What is it sensible to censor on the web?

Is it possible to ban a website? Should we ban websites that aren’t illegal, merely offensive? With recent concerns about websites promoting anorexia, and the Pakistani Government blocking access to YouTube (for the whole World for a few hours by accident), these questions have come back into the mainstream media. I have some experience in this area, so thought I’d stick my oar in.

One of my early jobs was working in a converted cowshed in Chelford near Alderley Edge. With a dozen colleagues I looked after some 400 servers, 20 modem “racks” and the infrastructure for nearly a million 0845 dial-in customers (remember 0845 ISPs?) belonging to 300 ISPs. My job was to make sure it all “just worked”. That company eventually through acquisition and merger became Tiscali.
Part of my job was to process “DPA releases”. This is something that happens when a customer has broken the law online and the police want to know who they are – they contact the ISP in question and seek a release of data as provisioned by the Data Protection Act. I became aware of the darker side of the Internet, in a way that you will thank me for not being more explicit about.
I’m telling you all this, because I think it’s important to point out that I genuinely think – and know – there is some material that should never be published online.
However, do websites promoting anorexia fall into that same category?
If we were to try and block websites that promote unhealthy activity, and that give teenagers ideas that it’s acceptable to do something that is actually fundamentally dangerous, then why would anorexia sites be banned but not those of alcoholic drink manufacturers?
Many would argue that the two aren’t comparable but is that rational? Or is it merely subjective – I don’t like anorexia but I do like a pint – and therefore are we not risking stepping into plain censorship?
The censorship argument has been doing the rounds since the earliest online communities formed around “Bulletin Board Systems” or “BBS” for short. In fact, BBS systems were renowned for having ridiculously dangerous content on them. I’d link to an archive of the kind of text files that were posted on them in the 1980s to give you an idea, but some of the files contain (inaccurate) instructions on how to make nitro-glycerine and simple nuclear bombs. I suspect I would be condemning you all to an arrest under the Terrorism Act.
The Internet is even more difficult to police than BBS communities of old. The general consensus has always been that it’s impossible to censor the Internet. There are always ways to subvert any system you put in place.
The Chinese know this particularly well. They employ a task force of some 30,000 police officers to block access to websites that discuss certain religions, democracy, or criticisms of China and her Government. However, virtually everybody who wants to get around the “Great Firewall of China” can do so with only a small amount of technical knowledge.
In other words, if we started blocking content we found objectionable here in the UK, those who wanted to access it still would. Anorexic teenagers skilled at hiding an eating disorder are likely amongst the group who are going to be skilled at getting around content barriers.
The Pakistani Government’s move to block YouTube this morning however suggests they might have stumbled across a technique which is incredibly effective. I won’t go into the nitty gritty of “BGP route announcement” (for the technically minded, local blogger Andy Davidson provided a good overview), but in essence any Government could use the technique they used to block access to any website anywhere in the World for the entire Internet. There would be repercussions and we would end up in online chaos if Governments tried it, but this morning it was effectively shown that any ISP can effectively turn off a website for the whole globe with the flick of a switch.
What I am surprised at how however is the fact nobody seems to want to think about why the sites exist and tackle the problems at source.
Would it not be more productive to deal with anorexia as a social problem rather than a technical problem? Would we not benefit more by not bombarding our children with images that make them feel so fat they respond to the idea that anorexia is acceptable?
Would Pakistan not have had a better result if they had worked out why people were making anti-Islamic videos and engaging them in an educative process instead of just blocking access to those videos (and all other YouTube content) for their entire population?
I don’t have answers to these questions, but what I do know is that we’re heading into a new battle in the war of censorship and this time the weaponry and arguments look very different to how they looked in the 1980s.