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Here's what the filtering would mean: sexual health sites would also be blocked. Whenever I visit a university or corporation that has filtered Internet access,
by tommorris 14y ago
Here's what the filtering would mean: sexual health sites would also be blocked. Whenever I visit a university or corporation that has filtered Internet access, I always test out a few sexual health and LGBT support sites. Inevitably, a few of them are blocked. (Hey, my alma mater used to filter access to the Wikipedia article "Same-sex marriage" because it has the word "sex" in the URL.)
For years, websites that offer a space for young people to talk about sex, sexual orientation, relationships and so on have been blocked because too many of the people making the censorware presume that sex == porn or that LGBT == porn.
That's the cost of our anti-porn prudery: that people can't access sites that have advice on having healthy sex and relationships. Mandating a policy with that kind of side effect by law is a really dumb idea.
I've yet to see a compelling case that teenagers are being harmed by porn. But not having access to advice on how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases... that's really harmful. Whether it's providing sexual health advice or providing an anonymous shoulder to cry on for sexually confused teenagers, the Internet has saved plenty of young people's lives and health. It's helped people discover who they are, how to come out, how to have positive, healthy relationships. Ensuring that the next generation can have access to the enormous amount of good stuff that the Internet provides is precisely why we need to ensure we do not have government-instituted web censorship.
- DanBC 14y ago> Here's what the filtering would mean: sexual health sites would also be blocked You list the result of bad filtering, and suggest that a national filter would have the same problems. While I disagree with a national filter it's easy to think it would have been better than the lousy filters already existing. Does the existing child porn filter prevent access to innocent sites?
- tommorris 14y agoYeah, but the policy wasn't to have one "national filter". It was to have the government tell ISPs "you must have a filter". How the ISPs implement it would be up to them. Which means they'd go buy the same crap that universities, libraries and corporations are currently using and implement that. Deciding what counts as "porn" is very difficult. Deciding what is illegal child porn is, with the odd exception, pretty easy. But for legal non-child porn, well, what about a 15-year-old girl writing erotic Harry Potter shags Dracoy Malfoy fan fiction and sharing it in the fanfic community on LiveJournal or whatever. Does that count as "porn" in the same way as commercially produced videos does? And it is trivially defeatable: one kind finds a stash of porn, puts it on USB sticks and sneakernets it to all the other teenage boys in the neighbourhood. Hell, sexting exists.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoOr e-mails it to them, or uses Dropbox.
- ramblerman 14y ago> it's easy to think it would have been better than the lousy filters already existing. Why on earth would you assume that? It's a government imposed solution with no competition or incentive to be user friendly. If anything every politician and bureaucrat involved in the project would rather make it more restrictive to be safe than risk their own ass.
- superuser2 14y ago>advice on having healthy sex and relationships I highly doubt that an institution which blocks pornography wants its students having any sex at all.
- tommorris 14y agoAbstinence education works wonderfully right up until the moment it stops working.