This is why it's so important to fight with everything you have over the tiny scraps of civil liberties you enjoy. Once a bite is taken, the whole cake inevitably follows.
The slippery slope started when they installed these blocks "for child porn only!" way back when. They even said, specifically, that no other content would ever be blocked.
Since then they added "violent [adult] porn," "illegal 'terrorist' sites," and now they've started doing pirate-related content.
So the slippery slope started a long time ago. We are half way down it and it is only getting steeper.
Aren't these blocks very different to the blocks of sites dealing in images of child sexual abuse?
This was a private case between industry and a few ISPs. The IWF blocklist is strictly about images of child sexual abuse (hosted world-wide), images of criminally obscene content (hosted in UK) and non-photographic images of child sexual abuse. The block is a temporary block until illegal content is removed.
The blocking technology (cleanfeed) was installed by most ISPs for the IWF blocking, once it was installed the industry took the ISPs to court to use it for blocking other things.
Right, and the police should not have the right to pull you over for speeding. Only someone with a massive sense of self-entitlement could call the West's civil liberties scraps. We could have total freedom (anarchy) but I don't think you would like it.
This is why it's so important to fight with everything you have over the tiny scraps of civil liberties you enjoy. Once a bite is taken, the whole cake inevitably follows.