Two dutch internet providers decided to censor the internet, while i do understand their reasoning, i believe they make the wrong choices.
First of all i am against censoring the internet, but i would like to see criminal activities to be punished, this brings me in problem, as what i see as a criminal activity someone else in another country might not see it as criminal, or the same activity is even legal in another country. We are talking about the internet, this is not The Netherlands nor Europe, not USA, not Thailand nor any other Asian country, its simply the World community.
Why is this censoring so bad in my eyes ? Well, back to the topic, two dutch ISP’s are going to filter/censor the internet for child-porn websites. While I believe that child-porn should be punished severely, I don’t believe that filtering/censoring is making this disgusting activity not to exist anymore. Even worse the servers with content will still exist, the children will still be abused. And the abusers are still able to watch what we despise.
Blocking/Filtering/Censoring the internet is not a solution, Marley a way for the criminal to find better less traceable ways to get what they want. Now i am not someone who wants to see child-porn at all, and i will probably never see the filter-screen message, but what if they block an innocent site (how are you going to filter, per IP or Domain ? if on IP you could target more as hundreds of websites, if you target on domain, they have every hour a new domain name, or let you use the IP. If you block on content (read the page) you are also not waterproof.
I believe you should take action at the root, while the dutch government says they don’t have any ties with the countries these servers are located, i believe they should go work on that and put the pressure there on a political level, not to the internet user.
What is next ? Can’t go to a religious website? Can’t go to a website selling a certain brand, Can’t go to a website with news from another country, as it might show the story from an other angle ?
So my conclusion, it’s good to stop child-porn, but its wrong by doing this trough filtering/censoring the internet.