Great Firewall of UK Blocks Game Patch Because of Substring Matches 270
Sockatume writes "Remember the fun of spurious substring matches, AKA the Scunthorpe problem? The UK's advanced 'intelligent' internet filters do. Supposedly the country's great new filtering regime has been blocking a patch for League of Legends because some of the filenames within it include the substring 'sex.' Add one to the list of embarrassing failures for the nation's new mosaic of opt-out censorship systems, which have proven themselves incapable of distinguishing between abusive sites and sites for abuse victims, or sites for pornography versus sites for sexual and gender minorities."
Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... (Score:5, Informative)
Where the US leads, the UK inevitably follows...
Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... (Score:5, Informative)
Firstly, it's not a government filter. The only government involvement was the Prime Minister pressuring the ISPs to offer it.
Secondly it's entirely voluntary. It's not even "opt-out". You have to make an actual choice whether to enable it or not during setup.
China, on the other hand, has a mandatory government imposed filter.
I'm sure you can see the difference.
Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... (Score:1, Informative)
In the UK the Internet is being censored on a massive scale, they have to ask the government for permission to look at porn, and you can be arrested for insulting Islam or saying something racist. Don't pretend that the US even remotely close to the same.
Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... (Score:4, Informative)
They have elections in China.....
They just do not have official political parties, like many other democracies.
China is also mostly Capitalistic...
Re:The most egregious example of this problem... (Score:4, Informative)
I don't get it, how is Froslbutt profanity?
FTFY... [telegraph.co.uk] Also fixed in the past: President Abraham Lincoln was buttbuttinated by an armed buttailant after a life devoted to the reform of the US consbreastution
Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the last election result was such that no party had enough votes to secure power. It was a hung parliament as a result (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2010). The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a Coalition, gaining the required combined majority to form a government.
Conservatives: 36.1%
Labour: 29%
Liberal Democrats: 23%
Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... (Score:3, Informative)
The real problem is that the government has *not* done this. Instead, they have threatened the ISPs that they *will* if it isn't done voluntarily. And all thanks to one shrill unelected bitch on a committee who got some reason has a direct line to Cameron. The "support of millions" is from the hypocritical mouth breathers at the Daily Fail and the cretins who read it.
Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... (Score:5, Informative)
The USA doesn't need a Great Firewall. Anything it doesn't like, it takes down for everybody instead of blocking it.
When Slashdot commenters posted things the Church of Scientology didn't appreciate, the USA didn't block Slashdot for USA visitors, they forced Slashdot to remove the content for everybody.
When 2600 linked to DeCSS, the USA didn't block 2600 for USA visitors, they forced 2600 to remove the links.
When people set up gambling sites that USA citizens were using, they didn't block USA citizens from using them, they seized the gambling sites' domain names so nobody could visit them.
When Dmitry Skylarov wrote an ebook reader that circumvented copy protection so blind people could use it, the USA didn't block people from visiting his employers' website. They arrested him.
These are far from isolated examples. The USA censors all the time without having to bother with a Great Firewall. Why bother blocking something when you can take down the source and send a message to anybody else who might be thinking of doing something similar?
Re:Great Firewall of China is bad enough ... (Score:2, Informative)
She appoints ministers to her government. In essence, she is still the executive. Therefore the government is not actually elected. Members of the House of Commons are elected, beyond that it's practical necessity that Her Maj chooses a Prime Minister who "has the confidence of the House" and tradition that she chooses only from amongst party leaders.
nor enact legislation
Actually, she is the only one with the power to "enact" legislation. Parliament cannot create laws without her consent. She can therefore refuse to sign any legislation she objects to, and she has on occasion done so (typically tax laws that affect her personal wealth. Yeah.) She can similarly unilaterally strike down legislation that she has already signed into law.
As for proposing legislation, she actually instructs parliament on their whole legislative agenda for the new term. In modern times, this is just the winning party's agenda in a speech they've written for her, but the symbolism is still there: It is her government.