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Porn Blocked in Boonies

Tahsis Internet users receive government warnings; glitch blamed.

Andrew MacLeod 18 Feb 2008TheTyee.ca

Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee's Legislative Bureau chief in Victoria. You can reach him here.

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Users got scolding message.

When William Davidson started getting government warnings saying he's blocked from visiting favourite Internet sites from his home computer, he didn't suspect it might have something to do with a government push to bring broadband to rural communities.

"A couple of us were scared there'd been a new Internet policy thrown at us," said Davidson. "I don't think anybody should be able to decide what we look at. I have a kind of libertarian view of that."

Davidson lives in Tahsis, a small community west of Campbell River on northern Vancouver Island. His Internet provider is Cable Rocket, which is part of a company called Conuma Cable. He has used the local provider for two years without problem.

Then in early February he and other users began having trouble with their e-mail. All but the smallest notes were being rejected. A few days later Internet users started getting what Davidson called, "The red screen of inappropriate use."

Restricted Categories

An attempt to visit a pornography site, for example, would return a red screen with a British Columbia logo and a "** WARNING **" message: "This connection has been refused. The Internet site you are attempting to access has been designated by a web classification service as containing material that contravenes the BC Government's Internet usage policy."

The warning linked to a page that said, "Users must not access Internet sites that might bring the public service into disrepute or harm government's reputation, such as those that carry offensive material."

Restricted categories include sex, adult content, racism/hate and "extended government inappropriate." It also blocked sites deemed security risks containing spyware, phishing software and bot networks. The screen would be familiar to government workers, who have contended with the filter for years.

Davidson said private users should not be blocked from going where they want on the Internet. "Our whole community has succumbed to 'Big Brother,'" he wrote in an e-mail. "I don't know how far this problem extends, but some of the folks here are pretty upset."

Hard to analyze

The manager of Conuma Cable, Steve Savola, said the company is working to fix the system and doesn't need any negative publicity. "We're in a difficult little pinch right now," he said. "We've had a problem for a few days . . . . We're trying to deal with a problem that's out of our control."

The explanation for what was going wrong was technical, not one of censorship, though a person in the office working on the problem joked that "aliens" had taken over the system. It has to do with how the community's broadband is wired.

"We route through a government tunnel in Tahsis," said Savola. Normally there are parallel ports that keep private users separate from the government line, but something had changed somewhere. They were working to figure out what. He believed the problem was in New Westminster or Vancouver. "It makes it very hard to analyze."

The warning screens are the kind of thing government employees or students would normally get, he said. Asked what he makes of people worrying about the government controlling what sites they visit, he said, "Go smoke another doobie."

Partnership with Telus

The problem may, however, be related to the province's attempts at Closing the Digital Divide that aimed to bring broadband Internet service to rural communities.

Now known as Connecting Communities, in 2005 the government signed a $117 million partnership with Telus to provide broadband infrastructure to 119 communities, said Telus spokesperson Shawn Hall. Telus's website says so far 116 communities have been connected through the program. The remaining three have had right-of-way issues.

Tahsis was not part of that project, said Hall, but was the subject of an earlier, similar agreement. The problems there were probably not caused by Telus, he said. "It sounds very odd to me," he said. "It sounds to us like it's probably a configuration issue between Network B.C. and the ISP provider."

A spokesperson for the Labour and Citizens' Services Ministry, which is responsible for Network B.C. and the project, said the problem in Tahsis is an isolated incident. The government buys Internet service from Conuma Cable, he said, and somehow "the pipelines crossed" because of a "technical glitch."

Conuma's Savola said nearby Woss, which was in the Connecting Communities program, had Internet routed through the government's computers when it first started and had restrictions like the one that hit Tahsis last week. "Everyone had to live with that for six months," said Savola. In that case customers were warned ahead of time about the limits of the service. "People were told up front and it was their choice."

Despite the limitations, said Savola, the program has been a great success. "What the government's done for small communities has been probably the most proactive in North America."

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