British Censorship

The actions they claim they will do will, of course, lead to no
results whatsoever in many cases... as it should be. The hotline in question
sounds like a number as opposed to an email address... pity, we could just
bounce all spam to it and ask them to deal with it.

>     _________________________________________________________________
>   Cisco-Job Fair
>     _________________________________________________________________
>                  BRITISH GOVERNMENT SETS UP NET PORN FILTER
>   __________________________________________________________________________
>      Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net
>      Copyright &copy 1996 Reuter Information Service

>   LONDON (Sep 23, 1996 3:48 p.m. EDT) - The British government Monday
>   set up a watchdog to try to get pornography off the Internet.
   
>   Safety-Net, which is being financed by the industry, will have a
>   hotline to which callers can report suspected illegal material and
>   will contact police if necessary.

	Being financed by the industry = if you're going through a British
ISP, you're paying for it whether you like it or not.

>   It will publish a "legality indicator" or rating for each public
>   access area on the Internet known as a Usenet news group. The rating
>   will indicate whether the group normally contains illegal or
>   pornographic material and what kind.
   
>   Internet users can contact the hotline to complain about material
>   received from anyone via an automatic telephone, mail, e-mail or
>   facsimile.
   
>   Safety-Net operators will try to see where the material came from,
>   contact the authors and ask them to remove it. They can ask the
>   relevant service provider to take action and pass details to the
>   British Police National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS).
   
>   "We at the Home Office (interior ministry) made it clear to the
>   Internet providers some time ago that action was needed to deal with
>   obscene material on the Internet," Home Office Minister Tom Sackville
>   said.
   
[...]

>   Science and technology minister Ian Taylor said Safety-Net would act
>   as a warning system to alert the public.
   
>   "As this is an international network, we have to do something to try
>   to eliminate illegal use of it -- the abuse of the Internet by a few
>   perverts," he told BBC radio.
   
	As this is an international network, this is completely impossible.

>   "Government and the Internet industry have been working hard to come
>   up with proposals that can offer real protection to net users while
>   preserving free speech and recgonizing the value of the net for work,
>   education and leisure," Taylor added in a statement.

	Usual government doubletalk.... preserving free speech means no
such actions.

[...]

>    Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net