Opted out of the mobile phone filter

I opted out (actually, a while back) from the intrusive mobile phone filter that affects all mobile phones in the UK.

You didn’t ask, but here are some thoughts on the “porn filter” for landline connections:

It will require smaller ISPs to make infrastructure investments, inevitably making them less price-competitive and some will go out of business. This is the exact opposite of what the UK needs right now, which is more competition and faster broadband speeds. There’s not much more I could add to what the Open Rights Group have already written on this topic.

It’s designed to distract attention from the economy and appease the Daily Mail. It’s certainly working to distract attention from the dismal state of the economy — look at all the ink that’s been spilled on this issue — so well done DC!

Appeasement, on the other hand, never works. The Daily Mail exists to sell newspapers, and so “campaigning” (making up absurd stories to sell newspapers) is what they do. They won’t stop here. It would be better for the Tories to sideline and belittle the Daily Mail, except that they won’t do that because Daily Mail readers are their core voters. For people who don’t vote Tory, it just looks spineless, so I can’t see how this can be part of a long-term strategy to win people over.

If they wanted to do something useful for the internet, how about hardening critical systems and cutting fraud? Instead, they’re cutting funding for this.