Personally speaking I would be glad to have this filter, but I wouldn't want to force it on other people. So if people got a choice about enabling the filter I would be okay with it, i.e. if it was opt-in. In that case it's providing a service to people who need a human barrier to help them stop looking at porn if they have a problem. Any preventative mechanism that you set up for your own sake is pointless when you have root.
Are there any arguments against an opt-in filter? The legislation is for an opt-out filter.
Even a opt-in filter on an infrastructure level would imply DPI, and therefore would enable the ability for traffic analysis. And besides it creates a national 'watches porn' list.
In a free market economy, you could provide filtering as a service to those who want it. You get to use whatever setup of proxies and packet sniffers you please, so as long as they don't overstep the users mandate. Routing your other customers past these intermediaries would be a good idea, you can provide each customer the service they want.
That works as long as the ISP faithfully reports the routing rules they use for each user, which is rather hard to verify. ( And it would probably illegal for the ISP to tell their customers, if the government wants to use the DPI equipment.)
The arguments against an opt-in seem to focus on giving all kids an equal opportunity to use the internet without exposure to adult content, even when the engagement of their parents may differ (i.e; the kids of parents who don't take as much interest in their development as they perhaps should can still benefit).
However, one of arguments for an opt-in model suggests that removing the necessity for parents to make this 'active choice' about what material their kids could be subject to online, just ignores the problem and, if anything, makes it worse because parents don't ever need to think about it. (Should I talk to my kids about the dangers of the internet/world? Oh, I don't care about that now, because the Government has decided for me)
Personally, I agree with you, I think it's a good idea to have an extra layer of filtering like this (not every parent is tech savvy enough to install and manage local filtering) but it has to be Opt-In. How hard is it to ask the question when you sign up with an ISP? (Sir, if you have young children in the household we suggest you choose our network level filtering)
There would be a list of people who want to be able to watch porn (which could be used for black mail). It would also require a lot of infrastructure to be set up for this kind of censorship. That infrastructure could easily be used to start blocking other content.
Besides if you want to opt-out of porn you can already install filters on your computer or your router if you want to.
I think you reversed the meaning. Opt-in filtering means you choose to turn on the filter in the first place, opt-out filtering means you choose to turn off the filter.
Unable to hunt up a link right now, but literally every single ISP in the UK currently offers an opt-in filter for 'adult material'. Maybe the legislation should've just been to force more effective marketing of this.
I'm okay with paying taxes to give people a free opt-in filter that they have to speak to a human to opt out of again. I have no idea where to find such a thing right now, even for money. But then again, it sounds like the current opt-out laws don't require human conversation either.
You'd have to ensure that we don't ask people what the state of their filter is. If it becomes routine for (say) politicians, teachers, nurses to be asked at job interviews/elections what the state of their filter is ("Have you opted in to the filter? No? So you watch porn then.") then you're going to be forcing lots of people to be anti-sex and anti-porn.
Are there any arguments against an opt-in filter? The legislation is for an opt-out filter.