13 ms·
Online pornography age checks for UK web users [video]
- ThrowawayI11I1 8y agoAll I heard is more people are going to be using high-speed VPN services. Also, how the hell do they think that they're going to be able to enforce this? They do seem to be doing this for the right reasons, but I have no clue how in the world they think that they're going to be able to A) enforce it, and B) do so without breaking into user's privacy.
- tw1010 8y agoSimple, ignore constraint (B).
- tommoor 8y agoThe road to hell is paved with good intentions
- RankingMember 8y agoAre there really even any good intentions here?
- tommoor 8y agoI believe so, the aim is to try and protect children from pornography – which seems well intentioned to me whatever you believe of the technical feasibility or the state overstepping it's place.
- RankingMember 8y agoOh what bureaucratic atrocities have been committed in the name of protecting children. The phrase "protect children" is practically a dog whistle now- whenever I hear of the government moving to "protect children" there's inevitably a company or companies behind it whose services the government will now be using to "protect" said children.
- etatoby 8y agoAs mentioned above by @adwww: > Mindgeek lobbied hard for this. They (owners of Pornhub etc) are the government's approved age verifiers, so are in theory now in charge of access to all the other porn sites.
- mariuolo 8y ago> All I heard is more people are going to be using high-speed VPN services. By pushing people into clandestinity, surveillance against serious stuff will become even more complicated.
- magnamerc 8y agoWhat are the right reasons? I'm genuinely curious. I can't really think of any reasons why censoring porn is a good idea.
- hutzlibu 8y agoProtecting children. But while I agree that the average porn is not how children should get sexual education ... I doubt this is the way to change that.
- op00to 8y agoI came of age in the 80s. I remember finding caches if nudie mags in the woods. Pretty raunchy stuff too, comparatively. Maybe this will trigger a renaissance of the nudie mag in the UK!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- RankingMember 8y agoI'm consistently flabbergasted that these kinds of unilateral efforts are still tried by naive politicians rather than placing responsibility for monitoring of children's behavior where it logically (to me) belongs: with the parents.
- tomjen3 8y agoProvide them with an actual sex education? I don't mean talking about how the penis works and how to wrap a condom on a cucumber, because I think the UK does that already. I mean actually talking about how to have great sex, what works, how to please a partner, etc. Feel free to have a final where students have to review some porn and point out the parts that doesn't work in reality. Of course that would horrify parents and teachers, but the reality in 2019 is that you can no longer _not_ talk about the subject, you can only leave the discussion up to the porn producers and mind geeks search engines or get into the fray yourself.
- 8y ago
- notahacker 8y agoThe answer is (C) leave it on the statute book to create the impression that they care about limiting access to porn and then ignore the fact that the majority of people, including the kids the law is supposed preventing from accessing it, can find a workaround if sufficiently motivated to do so. (there's an argument that "ensure sufficient motivation is required to do so" is the actual rationale for this and many other behavioural regulations anyway)
- gdfasfklshg4 8y agoAlso it will give a tool for selective prosecution of undesirables... If everyone breaks the law then the prosecutor has the ability to arbitrarily imprison anyone.
- notahacker 8y agoWell not really, because the law has no provision for prosecuting porn users, it simply provides a basis for a regulator to instruct ISPs to ban certain sites which decline to implement its porn age check, if the relevant body which usually puts age classifications on films can actually be bothered to keep updating the blacklist for every new pornblog. The latter isn't exactly without the potential for dubious consequences (the BBFC has theoretical grounds to ask my ISP to block Reddit) but "selective prosecution of undesirables" isn't one of them (and the BBFC is probably no more likely to use its power to make Reddit "adults only" than it is to do the same for Disney films with a bit of gore)
- 2icnefi78 8y agoWho cares if you can enforce it; it provides probable cause (or whatever they call it) to search any device that doesn't have such a license. And if they happen to find (or plant) something on that device when it's searched: mission accomplished.
- DanBC 8y ago> Who cares if you can enforce it; it provides probable cause (or whatever they call it) to search any device that doesn't have such a license. No it doesn't, that's a bizarre interpretation of English and Welsh law and of police powers to search computers.
- Goronmon 8y agoI think the goal is to institute a policy that encourages people to avoid it through services like VPN. Then you get to go after VPN services to "protect law and the children", then the UK is able to more effectively spy on and track their citizens.
- HeWhoLurksLate 8y agoCynical me thinks that you could use that in conjunction with some terrorists using Whatsapp or similar and you would have some great grounds for mass decryption. In America, there are supposed to be legal processes that involve a lot of work for the government to spy on people. Is there anything like that in the UK, and do politicians like it?
- junto 8y agoI think that the UK have had that covered for a while, and no, the UK government did a lot of this in secret, and there is no legislation designed to protect spying on its own citizens. In fact that's the main point, as well as spying on traffic coming across from the US into Europe: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encry... And the UK government lost in the European Courts (that kind of countercheck is going to disappear after Brexit): https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45510662 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45510662 But all they will do is make it more secret and deny everything.
- blunte 8y agoWell obviously everyone will need a VPN voucher as well.
- zpeti 8y agoI find it hard to comprehend how anyone would actually support this other than a stupid government bureaucrat, anyone with any real world experience of privacy and practicality would laugh at this idea. Yet it gets voted in. Well done UK government.
- wukerplank 8y agoWho's the lobby behind it? Or is pure conservative Weltanschauung? Edit: Fixed punctuation.
- adwww 8y agoMindgeek lobbied hard for this. They (owners of Pornhub etc) are the government's approved age verifiers, so are in theory now in charge of access to all the other porn sites.
- Phillips126 8y agowow... just wow...
- sambull 8y agoNow the law makes complete sense.
- ahnick 8y agoHaha, that is unbelievable... https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/government-porn-id-check-mindgeek-porn-hub-digital-economy-act-bbfc-a8820016.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/government-porn-id-chec...
- andrepd 8y agoAaand of course. What else could it be, but the economic power moving to write laws to benefit themselves, stifle competition, overrule the will of the people, and impose their rules on all of us.
- tomjen3 8y ago
- skywhopper 8y agoHow is this going to even work? It sounds like it’s certifying particular devices, but there’s no way to certify the age of the actual user.
- KallDrexx 8y agoHahahaha. If you watch the video you have to enter your passport or government ID number into porn websites that will verify your age. If you don't want to enter your passport or id number in random porn websites then you will need to go to a store and buy a "voucher", and you can enter the porn voucher number in the website to access it. This is going to be a phisher's paradise.
- stevetrewick 8y agoWell, somebody’s passport number.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dTal 8y ago£4.99 per device? Whatever this is about, it's blatantly nothing to do with age checks. (Obviously, for that you'd certify the person, not the device. People do share computers!)
- yakshaving_jgt 8y agoI'm not sure people share computers explicitly (or even implicitly) for that purpose.
- vorpalhex 8y agoThey might when it starts being a few pounds per device...
- dTal 8y agoThe purpose is ostensibly to prevent underage people from "illegally" seeing porn. You don't think teenagers would seek out "porn-enabled" computers? "Computer == identity" is simply broken. (It's also broken the other way - there's absolutely no reason to charge per-device merely to authenticate age.)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- petercooper 8y agoThe example I keep coming back to is how are they going to enforce this on, say, Google? If you do a Google search for any sort of physical characteristic followed by nude/naked/porn and hit the Images tab, you get thousands of pornographic images back. I can't see Google enforcing such a block and ID scheme merely for its image search engine, tbh.
- etatoby 8y agoIf they can identify individual human faces through algorithms, they (= technology companies with deep pockets) can surely recognize most porn pictures, given the right incentive (regulation.)
- johnjac 8y agoHah Hah, no.
- etatoby 8y agoIf you haven't been following the deep learning trend, a "Cat vs. Dog" picture classifier, or variations of such, are now taught in introductory AI classes. Applying the techniques taught in the courses, you can easily reach 99% accuracy yourself, on your own run-of-the-mill hardware. If you extrapolate that to Google / Microsoft's resources, it's a clear yes.
- petercooper 8y agoI think Google is actually pretty good at doing that. If you turn on all the various safety features, it's pretty hard to find anything too graphic. But.. I think the problem is more a social one. Is Google going to comply with a single country's law when it requires quite an elaborate technological solution? The UK is not at the scale of China, and I suspect such companies will generally ignore the law (it's common in the UK to have laws which are broadly ignored, they're on the books for selective enforcement at a convenient time) or block the UK entirely.
- zimpenfish 8y ago
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoWell I know what to get people for Christmas now anyway. I wonder if Groupon will have any good deals.
- tincholio 8y agoGrouporn might have some...
- deanalevitt 8y agoOh good, government regulation of browsing habits. What could go wrong?
- no1youknowz 8y agoLike in China, the UK and EU will be banning VPNs and asking ISPs to block their usage. It may not be tomorrow but it will be here nonetheless.
- enriquto 8y agobut how can it be done effectively without banning also ssh (which is quite unlikely) ?
- chopin 8y agoBut that's not for the masses (if you think of setting up a tunnel). Afaik China drops encrypted traffic intermittently to subvert this approach. And you need to rent out some server elsewhere outside the jurisdiction. One could totally dry out the revenue stream for the hoster.
- darn2heck 8y agoIt can't be fully banned. I could envisage an authoritarian government demanding that you register to use ssh for work or whatever purposes. Obviously that doesn't actually prevent a determined individual with some know-how but it can be done effectively enough to bar most users and enable mass-surveillance. They know you can't stop all encryption. One time pads will always work when used correctly. That doesn't matter because they aren't targetting criminals, black-hats, or terrorists. They aren't targetting people that actually have to hide. They are targetting the technologically unaware. I always tell people that this isn't aimed at stopping people that really want to hide, it is about monitoring the majority of the population.
- tyingq 8y agoUK VPN providers rejoice.
- tristanperry 8y agoWait, what? I'm a Brit and assumed this was just an early April Fools Day joke - especially as a few articles said it was due to be implemented on 1st April 2018, but was delayed until 1st April 2019. What a bizarre policy.
- jacknews 8y agoWhile the immediate goal with this is understandable, it smacks of an 'approved content' voucher. These kind of things are always ineffective and end up being a way for government to insert itself into your life and charge for the privilege. These sites could instead use re-capchas featuring trivia from the past which only adults would get - select famous personalities etc. Or ISPs and telcos could offer 'family' filters built into some of their plans, etc. So many ways to tackle this issue without the heavy-handed involvement of government.
- nbaksalyar 8y ago> Or ISPs and telcos could offer 'family' filters built into some of their plans, etc. And they already do this, it's switched on by default. Sometimes you can't even visit innocuous websites because of these filters. The 'trivia quiz' approach reminds me of the classic game Leisure Suit Larry, you could crack it just by randomly trying different answers :)
- zzzcpan 8y agoNo need for adult trivia captchas, since this is not an actual issue to deal with. Adults are already responsible for children and have to guard them from all kinds of perceived and real danger.
- Bantros 8y agoThe state of this country. Have to admit I had to laugh, a fucking "porn voucher"
- nyberg 8y agoWondering if they'll have deals such as "buy one get one free" for them. Wouldn't be shocked if they've planned it already.
- gvand 8y agoIt seems something out of a Monty Python sketch, well done UK government.
- blunte 8y agoPeople in general are largely incapable or unwilling to think. If they were willing to actually think through these laws, they would never write them nor support them. I would ask the politicians and the supporters of this law to define "porn". Who gets to decide what is considered porn? Will that take into account religious beliefs? Will it consider regional norms? Which religion? Which region?
- DanBC 8y agoI mean, the law is stupid but your questions are trivially easy to answer and are the kind of thing English courts are well used to dealing with. Pornnis material designed to sexually titillate. This is why you can still buy American Beauty in England, even though it contains an image of a semi-naked underage actress in it. Your comments about religion at ebaffling and I have no idea what point you're trying to make. If you're suggesting that religious minorities who dislike ankles could somehow get websites showing ankles to be put behind an age wall, well, no that's not going to happen.
- defertoreptar 8y agoYou're giving people a financial incentive to give sensitive information to sketchy websites. Now all of your embarrassing, pervy interests can even more easily be tracked to your personal identify.
- mruts 8y agoWhat’s the rationale for this? Is kids even looking up porn an issue anyone cares about? If you’re old enough to search for porn (I had my first foray into porn at 11 or 12), you’re probably old enough to watch it right? Maybe girls look it up a latter, but boys start getting curious on the cusp of puberty.
- DanBC 8y agoThe rationale (and I'm not saying I agree with this) is that pornography now is different: it is pervasive; it's easily available; and it's far more extreme than it used to be. There's reasonably good evidence that this has changed sexual habits in young people. There's also reasonably good evidence that people are reporting worse experiences of first sexual encounters than in the past, because of the expectations that porn creates in young people. The industry has had years, over a decade, to self regulate and they chose not to do so, so it's not surprising a right-wing government is implementing an age-wall.
- quadcore 8y agoI've always wondered: what's wrong with a child watching porn? (real question) Is it bad psychologically? Do we have study to back this up? I've been exposed to porn at quite a young age, say 10, never though it'd armed me. edit: Thinking about it, I've found one reason: porn tend to be misogynistic hence makes a poor education. But then, blocking porn doesn't solve the root of the problem. Also, we all know what prohibition do when it comes to kids: makes it even more desirable.
- PUSH_AX 8y agoYou got me thinking about this, assuming good sexual education relating to safety and age of consent, fundamentally, I can't see an issue with allowing someone to see how healthy sexual encounters play out in a video format. So we're talking about a very specific wholesome type of porn. The taboo and embarrassment are social constructs we could get past. Would you stop your child from watching another species have sex in say a zoo? What reason would you give if so? I think we could separate observation of the act from participation in the minds of our youth, probably not in my lifetime but I think it could be done.
- quadcore 8y agoI think I see a strong reason now. It's kind of hard practically speaking to judge the content of porn (is it legal, illegal, violent, reasonably healthy, consented, etc), so better block it all together.
- aphexairlines 8y agoThe parliament website's entry for this law at https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2016-17/digitaleconomy.html https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2016-17/digitaleconomy.... doesn't seem to list who voted for it. Is that information available anywhere?
- tragomaskhalos 8y agoAs a child of the 60's growing up in the UK, there are compelling parallels to what has gone before: 1. As cinema became more overtly sexual in the 70's, films would occasionally make it onto TV with a minor amount of censorship; repeat showings would then 'correct' this by censoring more heavily. 2. As VCRs arrived in the 80's, porn and video nasties accompanied them. But again, there was a clampdown on these as the technology became widely adopted. 3. It is trivial to access pornography on the internet, and has become increasingly so in the last few years. This initiative is just the latest reaction. It is a tough one: like most people, I abhor any form of censorship or government interference into its citizens' private doings. OTOH the availability of internet porn to minors, and its current nature, has to be a concern: there are studies showing the desensitizing and distorting effect it has on those too young to apply their own experience and filters. Nor is asserting that it's the parents' responsibility to monitor or control access particularly useful unless there is the technology to support that in an accessibly low-tech form. But we do have the makings of a less intrusive and privacy-violating mechanism - ISPs could block certain websites unless you as a customer specifically allow access to them: BT do this, for example (although bizarrely various porn sites seem to be unaffected, whereas oglaf.com needs to be whitelisted!). The fact that such routes have not been pursued make me suspicious of the whole enterprise.
- LinuxBender 8y agoIt seems odd that this was ever required in the first place. To me, it would make a lot more sense to require any site that could contain adult material (porn, anonymous file upload, file sharing, etc) to add the RTA header [1] to all pages and then put the responsibility on parents to use parental control software to check for the header. It is trivial to add the header to all modern web servers and load balancers. In Apache, it looks like this: Header always set rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA" In HAProxy, it looks like this: http-response set-header rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA" On a web page, it looks like this: <meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA" /> [1] - http://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq http://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq
- jules-jules 8y agoThis would be the sensible solution if the goal was to curb kids watching porn. What this actually does is to lay the foundation to having control over any kind of content on the internet.
- LinuxBender 8y agoYou are probably right. How does the UK enforce websites outside of the UK to enable this verification? Are they going to nag my service providers?
- jules-jules 8y agoJust as a heads up, in case this ever gets implemented, Opera browser has built in VPN for those who don't want to set up their own.
- HNLurker2 8y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19345288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19345288