eputy Home Affairs Minister intends to fast-track the passage of a law that will force ISPs to filter out porn in South Africa

Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba intends to fast-track the passage of a yet-to-be drafted law that will compel internet service providers (ISP) to filter content provided to users to ensure it does not contain any pornography.

The Film and Publication Board (FPB) held a symposium this week to look at ways of protecting children from porn.

"Despite recent amendments of the law and other efforts to stop the devastating effect on children of their access to pornography, it's not enough," FPB legal affairs manager Dumisani Rorwana said in a statement on Thursday.

"The law as it stands is not working, so we've no choice but to take it to the next level."

Technology had advanced to a point where ISPs would be able to filter out around 95 percent of the content in a "highly cost-effective way", he said.

Similar programmes to safeguard children from pornography were currently in place in China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

"We expect resistance from those who claim the freedom to access pornography as a fundamental right," Rorwana said.

"However, it is well established in legal circles that the rights of children are paramount. By comparison, viewing pornography remains a peripheral right."

Gigaba would now meet with his counterparts at Cabinet level to determine where the bill would best fit.

The symposium also agreed on the need to block certain gaps in the broadcasters' code that had seen instances of "unsuitable content being aired during the past few months going unpunished", Rorwana said.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/14128-Internet-porn-ban-must-fast-tracked-Deputy-Minister.html

LMAO Porn is bigger and more powerful than this country they wont get it right

I have a few opinions on this:

1. Why ban pron on the internet only? Look at the filth that is on eTV late most nights followed by those "SMS ORGASM to 34555 for unlimited XXX vids sent you your phone for only R5!" adverts.. Here in main road Cape Town there is an adult world just about every 50m...
2. Protecting the children? sure thing sounds like a good idea but I wouldn't be suprised if 99% of abuse cases are from people without access to broadband.. you know "sleep with a virgin child to cure HIV" cases.
3. Censorship much? This isnt the UAE or China. Shouldn't adults have the choice to watch what they want? (As long as human rights are not abused).
4. They can try but people will just download it via torrents, nzbs, encrypt it etc.
5. The retard Minister behind this, Malusi Gigaba, seems to be in trouble himself after his wife laid a domestic violence charge & asked for a restraining order against him. Oh the irony..

If this does get enforced we will need to get in contact with Anton, he must have 2TB worth of pronz my now

EDIT: Another point, it is parents resposibility to protect their children from seing such things.

3. Censorship much? This isnt the UAE or China. Shouldn't adults have the choice to watch what they want? (As long as human rights are not abused).

um mate, just to filll you in, go to anc website. they stand for communism. so ja, this place is just like UAE and China. just well disguised. hello, sign are all around you!! who do we do international business with??? China are the main guys. just go read their webpage, what the stand for. all are equall, take from rich give to poor, nationalize mines, rica your phone(small print says they allowed to listen in on all call, where my privacy, new law for newspapers, they have to disclose anonymous tips offs if gov asks, wheres freedom of speech) etc etc. we are a communist country is disguise. dont be fooled!

I dont actually watch porn, not because I dont like it but because it doesnt really do anything for me :/

I like making my own

So true saffa, well said mate.
undercover communism, that's what it is indeed!

thanx celt.

Lets not steer away from the OP:

@ Saffa You can create another thread about communist South Africa, I agree there are many poor signs of where South Africa is going, however these are not related to this thread.

@ Shev I don't think this is about whether pron is good or bad, or who watches it etc but rather about GVT censorship or for some reason only chosing to censor one medium of it.

Think about it. Why ban internet pron(the largest, easiest & cheapest porn source) when you can watch it on tv, buy a dvd at adult world or look and listen?

$

What is the bet this minister is getting a fat donation from the adult dvd industry if this goes through. We all know that is not exactly unexpected from an ANC member.

Whats next, block google to keep the yellow pages around?

Fluffer - u dont like porn???

appologies for derailing ur thread fluff master.

i think its easier to police it if its being bought or hired bud. as for it being on tv, parentals know its on at this late hour and young kids should be in bed or parentals should check on their kids if they are watching at this late hour. as for it being on internet, its impossible to police. so a full ban is easiest. and my point of this being a communist country means they can and could ban it.

to be quite honest, if they banned all porn i wouldnt be against it. would make this world a better place.

saffa02 wrote:i think its easier to police it if its being bought or hired bud. as for it being on tv, parentals know its on at this late hour and young kids should be in bed or parentals should check on their kids if they are watching at this late hour. as for it being on internet, its impossible to police. so a full ban is easiest. and my point of this being a communist country means they can and could ban it.

to be quite honest, if they banned all porn i wouldnt be against it. would make this world a better place.

Easier to police because its bought or hired. Hmm you have a point but still I have been offered weapons and drugs numerous times so I don't think that is really the case. Like I mentioned in my 2nd post there is no way to "full ban" anything, especially on the net.

It is easy to protect children from interwebz pron. Vodacom offers this already as an option on its 3g/GPRS for mobiles and if your children are using a computer I feel a parent is STUPID not to install a "netnanny" or similar (check download.com for many others) or at least check their childrens browsing history. A computer is an immensly powerful tool and children need to be watched like hawks with one.

Another point to this topic - if this was to go through, how much will it cost YOU & I? New hardware, software & support will need to be procured.

Laney wrote:Fluffer - u dont like porn???

I am not going to lie, when I was younger (teen) I thought it was great but it is something that you outgrow.

As an adult, I think pron now and again is good, especially if you watch it with your partner.

Fluffer wrote:

saffa02 wrote:i think its easier to police it if its being bought or hired bud. as for it being on tv, parentals know its on at this late hour and young kids should be in bed or parentals should check on their kids if they are watching at this late hour. as for it being on internet, its impossible to police. so a full ban is easiest. and my point of this being a communist country means they can and could ban it.

to be quite honest, if they banned all porn i wouldnt be against it. would make this world a better place.

Easier to police because its bought or hired. Hmm you have a point but still I have been offered weapons and drugs numerous times so I don't think that is really the case. Like I mentioned in my 2nd post there is no way to "full ban" anything, especially on the net.

It is easy to protect children from interwebz pron. Vodacom offers this already as an option on its 3g/GPRS for mobiles and if your children are using a computer I feel a parent is STUPID not to install a "netnanny" or similar (check download.com for many others) or at least check their childrens browsing history. A computer is an immensly powerful tool and children need to be watched like hawks with one.

Another point to this topic - if this was to go through, how much will it cost YOU & I? New hardware, software & support will need to be procured.

you can ban it, but it doesnt you you can stop it agreed. look at drugs. but you can make it illegal, downloading it can be traced via IPs. if you caught with illegal pron you can get a police record. this could happen, but there are bigger police issues at hand at the moment so dont think it is feesable. and you could block out most porn to sa by putting SA behind a proxy. again it wont stop everything, but we've managed to catch and block alot of sites here at work, so it can be done with enough man power, good IT gurus and money. but again, not sure if its feesable. bottom line is it can be done. but i think theres alot of other bigger issues that need sorting first.

Agreed.

And I am not defending pron sites here, I think that just all of them are scum.

Even with the most hectic proxy & IP monitoring etc there is still encryption, peer to peer, usenet and torrents and I wouldn't be suprised if this is where 90% of internet pron is coming from.

Axxess

“The question is not whether it is practical, it is whether it is correct to dictate what can and cannot be viewed across the Internet,” said managing director of Axxess, Andrew Simpson.

“We believe that content should be openly available to everyone but options should be offered to those users who would like to be protected from adult or sensitive content,” Simpson stated. “Hence we offer the option to include ‘Family Friendly’ browsing in our Internet accounts. It is an option and if you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to.”

Cybersmart

Managing director of Cybersmart, Laurie Fialkov, stated that blocking porn is a good idea, but that three fundamental issues must be considered.

“Firstly, whether this is a form of censorship and violates everyone’s right to freedom of speech, secondly whether it is possible to implement, and finally whether this violates the current RICA act which states that you may not intercept without a subpoena or the permission of the end user,” elaborated Fialkov.

Fialkov said that there are two ways to implement a pornography filter: On an IP level and on a content level, but warned that blocking on the content level is a “fairly big problem.”

“It is really silly to expect ISPs to do content inspection because it is expensive, false positives will happen, it can be easily worked around by encrypting the traffic, and it violates the RICA act.”

False positives are when something gets blocked that shouldn’t be. Fialkov explained by way of an example: “The title child sex education may be blocked in error because of the words child sex.”

Fialkov stated that he would only advocate blocking in the form of a “porn block list” implemented in a similar fashion to a spam block list. “This is fairly cheap to do on the ISP side, but keeping the porn block list current could be a fairly onerus exercise,” stated Fialkov.

“Since what is and isn't porn is really in the eye of the beholder, it really should be a government related company that is tasked with maintaining this blocklist,” Fialkov said.

WebAfrica

CEO of WebAfrica, Matthew Tagg, said that porn block lists aren’t practical, referring to issues experienced in Australia and the United Kingdom in implementing such systems.

“There are numerous issues in the UK and Australia, around who is responsible for maintaining the ban lists, who decides what content goes on the list, and who pays for it all,” said Tagg. “In many cases these filtering measures prove ineffective and are easily circumvented."

Tagg warned that there is the added risk of false positives or the blocking system being open to abuse.

“We do not agree with the Ministers Plan,” said Tagg. “This is a very slippery slope, due to the complexities around who decides what content should and shouldn’t be blocked. We support freedom of choice and expression and we strongly feel that it is up to individuals and families to decide what is appropriate for them, not the government or ISPs.”

OpenWeb

Keoma Wright, founder of OpenWeb, suggested that the Deputy Minister should download a parental control application from Download.com to protect his own computer.

“No-one has the right to filter anything on the internet,” Wright stated. “If they have a problem with what our clients are doing on the internet, they must email us a complaint and we will deal with it. Censoring the internet is a glorified method of controlling our lives. I for one will not stand for it,” concluded Wright.

The cost

Axxess’ Andrew Simspon said that users would be the ones to pay for government’s push for Internet censorship: “If it is imposed, the incremental costs to the ISPs will absolutely be passed on to the end users, resulting in more costly Internet experiences.”

WebAfrica’s comments agreed with those provided by Axxess. “The cost implications are potentially huge,” said Tagg.

“Filtering on this scale requires large amounts of hardware, software, maintenance and support, and could have negative effects on browsing speeds and experience due to the bottle neck created by the filtering system.”

Tagg warned that the tax paying consumers would ultimately end up footing the bill. This would be either directly to ISPs through cost increases, through government expenditure of public funds to implement, maintain and monitor such a system, or both, said Tagg.

To OpenWeb’s Keoma Wright it’s not the cost that’s the issue, but the censoring of information. "Hail China! Next the government will block Google, and the DA website,” Wright said.

pretty spot on

I am gonna start a PORN internet site.
Biggest money to be made

"Keoma Wright, founder of OpenWeb, suggested that the Deputy Minister should download a parental control application from Download.com to protect his own computer."

Shevy wrote:I am gonna start a PORN internet site.
Biggest money to be made

who is going to star on said site?

I am gonna get people to submit their own material and then resell it

ooooohhhh im not that brave

Shevy wrote:I am gonna get people to submit their own material and then resell it

Cool I always wanted to be in a movie

JustVern wrote:

Shevy wrote:I am gonna get people to submit their own material and then resell it

Cool I always wanted to be in a movie

You can be in my movie... :/

If this does get enforced we will need to get in contact with Anton, he must have 2TB worth of pronz my now

i gotta stock up b4 they ban it :Oq: