
UK porn filter blocks League of Legends update - JacksonGariety
http://www.joystiq.com/2014/01/24/uk-porn-filter-blocks-league-of-legends-update-for-sex-in-file/
======
bguthrie
Obligatory link:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem)

"The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks
e-mails, forum posts or search results because their text contains a string of
letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily
identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in
false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked."

~~~
Livven
Even Google has this problem with some common words. If you type "Nudel",
which is German for noodle, into the Google search box, you won't get auto-
complete entries presumably because it contains the word "nude". This happens
even on the German Google version (?hl=de).

Interestingly, it seems that Bing does a better job of separating "Nudel" and
"nude" as it does offer appropriate auto-complete entries. I'm not sure how
widespread this problem is and how Google and Bing compare on other search
terms, though, since I only randomly stumbled upon this issue while searching
for recipes.

~~~
_glass
Strange, did they fix it in 12h? For me "Nudel" autocompletes.

~~~
Livven
Indeed, I checked before posting my previous comment to verify that
autocomplete for "Nudel" was still broken but it's fixed now, at least on the
English version. If you go to google.com/?hl=de to force the German version
then it's still broken.

Another autocomplete curiosity I found: "Mädchen", German for "girl", is
blocked on the German version of Google while it autocompletes on the English
version (not sure if this was just changed along with "Nudel" or not) even
though the English equivalent is blocked on neither Google language version.

------
fuhrer1996
PCPro and Wired suggest otherwise.

[0] [http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/386665/league-of-
legend...](http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/386665/league-of-legends-game-
update-not-blocked-by-isp-filters) [1]
[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/21/league-of-
leg...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/21/league-of-legends-porn-
filter-block)

~~~
andybak
Sigh. I had to read half the page before I saw this. Can we get this to the
top?

------
doctorfoo
I love incompetent filtering like this, it irritates those who might not
otherwise care. It would be nice to see it commonplace and socially acceptable
to disable the filters purely because of how rubbish they are.

~~~
rhizome
On the flipside, overfiltering that begets controversy like this tells the PTB
what people care about. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, so sayeth
the sociopath, and hey, any information on undesirables is gravy.

------
mcphilip
This reminds me of the early days of parental web control products like Net
Nanny. I remember being frustrated that www.titanicmovie.com was blocked and
asking my brother why. And then I learned what tits referred to :)

~~~
degenerate
And then Kate Winslet showed you a pair!

~~~
jafaku
Relevant username.

------
greglindahl
Yeah, not so smart. A quick look at blekko's crawl data says that about 1/2 of
the urls matching /sex/i are not objectionable, assuming you don't mind your
kids seeing something labeled 'sexy'. A pretty crappy filter.

Here are 10 random urls that have /sex/i in them: 2 overblocks, 1 news article
about sex offenders, 4 urls that mention "sexy", and 3 sex sites.

    
    
      https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/news/3322/essex-history-revealed-through-photographs
      http://trace.tv/en/urban/video/1345_top_sexy_boys_rihanna_s_special
      http://nutrius.tumblr.com/post/33689144704/sextafoil
      http://www.tribunetimes.com/article/20121016/NEWS/310160041/Treatment-being-sought-juvenile-sex-offenders
      http://sexypornocams.com/
      http://macys.tumblr.com/post/34356483165/spotted-and-sexy-a-leopard-eye-makes-for-the
      http://www.platinumsexpass.com/
      http://520sex.530video.info/
      http://bocadelrio.olx.com.mx/sexo-masculino-limpieza-para-restaurante-en-veracruz-iid-373475442
      http://www.waycoolgadgets.com/sexy-tron-costume/

------
pasbesoin
I assume all things Essex are likewise unreachable.

(The implication of my comment being that the filtering mechanism is not
limited to being that dumb; the stupidity in the particular (as opposed to the
general) may be laid at the feet of incompetent management.

In the general, the incompetence -- and maliciousness -- has already been
rightly laid at the feet of governent as well as its subornation to vested and
entrenched private interests.)

------
Groxx
Well, that's one way to encourage people to turn off an idiotic filter.
Hopefully more game updates / media will add random "expertsexchange"-like
URLs.

------
Houshalter
This is complete incompetence. I am opposed to filtering at all, but if they
are going to do it there are much more effective ways to do it that aren't
very complicated, and if they don't want to do it themselves there are
companies that do this.

Spam filtering has been extremely successful with just taking keywords that
are commonly found or not found in spam and updating the probability that it
is or is not spam. A single word isn't enough to indicate that something is
porn, especially a common one like "sex", especially if it was found in a
string of characters rather than an individual word.

------
driverdan
I like this. Companies should use filenames containing banned words in
protest.

------
deletes
From the perspective of the filter is it working like intended. The word sex
is in there, if any character can be used as a whitespace. They limit the such
characters, but then you would use dirty words with underscores or
punctuators, which would get through. Therefore such filter for words in
useless and impossible to make accurate enough.

------
belorn
This is not the first time ISP deep package inspection cause trouble for
League of Legends. A Swedish ISP identified league of legends game traffic as
bittorrent and created an unplayable state for about 3 months.

Of course, world of warcraft has had no such issues. There are too many users
and too much money, and so bugs get fixed on Saturday night if needed. Others
have to just hope the bug gets fixed before the company losses too much money
and too many customers.

I would like to see net neutrality laws could impose some liability for ISP
who interfere with their customers traffic. It would self correct much of
today problems, while still not outlaw filters, DPI and QoS as a technical
solution.

~~~
f00_
I didn't hear about the Swedish ISP news, but League of Legends actually does
have a bit torrent client installed with it (Pando Media Booster), and I
believe League of Legends has much larger user base and similar if not larger
profits than WoW.

I think that problem had more to do with Riot being based in North America.

------
hahainternet
There's no "UK Porn Filter". Please stop believing this.

~~~
alan_cx
We all know that there are various filters, different for each ISP, which
exist because the government pressured them in to it. Generically and
collectively we are all oh so terribly lazy and refer to them as a UK porn
filter.

Please stop believing that we are stupid enough to take that short hand as
literal.

~~~
DanBC
I've read many posts from people who think that the government controls the
filter and controls what is on the filter and that the filter is mandatory.

It's important to correct that misinterpretation.

------
vfclists
Computer game playing is inherently pornographic!!

Haven't folks cottoned on to the relationship between the term 'joystick' and
the location of the male sex organ, as well as the attendant and persistently
vigorous manipulations of said levers?

Both the PC industries, ie the Political Correctness and Personal Computer
industries need to come up with a less offensive term, before the whole
terminology degenerates into farce.

------
csmithuk
This seems like bollocks because I'm on one of the "big four" ISPs and I can
quite happily request anything I like other than a few sites listed here:

[http://help.sky.com/security/privacy/our-approach-to-
protect...](http://help.sky.com/security/privacy/our-approach-to-protecting-
copyright)

All of these can be trivially accessed by proxy sites.

~~~
barrkel
Your filter is not enabled.

The sites listed in the URL you mention are blocked by CleanFeed, the
censorship mechanism developed to block child porn and repurposed by the
courts for commercial protection. CleanFeed can't be disabled with a phone
call to your ISP.

~~~
csmithuk
Well I haven't disabled any filters, haven't been asked about filters and I'm
a new customer as of last week.

------
wnevets
just one more reason to play DoTA 2 instead

------
imdsm
Well, now we do have a problem.

------
rhubarbcustard
I totally get all the snarky comments and dislike for the porn filter but as a
father of a 11-year-old girl who surfs the web I am 100% behind the idea of
regulating material that is not suitable for kids. The current filter may or
may not work but the idea is sound and I'd like to think that the politicians
who are putting the filter into place are doing so for the right reasons, i.e.
to protect innocent eyes.

~~~
sillysaurus2
She's probably not as innocent as you'd like to believe, and she's probably
tougher than you give her credit for. She also has a basic human right to
access information.

Please try to see that restricting information when someone is young deforms
their worldview for the rest of their life. We as parents hope that the
deformation is a positive one, but this isn't necessarily so. We're biased
into thinking we've made positive choices for our children regardless of any
evidence to the contrary. The bias is hardwired, and unless we take conscious
steps to evaluate whether our behavior makes sense then it's easy to get swept
up in a "think of the children" argument.

~~~
rhubarbcustard
Totally agree with you but I'm sure you'd agree that watching porn is not
something that a 11-year-old should be doing? She is more or less free to
browse what she wants, she reads Wikipedia articles, reads the news etc etc
but I can't see how viewing porn would be good for her worldview?

~~~
Crito
If she is actively seeking it out, there really are no technical solutions
that you can use to stop her (short of taking all electronics from her).
She'll find a way around any filter. If that is the sort of situation that
you're in, sitting down with her and having a talk is really the only workable
solution.

If the concern is _accidentally_ viewing porn... well, I have a few thoughts
on that:

1) How often does that actually happen? My office does not have content
filters on the internet, yet I have never accidentally viewed porn at work. I
can't actually remember the last time I accidentally viewed porn at work. I
strongly suspect that 95% of the "accident" cases are excuses that people make
when they get caught.

2) If the concern is popups and she won't stop going to shady sites that have
porn popups, use adblock. Problem solved. Also, tell her not to go to those
sites, before you get the UK equivalent of a DMCA notice from your ISP...

3) Accidentally viewing a few naked people in popups is probably not going to
damage her worldview. Would it be _good_ for it? No. But I don't think it will
cause any damage either.

~~~
astrobe_
It's the same logic as with DRM: it won't prevent anybody from doing what they
want, but it will stop a significant part of them.

Right now websites have no way not to deliver inappropriate contents. The best
they can do is to ask "are you 18+?" (see for instance Reddit), which a 3
years old could bypass.

A basic protection against accidental view and/or kids a bit too curious could
be as simple as:

A) Have the adult sites to insert a HTTP header marking them as such. They
have no reason from doing it, plus not delivering porn to kids is a legal
requirement in most countries (or I guess so). This is a flexible solution for
sites with mixed contents such as Reddit, because the mark is per-page.

B) Have browsers not to show these sites if the 'adult content' is not ticked
in the user profile.

C) Make a tutorial that explains how to create restricted user profiles on
their computers (so they can prevent their kids from using browsers that don't
support this policy).

Alternatively, but it would impact too much websites I guess, is to use a
"safe for kids" header and have browsers to only show such sites etc.

