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I have a young daughter and I live in the UK. I think this legislation is bloody stupid. Yes, some people might reasonably not want their children to run acros
by gjm11 13y ago
I have a young daughter and I live in the UK. I think this legislation is bloody stupid.
Yes, some people might reasonably not want their children to run across pornographic material on the internet. Here are some other things some people might reasonably not want their children to run across on the internet: Anti-religious material. Religious material. Depictions of violence. Any mention of prejudice against racial minorities, women, etc. Websites offering do-my-homework-for-me services. News about upsetting things like tens of thousands of children starving to death every day in poor parts of Africa.
I hope it's clear that the internet would not be improved by having opt-out filters for all those things. I think it's clear, in fact, that the internet would not be improved by having opt-out filters for any of those things.
Yes, I hope my daughter will learn about sex in better ways than by stumbling across porn on the internet. And I hope she'll learn about those other things in better ways than by stumbling across them on the internet, too. It is not the government's, or my ISP's, job to make that happen by making things harder to find online; it probably won't work, and it will probably break other things (as such filters always have in the past), and it's the wrong way to solve the "problem" anyway.
And I also hope that if in the fullness of time our daughter wants to find porn on the internet, she will be able to, and she won't be (or feel) obliged to disclose the fact to her parents, and doing so without telling us won't require her to seek out dubious illegal channels which are likely to be full of stuff much "worse" than she'd easily have found without all the censorship.
- user24 13y agoGreat comment. > won't require her to seek out dubious illegal channels which are likely to be full of stuff much "worse" than she'd easily have found without all the censorship. This is one of my biggest fears. As an analogy (and a true story); they banned selling knives on ebay[1]. Now I have to go to specialist knife-selling websites to buy my knives (I am a collector). Those websites have a much better range and promote knives much better than ebay did. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7879701.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7879701.stm
- vidarh 13y ago"Hardcore" porn (anything with penetration or erect penises) was illegal in Norway when I was a child. As a result my generations source of porn was illegal imports sold in shady shops which, because they were already breaking the law, had few reasons to avoid selling anything that was available from their sources. So if you wanted just "mainstream" porn, you'd get that from places with prominent displays of all kinds of fetishes many of us would never have even heard of otherwise. Then came the BBS's, and the same was the case - normal mainstream stuff in between every fetish imaginable. Now I don't necessarily see that as a problem, but it does mean that by adding these kind of restrictions, they are effectively losing all control. They are also likely to massively hasten the move towards technologies to better anonymous, encrypted browsing. If anything drives "darknets" and systems like Tor to the next level, it will be more extensive porn filtering even more so than piracy, especially because of the amount of money in porn that is legally manufactured and distributed, but that is or may become illegal in large potential markets.