UK: Public Pressure on ISPs to Enforce Parental Control (Killing a VAS?)

  

Chris Williams reports to The Register that "Campaigners will meet with the internet minister, Ed Vaizey,  to lobby for ISPs to be forced to control access to pornography. Vaizey issued the invitation to Tory backbencher Claire Perry, (picture) who said the availability of sexual material online is "a fire is burning out of control". The minister offered to act as an "honest broker" between campaigners and ISPs in the hope that action will be agreed"

See also "Claire Perry MP calls for a new "Opt-in" Model for Accessing Internet Pornography" - here and the video below.

"As a mother with three children I know how difficult it is to keep children from seeing inappropriate material on the Internet. We already successfully regulate British TV channels, cinema screens, high street hoardings and newsagent shelves to stop children seeing inappropriate images and mobile phone companies are able to restrict access to adult material so why should the Internet be any different? British Internet Service Providers should share the responsibility to keep our children safe so I am calling for ISP's to offer an "Opt In" system that uses age verification to access pornographic material".



Source: Cisco



As can be seen from the posts below, web filtering regulation and service is indeed more common in mobile, as kids are using it outside of their parents’ reach. For fixed services, this may be offered as a Value added Service, part of a larger parental control package (which will also stop cyber bullying - inappropriate adult-child chats, messages, SMS and Emails).

However, any regulation - and certainly one that mandates Opt-in to allow access to adult material will take away the revenue opportunity for the ISPs.

A number of vendors of DPI and/or policy management products offer a network based, policy-controlled, paternal control solution (e.g. Sandvine and Bridgewater, Cisco (SCE), Cisco ASR-5000, Radware, BroadHop).

Related posts:

• DPI Deployment (15) : TalkTalk Uses Huawei to Detect Malware (or Parental Control?) - here
• DPI Deployments (9): Orange France Selects Openet and Cisco for Parental Control and Tethering Prevention - here
• Australia: Telstra, Optus and Primus Agree to Voluntarily Block Illegal Web Traffic - here.
• Kosher Mobile Internet - Cellcom Israel Offers Web Filtering - here