The Great Firewall of Britain has hit the big leagues by appearing on boingboing this morning:
Britain's "Great Firewall" set to restrict access to WikipediaHow the Great Firewall of Britain worksAnd also an article on
the Register.
This is the first time this has really popped up on my radar. I was feeling a bit smug about not being behind the one they're creating back home in Australia, but it appears I may be behind one after all.
My specific ISP, Pipex, isn't mentioned, but in the two years I've been a Pipex customer they've gone through several changes of ownership and infrastructure, so really I could be affected.
A few weeks ago I replaced my D-Link wireless router with a Belkin one (my brother had it spare). About a week ago, I noticed intermittent though frequent problems with Google image searches and Youtube. Google images hardly ever load, and Youtube thumbnail pics also tend not to load. This is both when I'm on Youtube, or when I'm looking at a top 20 clip site. Occasionally it works fine. Often it doesn't.
So while I've been wondering if it's the Belkin router (hell, maybe I just need to upgrade the firmware) I'm now wondering if my ISP is trying to filter my content. Nothing else I do seems to be affected, mainly it's just these two things.
This may also have been the real cause of what I thought were my
antivirus problems.
Is anyone else more deeply into this than I am?
EDIT: It' occurs to me I should add this is when doing
any kind of Google image search, not a search for the topics mentioned in those linked articles.