Banning Internet porn in SA: The Reality

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba intends to fast-track the passage of a yet-to-be drafted law that will compel internet service providers (ISP) to filter content provided to users to ensure it does not contain any pornography.

The Film and Publication Board (FPB) held a symposium this week to look at ways of protecting children from porn.

According to the FPB the law isn’t working as it stands and they therefore have no choice but to “take it to the next level.” They went on to say that technology had advanced to a point where ISPs would be able to filter out 95% of the content in a highly cost effective way.

Vodacom said that they currently have systems in place to protect minors from inappropriate content and if they were required by law to extend the filtering of such content then they would of course be obliged to implement the changes.

OpenWeb, Axxess and WebAfrica all disagree with Gigaba’s assessment, and plan.

Axxess

“The question is not whether it is practical, it is whether it is correct to dictate what can and cannot be viewed across the Internet,” said managing director of Axxess, Andrew Simpson.

“We believe that content should be openly available to everyone but options should be offered to those users who would like to be protected from adult or sensitive content,” Simpson stated. “Hence we offer the option to include ‘Family Friendly’ browsing in our Internet accounts. It is an option and if you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to.”

Cybersmart

Managing director of Cybersmart, Laurie Fialkov, stated that blocking porn is a good idea, but that three fundamental issues must be considered.

“Firstly, whether this is a form of censorship and violates everyone’s right to freedom of speech, secondly whether it is possible to implement, and finally whether this violates the current RICA act which states that you may not intercept without a subpoena or the permission of the end user,” elaborated Fialkov.

Fialkov said that there are two ways to implement a pornography filter: On an IP level and on a content level, but warned that blocking on the content level is a “fairly big problem.”

“It is really silly to expect ISPs to do content inspection because it is expensive, false positives will happen, it can be easily worked around by encrypting the traffic, and it violates the RICA act.”

False positives are when something gets blocked that shouldn’t be. Fialkov explained by way of an example: “The title child sex education may be blocked in error because of the words child sex.”

Fialkov stated that he would only advocate blocking in the form of a “porn block list” implemented in a similar fashion to a spam block list. “This is fairly cheap to do on the ISP side, but keeping the porn block list current could be a fairly onerus exercise,” stated Fialkov.

“Since what is and isn’t porn is really in the eye of the beholder, it really should be a government related company that is tasked with maintaining this blocklist,” Fialkov said.

WebAfrica

CEO of WebAfrica, Matthew Tagg, said that porn block lists aren’t practical, referring to issues experienced in Australia and the United Kingdom in implementing such systems.

“There are numerous issues in the UK and Australia, around who is responsible for maintaining the ban lists, who decides what content goes on the list, and who pays for it all,” said Tagg. “In many cases these filtering measures prove ineffective and are easily circumvented.”

Tagg warned that there is the added risk of false positives or the blocking system being open to abuse.

“We do not agree with the Ministers Plan,” said Tagg. “This is a very slippery slope, due to the complexities around who decides what content should and shouldn’t be blocked.  We support freedom of choice and expression and we strongly feel that it is up to individuals and families to decide what is appropriate for them, not the government or ISPs.”

OpenWeb

Keoma Wright, founder of OpenWeb, suggested that the Deputy Minister should download a parental control application from Download.com to protect his own computer.

“No-one has the right to filter anything on the internet,” Wright stated. “If they have a problem with what our clients are doing on the internet, they must email us a complaint and we will deal with it.  Censoring the internet is a glorified method of controlling our lives.  I for one will not stand for it,” concluded Wright.

The cost

Axxess’ Andrew Simspon said that users would be the ones to pay for government’s push for Internet censorship: “If it is imposed, the incremental costs to the ISPs will absolutely be passed on to the end users, resulting in more costly Internet experiences.”

WebAfrica’s comments agreed with those provided by Axxess. “The cost implications are potentially huge,” said Tagg.

“Filtering on this scale requires large amounts of hardware, software, maintenance and support, and could have negative effects on browsing speeds and experience due to the bottle neck created by the filtering system.”

Tagg warned that the tax paying consumers would ultimately end up footing the bill. This would be either directly to ISPs through cost increases, through government expenditure of public funds to implement, maintain and monitor such a system, or both, said Tagg.

To OpenWeb’s Keoma Wright it’s not the cost that’s the issue, but the censoring of information. “Hail China! Next the government will block Google, and the DA website,” Wright said.

Banning Internet porn in SA << Realistic?