Pleased to say that my UK ISP have taken the Open Rights Group out from behind their "adult content" block. It comes after me asking why they were blocking it and them repeatedly denying that they were. I wonder if I can get them to take any part of archive.org from behind the "adult content" block.
They are required to administer an "adult content" block by Ofcom (UK Government). Any oversight of this arms-length Government censorship is opaque. There is no way to see what is blocked or why. And it seems they'll even outright deny blocking domains despite their branded "adult content block" page being what you get when you try to visit (and doesn't if you use a VPN). Designed so that everyone can deny any responsibility whilst censoring stuff that isn't "adult".
Last year the big blue button server I using was blocked at my local library, I asked the server admin (whom I know from IRC) and he suggested the IP may be blocked, so IP addresses may be used by adult or other sites, if that site is shut down, the IP may be linked to another server / domain, however that IP may still be blocked, the result is the new site is also blocked.
So there may be an innocent explanation, if they become aware that the new IP is linked to a site that should not be blocked they should be able to update their record / databases to suit.
The important thing is, that dialogue conducted nicely should hopefully solve the issue, It will be interesting with the new Online safety bill, if that causes more sites to be blocked that should not be blocked.
@zleap I was "nice". I also jumped through several hoops where they asked me to provide "evidence" of their own emails and being told forwarding their email (as I was asked to) wasn't good enough evidence; they made me send a picture of their email that they'd sent me. So they denied they blocked it then sort of denied that they'd even told me that. I had to give up as there was no way to establish any consistent reality with them.
@zleap The point of me criticising the opacity is that it allows for so much deniability. We can say this isn't the fault of Government. It isn't the fault of Ofcom. My ISP can email me with a written denial that they block a domain despite them clearly doing so. On the phone they tried to suggest it was my browser(s) at fault. We can also default to saying it is just a "mistake" somewhere. It is a mistake. My issue is not the specific mistakes but the system.
@zleap I guess there is a *chance* that long running sites such as archive.org and the Open Rights Group *could* have moved IP address to something that was counted as "adult" since these "adult content blocks" were introduced. There is no way to know for sure thanks to the opacity of it all.