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I've mentioned this before on one of these threads: I think any focus on the sexual morality of politicians, political point scoring and such is superfluous. P

by netcan 13y ago

I've mentioned this before on one of these threads: I think any focus on the sexual morality of politicians, political point scoring and such is superfluous. Porn and other "offensive content" has been restricted or banned in pretty much every time and place by various means. Even if an outright ban does not exist in blanket legislation, there are restrictions, codes of practice, industry bodies, laws applying narrowly to certain media channels or something like that. Basically, porn gets regulated/restricted/banned always by whatever authority has the means to do so. Always. And some authority always has jurisdiction in some way over every mainstream media source. The difference on the internet is that no one could regulate it. There was no authority or industry body. No power that could be appealed to. Now the internet can be regulated, seemingly. That is the story here. Not "Cameron is a prude" or "Cameron is pro-censorship." The internet is regulatable now. That's the story. This probably means that the same restrictions that apply elsewhere (TV, radio, print) will apply online.

belorn 13y ago
That is false from a global perspective. Sex and nudity as "offensive content" is mostly an US-centric concept. Maybe they learned it from the UK, or UK from the US, but many European countries during the 1950-2000 did not share it. Sweden as an example, showed many movies on national paid TV that was deemed too sexual for movie theaters in the US. They had a teen age show called "bullen", broadcasting during family prime time, which included everything from nudity to instructions around masturbation. The movie Showgirls was shown not once but twice and both times the uncensored version. Nudity and sex was not discussed in censorship discussions as it was just not an issue in peoples mind. However, in contrast to US culture, Sweden had a heavy ban on violence. The cartoon show Darkwing Duck was deemed as "video nasty", and banned mid season. The move theaters had a state censure policy which got only as recent as 2001 got abolished.
kolektiv 13y ago
I'm not sure this is true. Oh, I don't argue with your point about the historical facts of restriction, but I do think that the internet is still far from regulatable. The story is still really that politicians believe it is - it isn't, but they don't have the expertise to comprehend why that's the case. The internet is a mass publishing medium, not just a mass consumption one. Legislation has historically successfully targeted only publishers, and you can do this when the number is fairly small, but not when that target is "everyone" because of the work required in monitoring (which is still not amenable to automation, despite what politicians may believe - it's still just too hard for the software technology we have).
- Cakez0r 13y ago
  And the collateral damage of an automated filtering system is huge.
- netcan 13y ago
  I'm not 100% sure I agree with me either. :) I agree with your point. Being a mass publishing medium is what has kept the internet in anarchy thus far. In some cases, I think it will be possible to regulate publishers with some success. If you can get 10-20 companies to comply, you're covering most of the web. For porn, that's not going to work. But, a filter probably will. Censorship and contend restrictions don't need to be airtight. They never are. It's enough to just move things from mainstream to marginal. Seeing breasts, arses & fleeting (preferably comical) glimpses of balls is normal and OK, but unadvisable for young children. Genitalia in non sexual contexts is new, but now OK too (thank you embarrassing bodies). You can watch that with your friends or teenage kids. Genitalia in a sexual context is not OK. You look at that alone with a laptop in shame. You have to buy it from licensed sex shops with darkened windows. Regulations & mainstream public opinion cross influence each other but actual line is more or less defined by TV standards and practices. All internet porn (or political opinion or any subject of cencorship) filtering has to do is reclaim the control of that line. If you have to call up and ask for porn access or use tor to get it, it might let them do that.
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    "Seeing breasts, arses & fleeting (preferably comical) glimpses of balls is normal and OK, but unadvisable for young children. Genitalia in non sexual contexts is new, but now OK too (thank you embarrassing bodies). You can watch that with your friends or teenage kids. Genitalia in a sexual context is not OK. You look at that alone with a laptop in shame." Did you really just go and claim that seeing breasts is unadvisable for young children? You complete and utter fuckwit. Do you think breasts are just there for you to leer over in your lonely cave of shame?
    - Sacho 13y ago
      He claimed that most societies(and at least the Western ones I've had contact with match that pretty well) shun exposing sexual organs to children. I don't see why the rage. This is not a controversial comment to make.
guard-of-terra 13y ago
Not participating in the state religion was banned in pretty much every time and every place, and here we are no longer buying in that mythology. Change happens. It is for good.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jwilliams 13y ago
Sure. And it was once illegal to own an English version of the Bible. (Greatly paraphrasing) Gutenberg's technology rendered that position untenable. Ok. Got a handle on the books. What do you do about pirate radio? The law is the law. The restrictions, codes-of-practice, whatever - they are medium specific. What's invalid is the idea that you can regulate the Internet like you can a "curtained off" section of your local VHS video library.
- netcan 13y ago
  AFAIK the Gutenberg Bible was in Latin. The protestant reformation put that technology to use to disseminate laymen readable translations 80 years later. The new technology (presses), the new theology (Martin Luther) and social change (literacy) cross-pollinated and together changed the world. Most of the positive changes seemed pretty incidental. I'm not sure Lutheranism in itself was much of an improvement, but that's besides the point. Not sure if the analogy here holds, but I think what we have is the technology. It has changed culture. I'm pretty sure public attitudes towards sex are different now because of the internet. We don't have the ideology though. IMO, the american right hog the "freedom" banner and give it all sorts of connotations that most of us want to keep at arms length. It would be good if they'd put it down and let someone new have a go at it.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    > AFAIK the Gutenberg Bible was in Latin. Gutenberg's technology enabled faaaar more than just Gutenberg's bible. The printing press enabled the distribution of the Tyndale Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Douay-Rheims Bible, the Bishops' Bible and, of course, the King James Bible. All English bibles, all possible thanks to the printing press. The Tyndale Bible in particular is notable here, since it was heavily criticized and burned when possible. The printing press was crucial to achieving. the distribution that it did. Without the press then the creation of several thousand copies of it would have never been possible.
cromulent 13y ago
Interesting point. In the U.K. it seems they are talking about regulating the WWW, rather than the Internet, but yes. At the same time we have PRISM awareness, so it seems the internet is 1) "monitorable" and 2) "regulatable", if those terms can be used. You would think that if PRISM is effective, it would be a much better way of catching child pornographers than implementing any sort of filter, and then perhaps people might calm down about the legal pornography.
- netcan 13y ago
  I don't think they see WWW as a thing apart from the internet. I don't really either. IMO, there will be attempts to regulate the media-ish parts of the internet like they do other media and the 1-1 communication-ish part of the internet as they do communication mediums (eg phone).
jacklockyeruk 13y ago
Except the people who apparently now have the jurisdiction to 'regulate' the internet seem to wholly lack the working knowledge to do so effectively.
vidarh 13y ago
Customs can stop (or try anyway) to stop importation of illegal porn in physical form. Police can try to stop it from being sold on the high street (but they can't even stop me from being hassled by people selling poor quality pirated DVD's), but the big difference here is that while they can do that for physical objects, ever attempt at stopping this online is trivially easy to circumvent. They can't regulate it. The cost of setting up a HTTP proxy for personal use is the cost of a tiny VPS - I can get one for a month for about the cost of one of those pirated DVD's, and for a quarter for the cost of a takeaway. Heck, if I was a teenager today, and had parents that signed up for even the optional filter, I'd spring for a VPN/VPS - it's a fraction of what most kids around here pay for smartphones already anyway. If this filtering stops peoples access, it'll create a market for VPN accounts targeted for that type of use, or "just" encrypted http proxying. They can try to stop the VPNs - good luck; IP hopping by spinning up cloud instances all over the place as needed and providing a browser extension to keep the list of proxies up to date will be trivial. They can try to stop people paying for these VPN's, but even if they manage to stop card payments, that'll only drive up the demand for things like Bitcoins. In other words: The same restrictions will not apply. The restrictions will apply for those who do not care enough to sign up to (trivially simple, once more people decides to try to make money off it) ways to circumvent them. But the barrier is so much lower. And it will keep lowering, rather than rising, as each new attempt at blocking gives more of us incentives to prepare countermeasures.
DanBC 13y ago
I mostly agree. The scary thing is the incompetence. Politicians think that paedophiles use Google Search to find images of child sexual abuse, and that all Google hasn't got "filter explicit images" working for these images. It's idiotic - I don't know what Google do, but I'm pretty sure they aggressively detect, remove, and report to law enforcement such images.
tomjen3 13y ago
The morality of politicians are extremely relevant because it is another stick we can use against this. It might not have been relevant in an Oxbrige debate club but politics is war by other means and in war you shouldn't give a hoot about the truth.

by netcan 13y ago

belorn 13y ago

That is false from a global perspective. Sex and nudity as "offensive content" is mostly an US-centric concept. Maybe they learned it from the UK, or UK from the US, but many European countries during the 1950-2000 did not share it. Sweden as an example, showed many movies on national paid TV that was deemed too sexual for movie theaters in the US. They had a teen age show called "bullen", broadcasting during family prime time, which included everything from nudity to instructions around masturbation. The movie Showgirls was shown not once but twice and both times the uncensored version. Nudity and sex was not discussed in censorship discussions as it was just not an issue in peoples mind. However, in contrast to US culture, Sweden had a heavy ban on violence. The cartoon show Darkwing Duck was deemed as "video nasty", and banned mid season. The move theaters had a state censure policy which got only as recent as 2001 got abolished.

kolektiv 13y ago

I'm not sure this is true. Oh, I don't argue with your point about the historical facts of restriction, but I do think that the internet is still far from regulatable. The story is still really that politicians believe it is - it isn't, but they don't have the expertise to comprehend why that's the case. The internet is a mass publishing medium, not just a mass consumption one. Legislation has historically successfully targeted only publishers, and you can do this when the number is fairly small, but not when that target is "everyone" because of the work required in monitoring (which is still not amenable to automation, despite what politicians may believe - it's still just too hard for the software technology we have).

Cakez0r 13y ago
And the collateral damage of an automated filtering system is huge.
netcan 13y ago
I'm not 100% sure I agree with me either. :) I agree with your point. Being a mass publishing medium is what has kept the internet in anarchy thus far. In some cases, I think it will be possible to regulate publishers with some success. If you can get 10-20 companies to comply, you're covering most of the web. For porn, that's not going to work. But, a filter probably will. Censorship and contend restrictions don't need to be airtight. They never are. It's enough to just move things from mainstream to marginal. Seeing breasts, arses & fleeting (preferably comical) glimpses of balls is normal and OK, but unadvisable for young children. Genitalia in non sexual contexts is new, but now OK too (thank you embarrassing bodies). You can watch that with your friends or teenage kids. Genitalia in a sexual context is not OK. You look at that alone with a laptop in shame. You have to buy it from licensed sex shops with darkened windows. Regulations & mainstream public opinion cross influence each other but actual line is more or less defined by TV standards and practices. All internet porn (or political opinion or any subject of cencorship) filtering has to do is reclaim the control of that line. If you have to call up and ask for porn access or use tor to get it, it might let them do that.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  "Seeing breasts, arses & fleeting (preferably comical) glimpses of balls is normal and OK, but unadvisable for young children. Genitalia in non sexual contexts is new, but now OK too (thank you embarrassing bodies). You can watch that with your friends or teenage kids. Genitalia in a sexual context is not OK. You look at that alone with a laptop in shame." Did you really just go and claim that seeing breasts is unadvisable for young children? You complete and utter fuckwit. Do you think breasts are just there for you to leer over in your lonely cave of shame?
  - Sacho 13y ago
    He claimed that most societies(and at least the Western ones I've had contact with match that pretty well) shun exposing sexual organs to children. I don't see why the rage. This is not a controversial comment to make.

guard-of-terra 13y ago

Not participating in the state religion was banned in pretty much every time and every place, and here we are no longer buying in that mythology. Change happens. It is for good.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jwilliams 13y ago

Sure. And it was once illegal to own an English version of the Bible. (Greatly paraphrasing) Gutenberg's technology rendered that position untenable. Ok. Got a handle on the books. What do you do about pirate radio? The law is the law. The restrictions, codes-of-practice, whatever - they are medium specific. What's invalid is the idea that you can regulate the Internet like you can a "curtained off" section of your local VHS video library.

netcan 13y ago
AFAIK the Gutenberg Bible was in Latin. The protestant reformation put that technology to use to disseminate laymen readable translations 80 years later. The new technology (presses), the new theology (Martin Luther) and social change (literacy) cross-pollinated and together changed the world. Most of the positive changes seemed pretty incidental. I'm not sure Lutheranism in itself was much of an improvement, but that's besides the point. Not sure if the analogy here holds, but I think what we have is the technology. It has changed culture. I'm pretty sure public attitudes towards sex are different now because of the internet. We don't have the ideology though. IMO, the american right hog the "freedom" banner and give it all sorts of connotations that most of us want to keep at arms length. It would be good if they'd put it down and let someone new have a go at it.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > AFAIK the Gutenberg Bible was in Latin. Gutenberg's technology enabled faaaar more than just Gutenberg's bible. The printing press enabled the distribution of the Tyndale Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Douay-Rheims Bible, the Bishops' Bible and, of course, the King James Bible. All English bibles, all possible thanks to the printing press. The Tyndale Bible in particular is notable here, since it was heavily criticized and burned when possible. The printing press was crucial to achieving. the distribution that it did. Without the press then the creation of several thousand copies of it would have never been possible.

cromulent 13y ago

Interesting point. In the U.K. it seems they are talking about regulating the WWW, rather than the Internet, but yes. At the same time we have PRISM awareness, so it seems the internet is 1) "monitorable" and 2) "regulatable", if those terms can be used. You would think that if PRISM is effective, it would be a much better way of catching child pornographers than implementing any sort of filter, and then perhaps people might calm down about the legal pornography.

netcan 13y ago
I don't think they see WWW as a thing apart from the internet. I don't really either. IMO, there will be attempts to regulate the media-ish parts of the internet like they do other media and the 1-1 communication-ish part of the internet as they do communication mediums (eg phone).

jacklockyeruk 13y ago

Except the people who apparently now have the jurisdiction to 'regulate' the internet seem to wholly lack the working knowledge to do so effectively.

vidarh 13y ago

Customs can stop (or try anyway) to stop importation of illegal porn in physical form. Police can try to stop it from being sold on the high street (but they can't even stop me from being hassled by people selling poor quality pirated DVD's), but the big difference here is that while they can do that for physical objects, ever attempt at stopping this online is trivially easy to circumvent. They can't regulate it. The cost of setting up a HTTP proxy for personal use is the cost of a tiny VPS - I can get one for a month for about the cost of one of those pirated DVD's, and for a quarter for the cost of a takeaway. Heck, if I was a teenager today, and had parents that signed up for even the optional filter, I'd spring for a VPN/VPS - it's a fraction of what most kids around here pay for smartphones already anyway. If this filtering stops peoples access, it'll create a market for VPN accounts targeted for that type of use, or "just" encrypted http proxying. They can try to stop the VPNs - good luck; IP hopping by spinning up cloud instances all over the place as needed and providing a browser extension to keep the list of proxies up to date will be trivial. They can try to stop people paying for these VPN's, but even if they manage to stop card payments, that'll only drive up the demand for things like Bitcoins. In other words: The same restrictions will not apply. The restrictions will apply for those who do not care enough to sign up to (trivially simple, once more people decides to try to make money off it) ways to circumvent them. But the barrier is so much lower. And it will keep lowering, rather than rising, as each new attempt at blocking gives more of us incentives to prepare countermeasures.

DanBC 13y ago

I mostly agree. The scary thing is the incompetence. Politicians think that paedophiles use Google Search to find images of child sexual abuse, and that all Google hasn't got "filter explicit images" working for these images. It's idiotic - I don't know what Google do, but I'm pretty sure they aggressively detect, remove, and report to law enforcement such images.

tomjen3 13y ago

The morality of politicians are extremely relevant because it is another stick we can use against this. It might not have been relevant in an Oxbrige debate club but politics is war by other means and in war you shouldn't give a hoot about the truth.