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Questions about Cameron’s ‘new’ porn-blocking

250 points by justincormack 13y ago

beaker52 13y ago
Through one method or another, sex is still taboo. We can't talk openly about it. It's something that generally happens behind closed doors. Making this filtering opt-out is a "soft ban". People will have to take that "uncomfortable", "shameful" step of "unbanning" it. If someone watches porn, they've gone to the trouble of getting it unbanned to feed their "filthy" minds. That's the narrative behind the psychology of this ban being enforced. The govt. will have a big list of people they can spy on to make sure they're not looking at anything they shouldn't be, and I hazard a guess that the govt. will change their mind on what's acceptable more rapidly now they have a handle on it. People may find these links interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisexualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisexualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_repression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_repression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libido_(Psychoanalysis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libido_(Psychoanalysis) "It is this need to conform to society and control the libido that leads to tension and disturbance in the individual, prompting the use of ego defenses to dissipate the psychic energy of these unmet and mostly unconscious needs into other forms." Say... consuming material goods?
- bifrost 13y ago
  IMHO its a clear invasion of privacy.
  - hahainternet 13y ago
    I don't understand how this could possibly be an invasion of privacy. By that logic my locked door is an invasion of your privacy.
    - bifrost 13y ago
      Your locked door is your protection of privacy. This is akin to requiring people to register to look at your door to decide if they want to open it. We all know how wonderful government registries are, because nobody has ever been unfairly prosecuted for sexual preferences and/or orientations, religion, race, etc...
bifrost 13y ago
I think another question that we should be asking -> "When will the US administration try this?"
- merlincorey 13y ago
  Did you read that part about the First Amendment Lobby? They're backed up by The Second Amendment Lobby.
  - falk 13y ago
    This makes a nice tagline, but the first amendment, like almost all of the other ones, has been eroded over time. For example, having to have a permit to protest in high traffic areas.
  - reader5000 13y ago
    Haha. The Second Amendment lobby would throw the 1a overboard in a heartbeat if it would help them get more guns into the grocery store.
    - merlincorey 13y ago
      I sense someone who does not like guns... I'm sure it was hyperbole, but how many guns do you really need at the grocery store? If it's not a zombie apocalypse, my vote is on a maximum of one, assuming you are licensed to carry it, of course.
      - anaptdemise 13y ago
        >my vote is on a maximum of one Depends on who has it. Might need two.
  - derleth 13y ago
    Not unless the Second Amendment Lobby has tactical nukes, which it doesn't, because nothing else scares the US Army at this point.
  - 13y ago
DanBC 13y ago
He gave an interview on Woman's Hour where he sounded functionally illiterate. He sounded really confused about the idea of "where the filtering actually occurs", saying that all new computers (by the end of the year) would have to have this filter on, "ticked off by default" (meaning, I think, 'on' by default). It's just bafflingly bad. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03757cr http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03757cr)
- venomsnake 13y ago
  So ... linux is outlawed in UK then?
  - cmircea 13y ago
    Forget Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Xbox, PS will CERTAINLY not be supported if this is a Windows app.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      The filtering is almost certainly applied on the ISP end, with a web interface to a control panel. I have no idea what Cameron means when he says it will be on all new computers by the end of the year, but he mentioned iPads. I suspect it's just his confusion about client / server, and that the OS will have no effect.
      - venomsnake 13y ago
        Yeah, I suggested as much but loose politician lips can sink ships. Especially ignorant ones. A poorly drafted law can have unpredictable consequences and later be impossible to change with the "My opponent wants your kid to be sodomized on the internet by copyright pirate, terrorist, porn industry magnates, blasphemers,{scary moral panic subculture of the month}" argument.
  - ihsw 13y ago
    Since PCs are falling out of favor, you can bet that all locked-down non-PC devices will be gradually implementing "lawful and compliant" restrictions on user activity, and hefty surveillance "just in case." Android devices will be no exception, and families/businesses will be encouraged to install "lawful and compliant" software on all new computers. Any vendors looking to get a foothold in the UK will be jumping on this bandwagon, and I wouldn't be surprised if Canonical tries to get in on the action too.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
moocowduckquack 13y ago
Is probably just an attempt to get back some of his core voters that he managed to annoy with the whole gay marriage thing. If/when it fails he can then point fingers at the ISPs and say that it is their fault it didn't happen, which is probably why he is claiming that he is fighting them from the outset as it fits the later narrative better and means he can scapegoat them when the time comes to minimise the splashback.
infinita740 13y ago
> 10 Do you really think these plans will stop the ‘corrosion’ of childhood? question 10 is indeed the most important one, IMHO blocking porn on the internet is not going to stop kids to have access to adult content so it's really pointless unless you want to have a start point for something bigger (censorship)
- nicktelford 13y ago
  With regards to "corrosion of childhood", I believe "access to adult content" is a bit of a red herring. More worryingly, kids are spending more time indoors, isolated (often on the Internet/games consoles, though that's missing the point). As little as ten years ago, you'd generally see kids playing outdoors, in the parks and in the streets, often unsupervised. Now, thanks (I can only assume) to paedo-paranoia, parents are unwilling to allow their children to play outdoors at all, let alone unsupervised. I'd consider this to contribute more to the corrosion of childhood than "access to adult content" - especially since they'd likely have less of the latter if they spent more time being kids.
  - smackay 13y ago
    I think the delay in starting a family is also a big factor. Anecdotal evidence (including personal experience) suggests that older parents are more anxious about their kids since, from a purely biological perspective, replacing a lost one is no longer possible. That makes people paranoid about the dangers to the kids they have. The paedo-paranoia and (my pet peeve) endless stories of dead children in the media only go fuel parental anxiety further. So if Cameron want to stop the "corrosion of childhood", a crackdown on media outlets eliciting emotional responses to boost readership would be a better place to start.
  - desas 13y ago
    It's not just parents. My local school (~500 metres away) doesn't let students walk to and from school unaccompanied by an adult until they are eleven.
- DanBC 13y ago
  I'm gently sympathetic to the "let's help children avoid accidentally stumbling across hard core pornography". I don't think this is the right way to do it, and I don't think it's nearly as much of a problem as it used to be, although the various porn-video sites don't seem to require any age verification at all. Google and DDG and others seem to be working hard to reduce the amount of pornographic content shown to people doing searches. (A Google image search for [vintage beef] largely returns the YouTuber and Minecraft player, and not vintage naked men. Even without filtering explicit results it's just a few naked men, and nothing "horrible".) Email is a lot better than it used to be, I think. It would have been nice if the UK had implemented a real anti-spam law when we had the chance. Existing law means it's only illegal to show porn to people under 18 if you do so for the purpose of sexual gratification. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12)
neeee 13y ago
>the statement about making it a criminal offence to possess images depicting rape sounds a good idea on the face of it How does making images of consenting adults doing something completely legal sound like a good idea in any way?
spdy 13y ago
It will be interesting to observe if this gets into law without being challenged. UK public did not really care about "Tempora" etc. as far as i could see it. (i hope i am wrong) And systems like these are just the front door approval to cover the other systems. They tried to implement a system like this in Germany and failed miserable but every society acts differently we are still up in arms against the spying programs. But in most countries this topic already vanished from mainstream media.
- DanBC 13y ago
  A government mandated crude filter applied by the ISPs by default, controllable by the account owner, would probably be acceptable to enough people in England for it to go through without much fuss. But even with that there are obvious problems. Ann wants to turn the filter off, but Bob is the account owner, and Ann doesn't want Bob to know. Chas is their 15 year old child and he finds it trivially easy to bypass the filter. And now Cameron has announced much wider plans, with many more flaws. I'm annoyed and disturbed that Cameron is mixing in some measures against images of child sexual abuse and measures against normal pornography. They are very different problems[1] and should be dealt with very differently. It would be great if image search engines could make reporting images to the Internet Watch Foundation[2] easier. That might go someway to appeasing the politicians. I doubt it would get much use. I search for a lot of images, every day, and I go down the long tail of the search, and I have never seen any images of child sexual abuse. Perhaps search engines could provide some statistics of searches for certain words associated with child sexual abuse. This would have to be done carefully, but I'm not thinking of normal terms that every day people might use (someone doing research, or a child who has been abused) but some very specific terms that only people involved in trading images of child sexual abuse would know. I'm sure they have their own lingo. [1] I say problem because that's the word they use, not because I think regular pornography is a problem. [2] IWF are the regulators in the UK for this kind of thing and they coordinate with law enforcement world wide. http://www.iwf.org.uk/ http://www.iwf.org.uk/
n0mad01 13y ago
everybody knows that this is just a first step toward filtering and censoring the net, blocking whatever benefits someone powerful ...
Nursie 13y ago
He's not the only politician to have spouted off loudly about this stuff lately. Each one of them seems to think that Google is the internet, and that if they don/t index something it doesn't exist. Each one of them also (intentionally?) conflates images of child abuse with images of consenting adults. They come across as extremely ignorant. Unfortunately this isn't confined to a single party.
venomsnake 13y ago
1 Who will decide what counts as ‘pornography’, and how? Pornography is everything that gives a politician, cleric or judge a boner. 2 Do you understand and acknowledge the difference between pornography, child abuse images and images depicting rape? See number one. 3 Are you planning to make all pornography illegal? Only until people find joy in it. When the junior anti sex league is ready we will unban it. 4 What about Page 3? Don't mess with the freedom of the press to make and break politicians. Yet. 5 What else do you want to censor? Everything but the truth. There will be special government agency to decide what the truth is today. 6 What happens when people ‘opt-in’? I will ask daily mail to kindly label them child rapists. Also will suspend the UK libel law for the Daily mail. Then I will offer a ritual sacrifice to the daily mail shrine in my office so the deity will bring more votes to me. 7 What was that letter to the ISPs about? [Redacted for national security concerns] 8 Are you going to get the ISPs to block Facebook? Facebook? Book with faces. We hadn't had such things in 1695, haven't kept up with the recent trends. 9 How do you think your plans will go down with US internet companies? I will delay the tax pressure and they will cave. Too much PITA to chase the money to fund health and education anyway. 10 Do you really think these plans will stop the ‘corrosion’ of childhood? No but it will give is critical tools in being able to delay or outright prevent developing of critical thinking and free thoughts. On a serious note - if the kid is able to learn about the Holocaust, WW2, Gulag,Wikipedia pages on torture or Greek mythology with pictures at age of 8 (they won't be censored) and not be scarred for ever, his/her mind is probably strong enough to bear the sight of a consenting women and men having sex few years later. Even if it is in a bit weirder ways.
- madaxe 13y ago
  >1 Who will decide what counts as ‘pornography’, and how? >Pornography is everything that gives a politician, cleric or judge a boner. So, everything then. The ruling classes have the most profound and perverse paraphilias one can imagine. A friend who is a PPS (Parliamentary Private Secretary) to a Tory MP reports that he is a horse fancier, however prefers to be ridden than to ride. BAN HORSES!
  - venomsnake 13y ago
nottrobin 13y ago
This article doesn't make the distinction between "porn" and "illegal content" half clear enough. Porn is not illegal (and in my view not necessarily immoral) to make or to watch. Using child abuse arguments to legitimise legislation about porn is just disgusting.
rorrr2 13y ago
You forgot the most important question 0) How will you do it? The internet is HUGE. Detecting porn is a non-trivial task, but even if you solve it, you will still need insane infrastructure to crawl the internet and apply your magical algorithm to every image on every website.
- jwdunne 13y ago
  Exactly and with all the massive cuts they're making because we spend far too much, is this really what they should be spending money on? The NHS is in shambles (visibly worse than under Labour), people having to pay for the extra room whilst their children are away fighting in Afghanistan and many pensioners much less than well off and the government wants to fund a porn blocking filter that's undoubtedly going to cost tonnes? I do not like my government.
- Nursie 13y ago
  Oh, that bit's simple, in two parts - 1. You draw up a blocklist of offending domain names and IP addresses for child porn websites and get ISPs to block them 2. Force google not to return results for people searching for child porn. Because politicians and their advisers really do seem to think it's that easy and that if it's not listed on google it's not on the internet. It's stunningly ignorant.
  - seabee 13y ago
    They've already done that bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_%28content_blocking_system%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_%28content_blocking_s... This move is to please middle England since they read all the headlines about '1/3 of kids addicted to porn' and stories about teenage rapists heavily implying porn made them that way.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      Oh I know about cleanfeed, ever since the wikipedia debacle. The issue is that they think it actually solves anything! I wish it was only one side of the house that was into this rubbish, but various Labour front-benchers have come out with very similar nonsense. Also the last labour government seemed to be full of "All Porn is Rape" style feminists * . ( * please note, I consider myself a feminist in as much as believe in absolute equality and free self determination for all humans, I just disagree with some aspects of some feminist philosophy. As do a lot of prominent feminists AFAICT)
xedarius 13y ago
'Family filter', what a crock of shit, similar to the crock of shit verdict that GCHQ's use of PRISM was deemed legal (by whom exactly?). We know you want to spy on us, don't use the bleeding hearts at mum's net to get your agenda passed.
- krmmalik 13y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. This is just a "hook" for them to find their way "in".
- inthewind 13y ago
  Exactly. I thought we'd had the intelligent debates about censorship and the Internet over ten years ago! Same old crap, wrapped in some slightly different packaging. You could call a referendum on this one and get it through, just by asking a thinly veiled question like: 'Do you think our children should be protected from pornography?'. Just flash a picture of Jimmy Saville visiting a hospital while you ask it. I feel this country is getting less and less progressive at every turn and u-turn. Some furore over some phone hacking - remember that? Remember that eavesdropping is a bad, bad thing? Then a few months later, happily talk about eavesdropping/filtering the nation. Sickens me, even more than Mandy's mutterings. Boxed into a corner - will be wiping ballot paper on arse at next election.
awjr 13y ago
So I'm guessing Twitter will be blocked. You won't believe the amount of porn on there.
mikemoka 13y ago
This totally looks like a way to justify government snooping and limit any protests in case they get discovered again.
rwmj 13y ago
The big question is does this require primary legislation. And how's he going to get that through?
- alan_cx 13y ago
  By playing the "children" card. And on opposing will be said to support child abuse.
xupybd 13y ago
There are some of us the would love an ability to opt-out of certain parts of the internet. I understand the problem with censorship. But I would love the option to opt-out. Especially when children are involved. The internet is an amazing source of information. But currently it is not safe to leave a child alone on the internet. Is there a way to keep every one happy?
- zimpenfish 13y ago
  Then, uh, don't leave a child alone on the internet...? Or install your own filtering software / proxy / whatnot. (At which point someone normally says "but those don't work" and the sane people go "and you expect a nationwide one to work instead?")
  - noarchy 13y ago
    Particularly, filters run by government. If private companies struggle to do this, imagine how poorly a team of bureaucrats will be at this.
- cmircea 13y ago
  OpenDNS. Either use categories or pick your own domains to block. If you want to block IPs, use a firewall or the hosts file.
  - inthewind 13y ago
    Not really practical to manage a list of domains or IPs yourself, but the idea of using an opt-in filter on your DNS could offer a simple filter. You'd need to make configuring such things a little easier. Under Vista just trying to conjure up the IPv4 control panel requires an act of magic.
    - cmircea 13y ago
      Well you can use a filter and manually add sites to that. I did use OpenDNS a long time ago and it was pretty easy to filter the most common stuff.
alan_cx 13y ago
One of the biggest abuses of children is the use of them to enforce a judgmental sense of morality on adults.
yawniek 13y ago
absolutely retarded idea, but if they do it: make it IPv4 only, that would finally speed up IPv6 adoption.
oleganza 13y ago
As I always note in threads like this, this is not a problem of censorship or defining what is "pornography". These are all distractions from the real problem: a legalized violence employed by people calling themselves "government" to achieve their ends. "Anti-porn law" in plain words means this: if you happen to provide an internet connection to some people, you will have to do what we say, or we will bring people with guns to make you to or give up your property (and maybe put you in jail too). We may ask for suggestions in form of "petitions" and "voting", but only within the imposed framework which you are not allowed to bypass. E.g. you are not allowed to vote for not sponsoring this whole mess by not paying your taxes. And even if you can, there's a mob rule: 50%+1 will overrule you. When Apple censors porn on App Store, no one really cares because Apple does not point guns at people. You may use any other device, any other distribution platform. You can build one on your own. Apple only tries to be nice to people and attract customers voluntarily. This 180º opposite from how government operates. Government does not really try to please people, that's only for decoration. Underlying principle is to force everyone to obey.
- reader5000 13y ago
  Yeah. It's called "the free-rider" problem. Luckily in the US at least, any inbred retard has a gun and can impose themselves on anybody. It's much better.
drblast 13y ago
You'll be able to trivially circumvent this, and the first people to figure that out will be teenage boys. And then what? Well hey, we can try to block the encryption and tunneling protocols they use and make those opt-in too. Inevitably someone who "opts in to use encryption" will have to answer for it in a criminal trial.
speeder 13y ago
So, Cameron decided to block something that about 60% of women like? He forgot to research about it or something? http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201001/womens-rape-fantasies-how-common-what-do-they-mean http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201001/wom... (I know psychology today has some issues... but the article cite its sources)
- toyg 13y ago
  If the other 40% is Mumsnet, then it's not a problem.
gravedave 13y ago
I find this article overly critical. Leaving the feasibility issues aside, I don't think most parents will just rely on this measure and totally forget about their own responsibilities. What, do people not teach their kids against taking drugs, just because they're illegal? Also, assuming that the NSA will use the list to find terrorists or child pornographers is also ridiculous. If there's a porn site the ISP's keep track of (so they can "opt" it in the program), chances are that the site does not have illegal porn on it, so why the fuck would they care? Even if it could be used for public shaming, who the hell still cares about who watches and who doesn't watch porn? The only legitimate complaints are those regarding feasibility, like what counts as porn (do sites that allow it, but are not really about it, count, like reddit? or to a lesser extent, as already mentioned in the article, facebook) but hell, might as well just ask why all politicians make promises they can't keep. The article would have been way more credible if it kept to sane arguments, rather than trying to throw around random criticisms like #2, which makes references to porn that is already illegal, or #3 and #4, which would obviously never come to fruition. As for #10, which is a legitimate question, definitely not, but it's an aid towards it, with a significance in the long term that is yet to be discovered.
singular 13y ago
I want to see the detailed metastudies that clearly suggest exposure to internet porn does significant damage to kids. I also want to know why this has to be enforced by the nanny state, rather than provided for by already available software? Do the parents have no responsibility? Actually, since this government likes to full-on lie about evidence [0] let's just wait until we have a chance to throw these demagogue idiots out. [0]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/15/conservative-claims-about-benefits-not-spin http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/15/conserva...
- TomGullen 13y ago
  Me to. Especially because Cameron U-turned on minimum alcohol pricing last week due to "lack of concrete evidence"
- whyleyc 13y ago
  Well, here's a link [0] to a recent report by the Children's commissioner for England which found: - Access and exposure to pornography affect children and young people’s sexual beliefs - Access and exposure to pornography are linked to children and young people’s engagement in “risky behaviours” - Exposure to sexualised and violent imagery led to violent attitudes [0]: http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/content/publications/content_681 http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/content/publications...
  - mattstocum 13y ago
    And we know it's the sexualized imagery and not the violent imagery that led to violent attitudes.
  - singular 13y ago
    I'm no expert, but that seems to be a report by a probably biased organisation, rather than a scientific metastudy looking at sufficient sample sizes and eliminating confounding factors. Please correct me if the report is of equivalent quality. I'd be amazed if there was actual evidence that violence in the media actually contributed to real world violence even in children, as I thought this had already been covered at length with the various computer game scares.
Camillo 13y ago
> Some of this is welcome – the statement about making it a criminal offence to possess images depicting rape sounds a good idea on the face of it, for example, for such material is deeply offensive Are you fucking kidding me? What's with this pseudo-shamanistic idea that viewing a picture of an act makes you a participant in it? Has everybody lost their mind? A criminal offence. Stop making up thought crimes, you authoritarian zealots!
- scrabble 13y ago
  But we must protect people from being offended!
- mattstocum 13y ago
  If the law made it illegal to posses images or video of an ACTUAL rape, I'd agree with it 100% (I hope this already is illegal). If it's a simulation made by two consenting adults, where's the harm? I find Justin Bieber to be "deeply offensive", why can't he be outlawed?
  - GeneralMayhem 13y ago
    Even that opens up a lot of troubling possibilities when you get computers involved. Does scrolling /b/ and having the thumbnail of a picture that turns out to be an actual rape in your cache count as "possession?" If I email a bunch of rape porn to David Cameron, is he in "possession" of it? What if he downloads the attachment before realizing what it is? Ridiculous, sure - but what if it's not him but a suspect for other crimes or a political nuisance?
  - hahainternet 13y ago
    The harm is in convincing people that this is normal or reasonable. It's extremely easy online to find an echo chamber where virtually every post will agree with you. These exist for mens rights groups, anorexics, conspiracy theorists, practically every topic. Rape porn is one of those areas where the lines between reality and fiction are blurred. It's highly unlikely someone accessing rape porn is doing it because they are aroused by the idea of simulated rape. By providing or permitting a similar echo chamber it is much easier for people to convince themselves their actions are perfectly acceptable. That is the danger of almost any media that depicts this sort of behaviour. It's not exclusive to the Internet, but it's the diversity and complete freedom on the Internet which permits these echo chambers to form.
josteink 13y ago
Step 1: Introduce a system and infrastucture for handling online censorship. In the name of "think of the children". Step 2: Promise with your hand on your heart that this new censorship-machine will never be used for antidemocratic or subsidiary reasons, like saving the governments ass next time we have some of those pesky leaks showing massive government violations going on. There is no step 3.
- ihsw 13y ago
  There is no step 2 either, since they made no such claim. It's an inevitability that it will be used for nefarious purposes, so we can also expect Tor to receive quite a bit of attention since VPN services have lately been on the receiving end of unpleasant attention.
  - hahainternet 13y ago
    > It's an inevitability that it will be used for nefarious purposes Is it? There's a system in place already for child porn images and while they've made some mistakes, they have yet to block anything political as far as I am aware. Can you prove this is inevitable?
    - DuskStar 13y ago
      Well, it's now being used to block access to thepiratebay and other torrent sites if I recall correctly. And of course it's now being expanded to ALL porn (though that part has an opt-out) and rape porn. I'd call that a very clear example of mission creep.
      - hahainternet 13y ago
        The blocking of Newzbin was a court order, not an action taken by the Government. It does seem that they want to regulate material 'advocating terrorism' though, which could easily be a slippery slope. Still, without evidence such an argument is fallacious.
cubsink 13y ago
Goodbye democracy and hello censorship with dictatorship.
Aqueous 13y ago
Scene opens in PM David Cameron's 10 Downing St. office. PM: Shall we have tea first, or shall we look at the list? Have you fetched me the list? Aide: What list? PM: You know, the list. The list of people that was created when we made pornography filtering opt-out instead of opt-in, and those who opted in to pornography automatically registered themselves in our database in the act of doing so. Aide: Oh, yes, sir, I have it right, here. It's this volume right here. It is, ahem, quite long. PM: How long? Aide: Quite. PM: (more sternly) How long? Aide: It is several thousand pages, sir. PM: Ah. Ok. How very disappointing. Have you scanned the list? Aide: I have. PM: And who, might I ask, is it comprised of? Degenerates, criminals, ne'er-do-wells, perverts, thugs, know-nothings, liberals? Aide: Sir, well...sir.... PM: Spit it out. Aide: It seems everyone is on the list, sir. PM: Everyone? Aide: Yes. Everyone. PM: Do you mean everyone in Liverpool? Aide: I'm afraid I mean everyone in the UK, sir. PM: That's 60 million people. Aide: Indeed. PM: That's nonsense. The Britons are more decent than that! Next you'll be telling me that the Queen herself is on the list! Aide looks down at his feet. Aide: Um. PM: Oh for God's sake, sir. Don't tell me that the Queen is on the list! Aide: I'm afraid she is. PM: Wait. So you're telling me that, when I turned pornography filtering on by default nation-wide, that every single natural born citizen of the UK, including the Queen, chose to get to their computers, logged into the filtering system, and opted in to pornography? Aide: That's what it seems like, sir. Er, well...there is one who is not on the list. UK tennis player and Wimbledon champion Andy Murray is not on the list. He is as pure as new-fallen snow. PM: National treasure, that chap. Aide. Indeed. But everyone else is on the list. PM: Ballocks. Ah well, I tried. It was for the children, you see. Now if you'll excuse me I have some porn I mean, er, ahem, important reading I have to get to, privately.
- toyg 13y ago
  :s/It was for the children/It was for the Daily Mail/g
- DanI-S 13y ago
  Interestingly, I hope we'll be able to see the actual numbers via a Freedom of Information Act request.
  - 13y ago
bane 13y ago
For brits, a petition! http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746 http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746
- mmcnickle 13y ago
  Don't sign an e-petition, write to your MP [1]. If nearly 8000 people got in touch with their MP about this, it woukd be the singular topic of the next Prime Minister's questions. [1] http://www.writetothem.com http://www.writetothem.com
smegel 13y ago
What's next, Empire reborn? Seriously, a pubic morals campaign under the banner of "think of the children" looks antiquated in the 21st century. And if anything it will make abuse harder to identify and track down - instead of sharing online it will be shady deals out of the boot of a car. The NSA can't intercept that (or can they??). Only in Great Britain. A stuffy, red faced PM whipping up a righteous moral panic because images of this awfully taboo and horrendous thing called human sexuality are freely available to all. Is this the beginning of a return to the Victorian era, with it's forceful sexual repression and the insidious forms of abuse that came with it? Sad. Not the actions of an enlightened, open society.
- toyg 13y ago
  Tony Blair and friends had already kickstarted an attempt at restoring Victorian values. Didn't get very far, but bad ideas never die. I can understand how this sort of thing looks good to a politician, tbh. Cost: zero. Support from press: great (the Daily Mail has been campaigning on it for months already). Support from senior citizens (i.e. people who actually get their ass to the ballot box every time): good. Possibility of blowback in polite society: none (who's ever gonna discuss porn at dinner parties?). Negatively affected in a direct way: nerds (don't move votes), kids (don't move votes -- in fact, if they protest, senior citizens will support it even more, so it's a win-win). Economic benefit: likely net positive, since somebody will have to maintain these filters, these captive portals, these opt-in/opt-out forms, right? What is not to like ? Ah yes, that "open society" thing. You see, this government is run by old money people; they were running the show when "open society" didn't even exist, and will likely keep running it for the foreseeable future. Openness and freedom were a necessary evil to win the Cold War. Now that XX century utopias have been dealt with, we can all go back to the old way of doing things, what what?
  - tomjen3 13y ago
    I think they have miscalculated completely. Everybody in the internet generation looks at porn, not only is it normal joking about it is and while one might not want to discuss this over the dinner table much politics have started in bars or over alcohol - here attempts to ban porn would be discussed and laughed over.
gadders 13y ago
It is worth mentioning that the ban on images of rape is to bring the rest of the UK in line with an existing Scottish law. Therefore anyone who sees this as a right-wing thing is clearly wrong as (people are frequently fond of saying) there are actually more Pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs. The Scottish Parliament is currently dominated by a left-wing nationalist party that wants to remove Scotland from the UK.
Stubbs 13y ago
Doesn't Google's "Safe Search already do this?
vog 13y ago
This debate strongly reminds me of the "Zensursula" debate we had in Germany some time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen#Blocking_internet_child_pornography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen#Blocking_... The result was one of the biggest protests in Germany and a huge anti-censorship petition (signed by about 130,000 people). The law passed legislation nevertheless, but remained in a strange state between legislative and executive, because nobody dared to enforce this crappy law anymore. Some months later, the law was repealed - mostly unnoticed by press: http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.7/germany-internet-blocking-law http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.7/germany-internet-bloc...
SolarUpNote 13y ago
My sister's family computer has a porn filter on it. Seems like a great idea because they have small children. But here are some of the sites it blocked: * Amazon * YouTube * Reddit * GitHub!
area51org 13y ago
Stunning. I'd love to be able to say that we'd never see this in the U.S., but there are certain former presidential candidates (mostly Republican) who I can easily imagine trying to implement something similar.
ultim8k 13y ago
I think that Cameron supports the idea of asexual reproduction :D Or maybe that's another way to end internet freedom forever.
pbowyer 13y ago
Interesting read from a youthworker re Paul Bernal's point #10: http://youthwork-magazine.co.uk/main/blogs/internetporn http://youthwork-magazine.co.uk/main/blogs/internetporn
SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
There are another 20 good technical and legal questions on the issues here: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/isp-filtering-qs https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/isp-filtering-qs
toyg 13y ago
I'd support this two-tier scheme if, on the clean feed, we could do away with the semi-secret blacklist and the stupid anti-p2p blocks. By all means help to keep schools and libraries away from pr0n, but leave competent people alone.
drostie 13y ago
11. Did you know that there's this thing called HTTPS? Blocking pornography can only be haphazardly done at the ISP level, because porn sites like most sites do not encrypt traffic by default. (I'm still not sure why this is, but it makes it much easier to find out if people are browsing porn at work.) When you make this decision, some porn sites will use HTTPS and the ISP won't know what content is being transmitted. Are you planning on creating a database of IP addresses which will be censored? What will you do about the likely false positives, or the generous number of IPv6 addresses now available?
- learc83 13y ago
  I'm betting that the filtering will be at the DNS level. So all you'll have to do is use an alternate DNS server.
deleted 13y ago
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Dogamondo 13y ago
Where I'm more concerned on this topic is the inevitable presence of a non-curated list of those who voluntarily 'opted in' to having the porn faucet unplumbed. The character assassinations and prospective employment undoings we've all read about over the past few years, due to (reasonably) tame publicly available information now may pale in comparison to the damage that could ensue if one were to be labelled a 'voluntary pornographer'. I fear that what has historically been a 'right of passage' may in future be used to retrospectively punish those that can be traced back to such a compelling opt-in. For those of us that can remember when porn wasn't a series of 0's and 1's, we took great delight in sneaking a peak at the 'forbidden' shows on pay-TV after Mom and Dad had gone to bed. We willingly exchanged a tasty sandwich during recess for a roughly torn page from the Hustler mag that little Johnny had smuggled from his older brother. And later, (0's and 1's) delighted in seeing that lush SERP, born from a 4 letter search phrase and the final 14.4k nod of KRSSHHHHHHH, Go for it, You're in!" My right of passage was in the school music room, after hours with Drew Barrymore in 1994 - Lusciously posing for me on the cover December's Penthouse. If Cameron had his way, that memory may now be a piece of data, just waiting to be exploited by a "hacker" collective who do it "for the lulz", or worse, a 1984 style release of public disclosure outing those who were once impure. Who knows what may come now. (pun intended)
maerF0x0 13y ago
In the end they wont be able to block TOR Browser/Vidalia . It will stop amateurs, but I doubt you can stop (computer) pros.
Torkild 13y ago
"My position has always been that there's two types of people opposed to pornography: those who don't know what they're talking about, and those who don't know what they're missing." - Larry Flynt
eunice 13y ago
Cam just wants to distract people from the Lynton Crosby scandal with this silliness
- MistahKoala 13y ago
  Hardly a scandal, although that won't stop the Guardianistas tilting at their windmills. Besides, this censorship silliness has been going on for months.
dclowd9901 13y ago
If ISPs in the UK have a shred of decency, I'm hoping they phrase the opt-in as "would you like the internet you pay good money for to be unfiltered?" as opposed to "would you like to be able to access pornography?". It gives the subscriber plausible deniability, and changes the conversation to being an empowerment versus a shame.
acd 13y ago
This is going the slippery slope rabbit hole of censorship. They start with this "noble cause", then other things will also be censored that the politicians consider bad. Why doesn't the ex politicians explain why they are on consultant payroll salaries from the big banks, why are they going to undemocratic Bilderberg group meetings with no public meeting agenda notes, why is CFR setting the agenda. What is the Trilateral commission planning, why are the members hand picked. Is it democratic? Why are new political leaders flown there on private jets? Why do we have central banks that central plan interest rates and ever increasing debts that make the bank owners richer for every round that goes around? Why are we ordinary people being mass surveillanced in Stasi 2.0 fashion in the name of terror hunting?
tn13 13y ago
I thought it was only beggars who used little kids as a means to optimize their goals. Politicians seem to be doing much better.
jwatte 13y ago
If pictures of bad crime and abuse are undesirable, then shouldn't we start with the worst crimes, like murder? And thus ban every depiction of murder?

250 points by justincormack 13y ago

Through one method or another, sex is still taboo. We can't talk openly about it. It's something that generally happens behind closed doors. Making this filtering opt-out is a "soft ban". People will have to take that "uncomfortable", "shameful" step of "unbanning" it. If someone watches porn, they've gone to the trouble of getting it unbanned to feed their "filthy" minds. That's the narrative behind the psychology of this ban being enforced. The govt. will have a big list of people they can spy on to make sure they're not looking at anything they shouldn't be, and I hazard a guess that the govt. will change their mind on what's acceptable more rapidly now they have a handle on it. People may find these links interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisexualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisexualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_repression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_repression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libido_(Psychoanalysis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libido_(Psychoanalysis) "It is this need to conform to society and control the libido that leads to tension and disturbance in the individual, prompting the use of ego defenses to dissipate the psychic energy of these unmet and mostly unconscious needs into other forms." Say... consuming material goods?

bifrost 13y ago
IMHO its a clear invasion of privacy.
- hahainternet 13y ago
  I don't understand how this could possibly be an invasion of privacy. By that logic my locked door is an invasion of your privacy.
  - bifrost 13y ago
    Your locked door is your protection of privacy. This is akin to requiring people to register to look at your door to decide if they want to open it. We all know how wonderful government registries are, because nobody has ever been unfairly prosecuted for sexual preferences and/or orientations, religion, race, etc...

bifrost 13y ago

I think another question that we should be asking -> "When will the US administration try this?"

merlincorey 13y ago
Did you read that part about the First Amendment Lobby? They're backed up by The Second Amendment Lobby.
- falk 13y ago
  This makes a nice tagline, but the first amendment, like almost all of the other ones, has been eroded over time. For example, having to have a permit to protest in high traffic areas.
- reader5000 13y ago
  Haha. The Second Amendment lobby would throw the 1a overboard in a heartbeat if it would help them get more guns into the grocery store.
  - merlincorey 13y ago
    I sense someone who does not like guns... I'm sure it was hyperbole, but how many guns do you really need at the grocery store? If it's not a zombie apocalypse, my vote is on a maximum of one, assuming you are licensed to carry it, of course.
    - anaptdemise 13y ago
      >my vote is on a maximum of one Depends on who has it. Might need two.
- derleth 13y ago
  Not unless the Second Amendment Lobby has tactical nukes, which it doesn't, because nothing else scares the US Army at this point.
- 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

He gave an interview on Woman's Hour where he sounded functionally illiterate. He sounded really confused about the idea of "where the filtering actually occurs", saying that all new computers (by the end of the year) would have to have this filter on, "ticked off by default" (meaning, I think, 'on' by default). It's just bafflingly bad. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03757cr http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03757cr)

venomsnake 13y ago
So ... linux is outlawed in UK then?
- cmircea 13y ago
  Forget Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Xbox, PS will CERTAINLY not be supported if this is a Windows app.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    The filtering is almost certainly applied on the ISP end, with a web interface to a control panel. I have no idea what Cameron means when he says it will be on all new computers by the end of the year, but he mentioned iPads. I suspect it's just his confusion about client / server, and that the OS will have no effect.
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      Yeah, I suggested as much but loose politician lips can sink ships. Especially ignorant ones. A poorly drafted law can have unpredictable consequences and later be impossible to change with the "My opponent wants your kid to be sodomized on the internet by copyright pirate, terrorist, porn industry magnates, blasphemers,{scary moral panic subculture of the month}" argument.
- ihsw 13y ago
  Since PCs are falling out of favor, you can bet that all locked-down non-PC devices will be gradually implementing "lawful and compliant" restrictions on user activity, and hefty surveillance "just in case." Android devices will be no exception, and families/businesses will be encouraged to install "lawful and compliant" software on all new computers. Any vendors looking to get a foothold in the UK will be jumping on this bandwagon, and I wouldn't be surprised if Canonical tries to get in on the action too.

deleted 13y ago

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moocowduckquack 13y ago

Is probably just an attempt to get back some of his core voters that he managed to annoy with the whole gay marriage thing. If/when it fails he can then point fingers at the ISPs and say that it is their fault it didn't happen, which is probably why he is claiming that he is fighting them from the outset as it fits the later narrative better and means he can scapegoat them when the time comes to minimise the splashback.

infinita740 13y ago

> 10 Do you really think these plans will stop the ‘corrosion’ of childhood? question 10 is indeed the most important one, IMHO blocking porn on the internet is not going to stop kids to have access to adult content so it's really pointless unless you want to have a start point for something bigger (censorship)

nicktelford 13y ago
With regards to "corrosion of childhood", I believe "access to adult content" is a bit of a red herring. More worryingly, kids are spending more time indoors, isolated (often on the Internet/games consoles, though that's missing the point). As little as ten years ago, you'd generally see kids playing outdoors, in the parks and in the streets, often unsupervised. Now, thanks (I can only assume) to paedo-paranoia, parents are unwilling to allow their children to play outdoors at all, let alone unsupervised. I'd consider this to contribute more to the corrosion of childhood than "access to adult content" - especially since they'd likely have less of the latter if they spent more time being kids.
- smackay 13y ago
  I think the delay in starting a family is also a big factor. Anecdotal evidence (including personal experience) suggests that older parents are more anxious about their kids since, from a purely biological perspective, replacing a lost one is no longer possible. That makes people paranoid about the dangers to the kids they have. The paedo-paranoia and (my pet peeve) endless stories of dead children in the media only go fuel parental anxiety further. So if Cameron want to stop the "corrosion of childhood", a crackdown on media outlets eliciting emotional responses to boost readership would be a better place to start.
- desas 13y ago
  It's not just parents. My local school (~500 metres away) doesn't let students walk to and from school unaccompanied by an adult until they are eleven.
DanBC 13y ago
I'm gently sympathetic to the "let's help children avoid accidentally stumbling across hard core pornography". I don't think this is the right way to do it, and I don't think it's nearly as much of a problem as it used to be, although the various porn-video sites don't seem to require any age verification at all. Google and DDG and others seem to be working hard to reduce the amount of pornographic content shown to people doing searches. (A Google image search for [vintage beef] largely returns the YouTuber and Minecraft player, and not vintage naked men. Even without filtering explicit results it's just a few naked men, and nothing "horrible".) Email is a lot better than it used to be, I think. It would have been nice if the UK had implemented a real anti-spam law when we had the chance. Existing law means it's only illegal to show porn to people under 18 if you do so for the purpose of sexual gratification. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/12)

neeee 13y ago

>the statement about making it a criminal offence to possess images depicting rape sounds a good idea on the face of it How does making images of consenting adults doing something completely legal sound like a good idea in any way?

spdy 13y ago

It will be interesting to observe if this gets into law without being challenged. UK public did not really care about "Tempora" etc. as far as i could see it. (i hope i am wrong) And systems like these are just the front door approval to cover the other systems. They tried to implement a system like this in Germany and failed miserable but every society acts differently we are still up in arms against the spying programs. But in most countries this topic already vanished from mainstream media.

DanBC 13y ago
A government mandated crude filter applied by the ISPs by default, controllable by the account owner, would probably be acceptable to enough people in England for it to go through without much fuss. But even with that there are obvious problems. Ann wants to turn the filter off, but Bob is the account owner, and Ann doesn't want Bob to know. Chas is their 15 year old child and he finds it trivially easy to bypass the filter. And now Cameron has announced much wider plans, with many more flaws. I'm annoyed and disturbed that Cameron is mixing in some measures against images of child sexual abuse and measures against normal pornography. They are very different problems[1] and should be dealt with very differently. It would be great if image search engines could make reporting images to the Internet Watch Foundation[2] easier. That might go someway to appeasing the politicians. I doubt it would get much use. I search for a lot of images, every day, and I go down the long tail of the search, and I have never seen any images of child sexual abuse. Perhaps search engines could provide some statistics of searches for certain words associated with child sexual abuse. This would have to be done carefully, but I'm not thinking of normal terms that every day people might use (someone doing research, or a child who has been abused) but some very specific terms that only people involved in trading images of child sexual abuse would know. I'm sure they have their own lingo. [1] I say problem because that's the word they use, not because I think regular pornography is a problem. [2] IWF are the regulators in the UK for this kind of thing and they coordinate with law enforcement world wide. http://www.iwf.org.uk/ http://www.iwf.org.uk/

n0mad01 13y ago

everybody knows that this is just a first step toward filtering and censoring the net, blocking whatever benefits someone powerful ...

Nursie 13y ago

He's not the only politician to have spouted off loudly about this stuff lately. Each one of them seems to think that Google is the internet, and that if they don/t index something it doesn't exist. Each one of them also (intentionally?) conflates images of child abuse with images of consenting adults. They come across as extremely ignorant. Unfortunately this isn't confined to a single party.

venomsnake 13y ago

1 Who will decide what counts as ‘pornography’, and how? Pornography is everything that gives a politician, cleric or judge a boner. 2 Do you understand and acknowledge the difference between pornography, child abuse images and images depicting rape? See number one. 3 Are you planning to make all pornography illegal? Only until people find joy in it. When the junior anti sex league is ready we will unban it. 4 What about Page 3? Don't mess with the freedom of the press to make and break politicians. Yet. 5 What else do you want to censor? Everything but the truth. There will be special government agency to decide what the truth is today. 6 What happens when people ‘opt-in’? I will ask daily mail to kindly label them child rapists. Also will suspend the UK libel law for the Daily mail. Then I will offer a ritual sacrifice to the daily mail shrine in my office so the deity will bring more votes to me. 7 What was that letter to the ISPs about? [Redacted for national security concerns] 8 Are you going to get the ISPs to block Facebook? Facebook? Book with faces. We hadn't had such things in 1695, haven't kept up with the recent trends. 9 How do you think your plans will go down with US internet companies? I will delay the tax pressure and they will cave. Too much PITA to chase the money to fund health and education anyway. 10 Do you really think these plans will stop the ‘corrosion’ of childhood? No but it will give is critical tools in being able to delay or outright prevent developing of critical thinking and free thoughts. On a serious note - if the kid is able to learn about the Holocaust, WW2, Gulag,Wikipedia pages on torture or Greek mythology with pictures at age of 8 (they won't be censored) and not be scarred for ever, his/her mind is probably strong enough to bear the sight of a consenting women and men having sex few years later. Even if it is in a bit weirder ways.

madaxe 13y ago
>1 Who will decide what counts as ‘pornography’, and how? >Pornography is everything that gives a politician, cleric or judge a boner. So, everything then. The ruling classes have the most profound and perverse paraphilias one can imagine. A friend who is a PPS (Parliamentary Private Secretary) to a Tory MP reports that he is a horse fancier, however prefers to be ridden than to ride. BAN HORSES!
- venomsnake 13y ago

nottrobin 13y ago

This article doesn't make the distinction between "porn" and "illegal content" half clear enough. Porn is not illegal (and in my view not necessarily immoral) to make or to watch. Using child abuse arguments to legitimise legislation about porn is just disgusting.

rorrr2 13y ago

You forgot the most important question 0) How will you do it? The internet is HUGE. Detecting porn is a non-trivial task, but even if you solve it, you will still need insane infrastructure to crawl the internet and apply your magical algorithm to every image on every website.

jwdunne 13y ago
Exactly and with all the massive cuts they're making because we spend far too much, is this really what they should be spending money on? The NHS is in shambles (visibly worse than under Labour), people having to pay for the extra room whilst their children are away fighting in Afghanistan and many pensioners much less than well off and the government wants to fund a porn blocking filter that's undoubtedly going to cost tonnes? I do not like my government.
Nursie 13y ago
Oh, that bit's simple, in two parts - 1. You draw up a blocklist of offending domain names and IP addresses for child porn websites and get ISPs to block them 2. Force google not to return results for people searching for child porn. Because politicians and their advisers really do seem to think it's that easy and that if it's not listed on google it's not on the internet. It's stunningly ignorant.
- seabee 13y ago
  They've already done that bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_%28content_blocking_system%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_%28content_blocking_s... This move is to please middle England since they read all the headlines about '1/3 of kids addicted to porn' and stories about teenage rapists heavily implying porn made them that way.
  - Nursie 13y ago
    Oh I know about cleanfeed, ever since the wikipedia debacle. The issue is that they think it actually solves anything! I wish it was only one side of the house that was into this rubbish, but various Labour front-benchers have come out with very similar nonsense. Also the last labour government seemed to be full of "All Porn is Rape" style feminists * . ( * please note, I consider myself a feminist in as much as believe in absolute equality and free self determination for all humans, I just disagree with some aspects of some feminist philosophy. As do a lot of prominent feminists AFAICT)

xedarius 13y ago

'Family filter', what a crock of shit, similar to the crock of shit verdict that GCHQ's use of PRISM was deemed legal (by whom exactly?). We know you want to spy on us, don't use the bleeding hearts at mum's net to get your agenda passed.

krmmalik 13y ago
Exactly what I was thinking. This is just a "hook" for them to find their way "in".
inthewind 13y ago
Exactly. I thought we'd had the intelligent debates about censorship and the Internet over ten years ago! Same old crap, wrapped in some slightly different packaging. You could call a referendum on this one and get it through, just by asking a thinly veiled question like: 'Do you think our children should be protected from pornography?'. Just flash a picture of Jimmy Saville visiting a hospital while you ask it. I feel this country is getting less and less progressive at every turn and u-turn. Some furore over some phone hacking - remember that? Remember that eavesdropping is a bad, bad thing? Then a few months later, happily talk about eavesdropping/filtering the nation. Sickens me, even more than Mandy's mutterings. Boxed into a corner - will be wiping ballot paper on arse at next election.

awjr 13y ago

So I'm guessing Twitter will be blocked. You won't believe the amount of porn on there.

mikemoka 13y ago

This totally looks like a way to justify government snooping and limit any protests in case they get discovered again.

rwmj 13y ago

The big question is does this require primary legislation. And how's he going to get that through?

alan_cx 13y ago
By playing the "children" card. And on opposing will be said to support child abuse.

xupybd 13y ago

There are some of us the would love an ability to opt-out of certain parts of the internet. I understand the problem with censorship. But I would love the option to opt-out. Especially when children are involved. The internet is an amazing source of information. But currently it is not safe to leave a child alone on the internet. Is there a way to keep every one happy?

zimpenfish 13y ago
Then, uh, don't leave a child alone on the internet...? Or install your own filtering software / proxy / whatnot. (At which point someone normally says "but those don't work" and the sane people go "and you expect a nationwide one to work instead?")
- noarchy 13y ago
  Particularly, filters run by government. If private companies struggle to do this, imagine how poorly a team of bureaucrats will be at this.
cmircea 13y ago
OpenDNS. Either use categories or pick your own domains to block. If you want to block IPs, use a firewall or the hosts file.
- inthewind 13y ago
  Not really practical to manage a list of domains or IPs yourself, but the idea of using an opt-in filter on your DNS could offer a simple filter. You'd need to make configuring such things a little easier. Under Vista just trying to conjure up the IPv4 control panel requires an act of magic.
  - cmircea 13y ago
    Well you can use a filter and manually add sites to that. I did use OpenDNS a long time ago and it was pretty easy to filter the most common stuff.

alan_cx 13y ago

One of the biggest abuses of children is the use of them to enforce a judgmental sense of morality on adults.

yawniek 13y ago

absolutely retarded idea, but if they do it: make it IPv4 only, that would finally speed up IPv6 adoption.

oleganza 13y ago

As I always note in threads like this, this is not a problem of censorship or defining what is "pornography". These are all distractions from the real problem: a legalized violence employed by people calling themselves "government" to achieve their ends. "Anti-porn law" in plain words means this: if you happen to provide an internet connection to some people, you will have to do what we say, or we will bring people with guns to make you to or give up your property (and maybe put you in jail too). We may ask for suggestions in form of "petitions" and "voting", but only within the imposed framework which you are not allowed to bypass. E.g. you are not allowed to vote for not sponsoring this whole mess by not paying your taxes. And even if you can, there's a mob rule: 50%+1 will overrule you. When Apple censors porn on App Store, no one really cares because Apple does not point guns at people. You may use any other device, any other distribution platform. You can build one on your own. Apple only tries to be nice to people and attract customers voluntarily. This 180º opposite from how government operates. Government does not really try to please people, that's only for decoration. Underlying principle is to force everyone to obey.

reader5000 13y ago
Yeah. It's called "the free-rider" problem. Luckily in the US at least, any inbred retard has a gun and can impose themselves on anybody. It's much better.

drblast 13y ago

You'll be able to trivially circumvent this, and the first people to figure that out will be teenage boys. And then what? Well hey, we can try to block the encryption and tunneling protocols they use and make those opt-in too. Inevitably someone who "opts in to use encryption" will have to answer for it in a criminal trial.

speeder 13y ago

So, Cameron decided to block something that about 60% of women like? He forgot to research about it or something? http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201001/womens-rape-fantasies-how-common-what-do-they-mean http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201001/wom... (I know psychology today has some issues... but the article cite its sources)

toyg 13y ago
If the other 40% is Mumsnet, then it's not a problem.

gravedave 13y ago

I find this article overly critical. Leaving the feasibility issues aside, I don't think most parents will just rely on this measure and totally forget about their own responsibilities. What, do people not teach their kids against taking drugs, just because they're illegal? Also, assuming that the NSA will use the list to find terrorists or child pornographers is also ridiculous. If there's a porn site the ISP's keep track of (so they can "opt" it in the program), chances are that the site does not have illegal porn on it, so why the fuck would they care? Even if it could be used for public shaming, who the hell still cares about who watches and who doesn't watch porn? The only legitimate complaints are those regarding feasibility, like what counts as porn (do sites that allow it, but are not really about it, count, like reddit? or to a lesser extent, as already mentioned in the article, facebook) but hell, might as well just ask why all politicians make promises they can't keep. The article would have been way more credible if it kept to sane arguments, rather than trying to throw around random criticisms like #2, which makes references to porn that is already illegal, or #3 and #4, which would obviously never come to fruition. As for #10, which is a legitimate question, definitely not, but it's an aid towards it, with a significance in the long term that is yet to be discovered.

singular 13y ago

I want to see the detailed metastudies that clearly suggest exposure to internet porn does significant damage to kids. I also want to know why this has to be enforced by the nanny state, rather than provided for by already available software? Do the parents have no responsibility? Actually, since this government likes to full-on lie about evidence [0] let's just wait until we have a chance to throw these demagogue idiots out. [0]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/15/conservative-claims-about-benefits-not-spin http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/15/conserva...

TomGullen 13y ago
Me to. Especially because Cameron U-turned on minimum alcohol pricing last week due to "lack of concrete evidence"
whyleyc 13y ago
Well, here's a link [0] to a recent report by the Children's commissioner for England which found: - Access and exposure to pornography affect children and young people’s sexual beliefs - Access and exposure to pornography are linked to children and young people’s engagement in “risky behaviours” - Exposure to sexualised and violent imagery led to violent attitudes [0]: http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/content/publications/content_681 http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/content/publications...
- mattstocum 13y ago
  And we know it's the sexualized imagery and not the violent imagery that led to violent attitudes.
- singular 13y ago
  I'm no expert, but that seems to be a report by a probably biased organisation, rather than a scientific metastudy looking at sufficient sample sizes and eliminating confounding factors. Please correct me if the report is of equivalent quality. I'd be amazed if there was actual evidence that violence in the media actually contributed to real world violence even in children, as I thought this had already been covered at length with the various computer game scares.

Camillo 13y ago

> Some of this is welcome – the statement about making it a criminal offence to possess images depicting rape sounds a good idea on the face of it, for example, for such material is deeply offensive Are you fucking kidding me? What's with this pseudo-shamanistic idea that viewing a picture of an act makes you a participant in it? Has everybody lost their mind? A criminal offence. Stop making up thought crimes, you authoritarian zealots!

scrabble 13y ago
But we must protect people from being offended!
mattstocum 13y ago
If the law made it illegal to posses images or video of an ACTUAL rape, I'd agree with it 100% (I hope this already is illegal). If it's a simulation made by two consenting adults, where's the harm? I find Justin Bieber to be "deeply offensive", why can't he be outlawed?
- GeneralMayhem 13y ago
  Even that opens up a lot of troubling possibilities when you get computers involved. Does scrolling /b/ and having the thumbnail of a picture that turns out to be an actual rape in your cache count as "possession?" If I email a bunch of rape porn to David Cameron, is he in "possession" of it? What if he downloads the attachment before realizing what it is? Ridiculous, sure - but what if it's not him but a suspect for other crimes or a political nuisance?
- hahainternet 13y ago
  The harm is in convincing people that this is normal or reasonable. It's extremely easy online to find an echo chamber where virtually every post will agree with you. These exist for mens rights groups, anorexics, conspiracy theorists, practically every topic. Rape porn is one of those areas where the lines between reality and fiction are blurred. It's highly unlikely someone accessing rape porn is doing it because they are aroused by the idea of simulated rape. By providing or permitting a similar echo chamber it is much easier for people to convince themselves their actions are perfectly acceptable. That is the danger of almost any media that depicts this sort of behaviour. It's not exclusive to the Internet, but it's the diversity and complete freedom on the Internet which permits these echo chambers to form.

josteink 13y ago

Step 1: Introduce a system and infrastucture for handling online censorship. In the name of "think of the children". Step 2: Promise with your hand on your heart that this new censorship-machine will never be used for antidemocratic or subsidiary reasons, like saving the governments ass next time we have some of those pesky leaks showing massive government violations going on. There is no step 3.

ihsw 13y ago
There is no step 2 either, since they made no such claim. It's an inevitability that it will be used for nefarious purposes, so we can also expect Tor to receive quite a bit of attention since VPN services have lately been on the receiving end of unpleasant attention.
- hahainternet 13y ago
  > It's an inevitability that it will be used for nefarious purposes Is it? There's a system in place already for child porn images and while they've made some mistakes, they have yet to block anything political as far as I am aware. Can you prove this is inevitable?
  - DuskStar 13y ago
    Well, it's now being used to block access to thepiratebay and other torrent sites if I recall correctly. And of course it's now being expanded to ALL porn (though that part has an opt-out) and rape porn. I'd call that a very clear example of mission creep.
    - hahainternet 13y ago
      The blocking of Newzbin was a court order, not an action taken by the Government. It does seem that they want to regulate material 'advocating terrorism' though, which could easily be a slippery slope. Still, without evidence such an argument is fallacious.

cubsink 13y ago

Goodbye democracy and hello censorship with dictatorship.

Aqueous 13y ago

Scene opens in PM David Cameron's 10 Downing St. office. PM: Shall we have tea first, or shall we look at the list? Have you fetched me the list? Aide: What list? PM: You know, the list. The list of people that was created when we made pornography filtering opt-out instead of opt-in, and those who opted in to pornography automatically registered themselves in our database in the act of doing so. Aide: Oh, yes, sir, I have it right, here. It's this volume right here. It is, ahem, quite long. PM: How long? Aide: Quite. PM: (more sternly) How long? Aide: It is several thousand pages, sir. PM: Ah. Ok. How very disappointing. Have you scanned the list? Aide: I have. PM: And who, might I ask, is it comprised of? Degenerates, criminals, ne'er-do-wells, perverts, thugs, know-nothings, liberals? Aide: Sir, well...sir.... PM: Spit it out. Aide: It seems everyone is on the list, sir. PM: Everyone? Aide: Yes. Everyone. PM: Do you mean everyone in Liverpool? Aide: I'm afraid I mean everyone in the UK, sir. PM: That's 60 million people. Aide: Indeed. PM: That's nonsense. The Britons are more decent than that! Next you'll be telling me that the Queen herself is on the list! Aide looks down at his feet. Aide: Um. PM: Oh for God's sake, sir. Don't tell me that the Queen is on the list! Aide: I'm afraid she is. PM: Wait. So you're telling me that, when I turned pornography filtering on by default nation-wide, that every single natural born citizen of the UK, including the Queen, chose to get to their computers, logged into the filtering system, and opted in to pornography? Aide: That's what it seems like, sir. Er, well...there is one who is not on the list. UK tennis player and Wimbledon champion Andy Murray is not on the list. He is as pure as new-fallen snow. PM: National treasure, that chap. Aide. Indeed. But everyone else is on the list. PM: Ballocks. Ah well, I tried. It was for the children, you see. Now if you'll excuse me I have some porn I mean, er, ahem, important reading I have to get to, privately.

toyg 13y ago
:s/It was for the children/It was for the Daily Mail/g
DanI-S 13y ago
Interestingly, I hope we'll be able to see the actual numbers via a Freedom of Information Act request.
- 13y ago

bane 13y ago

For brits, a petition! http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746 http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746

mmcnickle 13y ago
Don't sign an e-petition, write to your MP [1]. If nearly 8000 people got in touch with their MP about this, it woukd be the singular topic of the next Prime Minister's questions. [1] http://www.writetothem.com http://www.writetothem.com

smegel 13y ago

What's next, Empire reborn? Seriously, a pubic morals campaign under the banner of "think of the children" looks antiquated in the 21st century. And if anything it will make abuse harder to identify and track down - instead of sharing online it will be shady deals out of the boot of a car. The NSA can't intercept that (or can they??). Only in Great Britain. A stuffy, red faced PM whipping up a righteous moral panic because images of this awfully taboo and horrendous thing called human sexuality are freely available to all. Is this the beginning of a return to the Victorian era, with it's forceful sexual repression and the insidious forms of abuse that came with it? Sad. Not the actions of an enlightened, open society.

toyg 13y ago
Tony Blair and friends had already kickstarted an attempt at restoring Victorian values. Didn't get very far, but bad ideas never die. I can understand how this sort of thing looks good to a politician, tbh. Cost: zero. Support from press: great (the Daily Mail has been campaigning on it for months already). Support from senior citizens (i.e. people who actually get their ass to the ballot box every time): good. Possibility of blowback in polite society: none (who's ever gonna discuss porn at dinner parties?). Negatively affected in a direct way: nerds (don't move votes), kids (don't move votes -- in fact, if they protest, senior citizens will support it even more, so it's a win-win). Economic benefit: likely net positive, since somebody will have to maintain these filters, these captive portals, these opt-in/opt-out forms, right? What is not to like ? Ah yes, that "open society" thing. You see, this government is run by old money people; they were running the show when "open society" didn't even exist, and will likely keep running it for the foreseeable future. Openness and freedom were a necessary evil to win the Cold War. Now that XX century utopias have been dealt with, we can all go back to the old way of doing things, what what?
- tomjen3 13y ago
  I think they have miscalculated completely. Everybody in the internet generation looks at porn, not only is it normal joking about it is and while one might not want to discuss this over the dinner table much politics have started in bars or over alcohol - here attempts to ban porn would be discussed and laughed over.

gadders 13y ago

It is worth mentioning that the ban on images of rape is to bring the rest of the UK in line with an existing Scottish law. Therefore anyone who sees this as a right-wing thing is clearly wrong as (people are frequently fond of saying) there are actually more Pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs. The Scottish Parliament is currently dominated by a left-wing nationalist party that wants to remove Scotland from the UK.

Stubbs 13y ago

Doesn't Google's "Safe Search already do this?

vog 13y ago

This debate strongly reminds me of the "Zensursula" debate we had in Germany some time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen#Blocking_internet_child_pornography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen#Blocking_... The result was one of the biggest protests in Germany and a huge anti-censorship petition (signed by about 130,000 people). The law passed legislation nevertheless, but remained in a strange state between legislative and executive, because nobody dared to enforce this crappy law anymore. Some months later, the law was repealed - mostly unnoticed by press: http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.7/germany-internet-blocking-law http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.7/germany-internet-bloc...

SolarUpNote 13y ago

My sister's family computer has a porn filter on it. Seems like a great idea because they have small children. But here are some of the sites it blocked: * Amazon * YouTube * Reddit * GitHub!

area51org 13y ago

Stunning. I'd love to be able to say that we'd never see this in the U.S., but there are certain former presidential candidates (mostly Republican) who I can easily imagine trying to implement something similar.

ultim8k 13y ago

I think that Cameron supports the idea of asexual reproduction :D Or maybe that's another way to end internet freedom forever.

pbowyer 13y ago

Interesting read from a youthworker re Paul Bernal's point #10: http://youthwork-magazine.co.uk/main/blogs/internetporn http://youthwork-magazine.co.uk/main/blogs/internetporn

SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago

There are another 20 good technical and legal questions on the issues here: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/isp-filtering-qs https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/isp-filtering-qs

toyg 13y ago

I'd support this two-tier scheme if, on the clean feed, we could do away with the semi-secret blacklist and the stupid anti-p2p blocks. By all means help to keep schools and libraries away from pr0n, but leave competent people alone.

drostie 13y ago

11. Did you know that there's this thing called HTTPS? Blocking pornography can only be haphazardly done at the ISP level, because porn sites like most sites do not encrypt traffic by default. (I'm still not sure why this is, but it makes it much easier to find out if people are browsing porn at work.) When you make this decision, some porn sites will use HTTPS and the ISP won't know what content is being transmitted. Are you planning on creating a database of IP addresses which will be censored? What will you do about the likely false positives, or the generous number of IPv6 addresses now available?

learc83 13y ago
I'm betting that the filtering will be at the DNS level. So all you'll have to do is use an alternate DNS server.

deleted 13y ago

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Dogamondo 13y ago

Where I'm more concerned on this topic is the inevitable presence of a non-curated list of those who voluntarily 'opted in' to having the porn faucet unplumbed. The character assassinations and prospective employment undoings we've all read about over the past few years, due to (reasonably) tame publicly available information now may pale in comparison to the damage that could ensue if one were to be labelled a 'voluntary pornographer'. I fear that what has historically been a 'right of passage' may in future be used to retrospectively punish those that can be traced back to such a compelling opt-in. For those of us that can remember when porn wasn't a series of 0's and 1's, we took great delight in sneaking a peak at the 'forbidden' shows on pay-TV after Mom and Dad had gone to bed. We willingly exchanged a tasty sandwich during recess for a roughly torn page from the Hustler mag that little Johnny had smuggled from his older brother. And later, (0's and 1's) delighted in seeing that lush SERP, born from a 4 letter search phrase and the final 14.4k nod of KRSSHHHHHHH, Go for it, You're in!" My right of passage was in the school music room, after hours with Drew Barrymore in 1994 - Lusciously posing for me on the cover December's Penthouse. If Cameron had his way, that memory may now be a piece of data, just waiting to be exploited by a "hacker" collective who do it "for the lulz", or worse, a 1984 style release of public disclosure outing those who were once impure. Who knows what may come now. (pun intended)

maerF0x0 13y ago

In the end they wont be able to block TOR Browser/Vidalia . It will stop amateurs, but I doubt you can stop (computer) pros.

Torkild 13y ago

"My position has always been that there's two types of people opposed to pornography: those who don't know what they're talking about, and those who don't know what they're missing." - Larry Flynt

eunice 13y ago

Cam just wants to distract people from the Lynton Crosby scandal with this silliness

MistahKoala 13y ago
Hardly a scandal, although that won't stop the Guardianistas tilting at their windmills. Besides, this censorship silliness has been going on for months.

dclowd9901 13y ago

If ISPs in the UK have a shred of decency, I'm hoping they phrase the opt-in as "would you like the internet you pay good money for to be unfiltered?" as opposed to "would you like to be able to access pornography?". It gives the subscriber plausible deniability, and changes the conversation to being an empowerment versus a shame.

acd 13y ago

This is going the slippery slope rabbit hole of censorship. They start with this "noble cause", then other things will also be censored that the politicians consider bad. Why doesn't the ex politicians explain why they are on consultant payroll salaries from the big banks, why are they going to undemocratic Bilderberg group meetings with no public meeting agenda notes, why is CFR setting the agenda. What is the Trilateral commission planning, why are the members hand picked. Is it democratic? Why are new political leaders flown there on private jets? Why do we have central banks that central plan interest rates and ever increasing debts that make the bank owners richer for every round that goes around? Why are we ordinary people being mass surveillanced in Stasi 2.0 fashion in the name of terror hunting?

tn13 13y ago

I thought it was only beggars who used little kids as a means to optimize their goals. Politicians seem to be doing much better.

jwatte 13y ago

If pictures of bad crime and abuse are undesirable, then shouldn't we start with the worst crimes, like murder? And thus ban every depiction of murder?