be to deal with the production of the content. In stead of private decisions about what is 'decent' and what is not, providers should develop a thorough and balanced notice and takedown procedure, and governments should collaborate more closely in chasing down the production sources internationally.

ISPA seeks analysis of BT's 'Cleanfeed' stats (21.07.2004) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/21/ispa_bt_cleanfeed/

Liberty guide to the Obscene Publications Act http://www.yourrights.org.uk/your-rights/chapters/the-right-of-free-ex...