I don't think the great-grandparent grasps the degree of specialization the various sub-components of and individuals in the services have.

It's more that I don't see how the Army can have the level of generalisation enough to have an air corps, and an engineering corps, but somehow running their own A-10 division is suddenly out of scope. The division seems arbitrary.

Given the variety of types of equipment and roles needed by the modern armed forces, I wonder if it makes sense to have different services rather than a combined armed forces. When a plausible mission is a sea launched ground attack with tactical air support I have to wonder why we're trying to get three services, each with historical antagonism towards the other, to work together rather than simply have a force with ships, planes and armoured cars.

No, they are not. Every ISP is required to offer this service

There's no law requiring them to. Only the largest ISPs offer this. The smaller ones don't. And if you don't want filtering then you can choose "No thanks", therefore the customer is not forced into doing anything except clicking "No thanks".

if one of the major ISPs tried that Cameron would be closing that loophole pretty quickly.

How? There's no law! Currently an ISP can just say "no" and if pressured tell people they can use a different ISP. It's unlikely that the government could even get this law through. The ISPs would actually be obliged to fight it and since the Lib-Dems mostly oppose laws to force this, it wouldn't become law unless Labour felt particularly puritanical.

Maybe we should limit it to those joystick waggling games from the 80's, and Dance Dance revolution.

Incorrect. Threatening companies into doing immoral things is immoral, unjust, and undemocratic.

What's immoral about offering your users more choice?

If I can't access content without making a choice, then as far as I'm concerned, it's default on.

So that means any setup screen is censorship.

It's not about Hollywood! It's about freedom of speech.

It's a very important principle, especially in the US that speech is protected. Not just by the first amendment, but as one of the fundamental principles on which your country is based.

You do not silence yourself because the government tells you, or because a criminal tells you and certainly not because some foreign unelected dictatorship tells you. If that happens then you should not just speak, but shout!

Yes, torture is a problem. Would we know about it if people didn't tell us about it?

Do you actually care about the human rights violations in North Korea? You seem to. Raise awareness! Tell the world! You can, because your freedom of speech is protected. If North Korea threatens you people will fight and some will even die to protect your right to speak out against it.

Maybe not to companies looking to secure their bottom line, but it is a big deal when the government can just make threats as it pleases to subvert the democratic process and get companies to do whatever they want them to.

They were being threatened with the democratic process! The free press was promoting the idea. The Prime Minister suggested that the democratically elected government might legislate if they didn't roll over.

A default on filter is simply intolerable.

It's not default on! It's active choice! That's what the article is about. People are seeing the screen that asks if they want to enable the filters. They can literally do nothing else without making a choice.

It's easily worthwhile. You don't need to go after everyone. Even if something is indeed popular, that doesn't mean it isn't a social taboo.

If over 90% of the population do something it's not a social taboo!

We're not talking about cleanfeed. We're talking about the ISP's parental filters.

You want to talk about cleanfeed? I agree with you. It's terrible.

You are presented with a screen asking you whether you want to enable filters or not. You have no choice but to see this screen. To opt out you click "no thanks". To opt-in, you click "yes please". If you can't work out what the two options do then I suspect that using a computer is beyond your abilities.

You don't think it's a big deal when worthless government thugs coerce companies into implementing filters they didn't want to implement in the first place?

If they just roll over then it was never a big issue in the first place.

You don't think it's a big deal that they have all the names of the account holders who opt out of this nonsensical filter

That's over 90% of their customer base. It's hardly worthwhile information.

I demand that all religious websites be filtered, because I find them harmful.

Seems fair. Get onto your ISP. Request a "religion" filter.

It's not a javascript injection. It's a browser redirect. It is one message that you can opt out of. You just say no, and it stops coming up. If you see it again then there's a fault with the system and you should contact your ISP if the fault keeps cropping up.

And they've been able to intercept and redirect connections for years already. If you have a problem with cleanfeed than I'm totally with you on that, but people seem to be ignoring that mandatory system and whining about optional filters.

So fucking what?

If you don't want filters, say "No I don't want filters". If you don't want to be asked then use a different ISP.

Which is pretty clear proof that pretty much no-one wants their Internet pre-censored.

Only if the free market works perfectly. Given that 4% of customers have turned on the filters, clearly there was some demand for this. This is much higher uptake than any software solution, so evidently that was not the solution the 4% wanted, and this is.

And, last I read, something like 4% of people had chosen to have their Internet censored.

So, 4% of the customers wanted filters. 96% did not. We now have a situation where the 96% get what they want, and the 4% get what they want. Why is this seen as a problem? Why do you want to remove the choice from those 4%?

They're probably the ones who clicked 'Yes' by mistake, thinking it meant 'Yes, I want the Internet, not Davenet'.

Or maybe they wanted the filters. If not, I have little sympathy for people who are that stupid.

Conservative parents might disagree.

They can turn the filters on. So the ISP provides a service that is useful for both those who so and those who don't want filters. The article is suggesting that the ISPs have a vested interest in tailoring their service for the smaller and more expensive of those groups.

Intentionally running a MITM attack against your customers aside, there is a huge problem with the legislation to begin with.

Yes. The fact that no such legislation exists. This is a voluntary ISP scheme

Cybersitter and NetNanny are not for me, but if I had young kids I may use that type of service if I was worried about their access.

Or you could use the service the ISP provides you with for free, that's easy to set up, available in the UK, and works with all network connected devices.

These companies get paid to manage content for you, and are _completely_voluntary so don't impose restrictions on everyone.

The UK ISP filters are completely voluntary as well.

And if those services are not available in the UK, or not good enough in the UK, why not create the company and let the free market do the work?

We tried. No suitable product became available. David Cameron pushed the market into providing such a service. The market obliged. If you really have a problem, you can always choose one of the dozens of ISPs that doesn't offer this service.

As bad as the US has become, I'm glad I'm not from the UK.

Why? You don't even have a choice of ISP in a lot of the US.