As 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

As 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.