UK's new national firewall: O2's "parental control" list blocks Slashdot, EFF, and Boing Boing

Cory Doctorow 8:45 am Mon Dec 23, 2013

The Great Firewall of Cameron is going live, with all British ISPs defaulting their customers to an "adult content filter" — meaning that you have to call up and say, "I demand pornography!" or all the sites on the blacklist will be off-limits to you. Included in O2's "parental control blocklist" are such hotbeds of hardcore porn as Slashdot, EFF, Linux Today, Blogspot, No Starch Press, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and, of course, Boing Boing. The "parental control" list is something you have to ask for (not the default-on filter), but it's being actively marketed to parents as the responsible thing to do. For the record, I've switched my broadband to Andrews and Arnold, who oppose Internet censorship.

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