Monday, February 22, 2010

Does the Ministry block out the Sun?

In an answer highlighted by Simon Clark we leran that the Culture Ministry blocks websites that reference tobacco(weird, I take it is bars all references to David Hockney and Maggie Hambling then).

But it also blocks access to this lot,

The written answer (by Siôn Simon, minister for Creative Industries at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) was published by Hansard on 12 January 2010. It reads:
"My Department uses SmartFilter to block access to web sites which are deemed unsuitable. The following categories of sites are
blocked.
Anonymizers
Criminal Activities
Game/Cartoon ViolenceDrugs
Extreme Hate/Discrimination
Illegal Software
Malicious Sites
Nudity
Provocative Attire
Phishing
P2P/File
Sharing
Spam URLs
Pornography
Spyware/Adware
Tobacco
Gruesome
ContentViolence
Two sites blocked that do not fall into these categories
are:
http://www.filthyjokes.freeserve.co.uk/
internationallottobv.net

My Department blocks certain sites based on central guidance about potential threats, as is standard practice on security matters we do not publish this list."
If nudity and provactive attire are blocked, does that mean that the Sun is barred? If so what is Rupert going to do about it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you think we should tell them that 'Filthy Jokes' has moved to a new URL?

Gawain Towler said...

Nah, maybe something they can enjoy. Would you dare block Jo Brand?

Twitter