These declarations will only be used to shame public figures once the list is leaked.
> The possession of "extreme pornography", which includes scenes of simulated rape, is to be outlawed.
Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With this on the books, it seems a short hop to outlaw videos of simulated murder.
> The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) is to draw up a blacklist of "abhorrent" internet search terms to identify and prevent paedophiles searching for illegal material.
A single search can now land you on a government list of accused pedophiles.
Yikes.
> A single search can now land you on a government list of accused pedophiles.
Also, I foresee a sudden rise in rickrolling along the line of:
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=kiddy+porn">Funny Cat Video!</a>Anyone googled "santorum" recently? The Wikipedia article has a nice rundown on how a US Senator's name ended up thus: 'The word santorum, as defined, has been characterized as "obscene", "unfit to print", or "vulgar".'
I eagerly await the day a Google image search for "David Cameron" starts returning furry-rape-sex pictures, and "Conservative Party" some even more "abhorrent" & "illegal material".
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%6b%69%64%64%79%20%70%6f%72%6e">Funny Cat Video!</a>
The other day I used Google to find info about a movie called "How to Make Money Selling Drugs"[1]. As I typed the words, I thought to myself "I hope that doesn't get me on a government list." I can't imagine having to think twice before Googling "Lolita"[2].
[1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276962/reference [2]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056193/reference
- Long term unemployment is at a 17 year high.
- Government debt is at 90 percent of GDP.
- Violent crimes is worst in EU.
For years Britain has feared loosing sovereignty to the European Union. To me it seems like they should maybe worry more about American influence with all the wars they fight, the spying on their citizens and now the neo puritanism.
To fix the above, or to push through moralistic laws that will keep the media busy and get positive treatment in papers like Daily Mail to draw attention away from the problems?
Rates of murder and violent crime have fallen more rapidly in the UK in the past decade than many other countries in Western Europe http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22275280
Homicide rate is less than loads of EU countries (and Canada!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
Describing debt as percentage of GDP is a subjective anti-debt framing of the issue. Here's why:
Units of debt: $ (here pounds). Units of GDP: $/year. So, units of debt/GDP: years, not percent.
Since "100%" sounds like a high number, this way of framing the numbers is useful for scaring people. Putting it mathematically correct "11 months" sounds much less scary.
Why would that be Britain's problem ?
> Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With this on the books, it seems a short hop to outlaw videos of simulated murder.
Even without such an extension, aren't there plenty of Hollywood movies which include "scenes of simulated rape"?
Still, it's a handy way to tar anyone complaining about online survellience as a rape-loving pedophile.
I suspect that films (girl with the dragon tattoo springs to mind) would not be subject to it because they aren't presenting the rape as sexual; it is seen as a crime in the film, which isn't primarily a film about rape/sex (obviously I can't speak for all films.)
The grey area and line drawing are a problem with laws like this, though, as several people have pointed out - I am sure there are films (horrible ones that I haven't seen) that come close to glorifying rape, or depicting it as desirable/sexual - whether those would be part of the law would be up to either parliament to specify, or up to the courts to decide later in case law.
There are tricky cases of defensible portrayals of sex involving children, e.g. Schlöndorff's adaptation of The Tin Drum (which was banned in Canada as child pornography), and narratives that document the child sex industry, but they are rare by comparison. With artistically and morally defensible portrayals of rape, the range is huge. sspiff mentions A Clockwork Orange; even Jeffrey Archer (former senior Tory politician) wrote a novel with a rape scene. I also recall that when Virginia Bottomley (another former senior Tory politician) was asked to name her favourite film, she named Hitchcock's Rear Window, which is quite voyeuristic, and Hitchcock has filmed what I would class as morally indefensible rape scenes. The idea that moral guardians go about forbidding various classes of transgressive art forms that they themselves admit to enjoying is quite ironic.
For the sake of having some sort of a list: Bandit Queen, Deliverance, and Leaving Las Vegas all have hard-to-watch, defensible, and narratively necessary rape scenes. The victim in Bandit Queen I think was supposed to be prepubescent. And didn't Slumdog Millionaire have a child rape scene?
[1] http://health.india.com/diseases-conditions/international-wo...
He knows what he's doing and there's no reason to expect him to acknowledge the "side-effects" of an evil regulation.
And the reporter is not responsible for realizing this; you are.
LOL. On my Twitter account I have a public list for porn. It used to be a private list but most of those girls are pretty cool so there's no reason to be ashamed.
I'm not a public figure of course but I think this shame toward sexuality is a generational thing. It's only taboo for older people.
It's not widely advertised because they'd like to claim such a thing is impossible, to avoid the music industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_sys...
Edit: The harm is combining such a database with broad internet surveillance. Also, since the database is only hashes, false positives are likely. YouTube, who probably has the best content matching algorithms, can't even get it right all the time.
Can we expect films such as "I Spit On Your Grave" and "Once Upon a Time in America" to become illegal also?
I'm no lawyer, but it already is, if they're in a pornographic "context": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Just...
This 2008 act outlaws possessing or publishing explicit and realistic imagery of acts that threaten life, would cause serious injury to certain genitals, etc.
So fisting, simulated murder, or simulated necrophilia.. already illegal. Rape, borderline allowable, although if I were a lawyer testing this act in court, I'd say that rape is quite clearly an act that is "likely to result" in "serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals".
Actually there was a case in 2012 of someone tried under this law for having fisting videos. They weren't convicted. This is strong evidence (and precedent) that fisting per se would not fall under this law.
Which includes pretty much every action movie these days. Maybe the irony will be that Hollywood will step up with a campaign to fight this, because they see it as an eventual threat to their bottom line.
Actually it's the common person I'm more worried about. Applying to work as a teacher? They might ask you (or the Government body with the details) if you watch porn. "We can't let someone who watches porn teach 5 year olds!" will be the excuse.
> Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own.
This is already the case in the UK, with violent and extreme pornography, a new law that (I don't think) has any convictions yet.
> it seems a short hop to outlaw videos of simulated murder.
Again, other way around. They made porn of that technically illegal a few years ago AFAIR,
Perhaps they could do that with blue movies :)
"If you've been fucked in the eyesocket"...
[1]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/australian_por...
Edit: You're free to cite examples of children who "aren't that lucky" and had their upbringing maliciously altered by viewing internet pornography.
What? In what world would 90% of ANY porn be legitimate?! I want rapists using strategies found in the fake garbage you can find online, at least then they will be less effective than they could be.
`And, in a really big step forward, all the ISPs have rewired their technology so that once your filters are installed, they will cover any device connected to your home internet account. No more hassle of downloading filters for every device, just one-click protection. One click to protect your whole home and keep your children safe.`
That's fucking censorship and I THOUGHT WE ALL AGREED THAT IS A SIGN OF FASCISM. Seriously, how many bloody times can someone use `FOR THE CHILDREN` as an a valid excuse? I hope this fellow gets put out of office with no pension. He is committing widespread censorship of an entire nation. And the people appreciate that. People also appreciated that Hitler brought Austria and Germany together in anschluss as well as the fact that he returned them from 40% unemployment. Funny how short sighted the people are.
`You're the people who have worked out how to map almost every inch of the Earth from space; who have developed algorithms that make sense of vast quantities of information. Set your greatest brains to work on this. You are not separate from our society, you are part of our society, and you must play a responsible role in it`
I see, you want the people who have been working for their entire lives to better the human race to take their valued time and put that towards your endeavors of censoring anything that could potentially offend the parents of children? I'm sorry, you are what's wrong with the world.
I say we should build systems designed specifically to undermine these authoritarian measures.
Now, by changing the law, the companies have a legal duty.
That is what I and others have wanted, censorship is something we are able to attack through established channels. The politicians are of the view that this wins votes, now we find out whether they are right or wrong.
In America, all this type of stuff was completely illegal until relatively recent decades (yes I know that the internet did not exist yet but what difference does that make?). Showing "pink shots" in a magazine was completely illegal until 1978 (See Larry Flynt).
Wow, what a bunch of Fascists we had running the country for the first couple of centuries. This country had no freedom at all man...
He is committing widespread censorship of an entire nation.
Is optional censorship really censorship? I know what you will say in response though - it is only optional for now right?
No! It's de facto censorship. As the game goes the "smart" choice will become agreeing to the censorship while keeping a vpn or something to route about it for fear of having your record requested during divorce proceedings or some thing like that. Maybe for fear the list would be leaked . It wouldn't look good for a teacher to be on the wrong list.
Making it illegal would be one thing but it sounds like this would damage the internet itself in the UK.
I doubt the Tories have a clean house in this regard. Every time some politician or other 'moral leader' starts pontificating about moral panic, I get suspicious that they're just trying to ban their vice. Clearly if they're so vocally opposed to it, they mustn't be partaking, right?
Glenn Loury and cocaine.
Mark Foley and the exploitation of children.
Eliot Spitzer and prostitution.
John Ensign and 'family values'.
Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, countless others and homosexuality.
The Conservative Party and Back to Basics.From Wikipedia: "Spitzer used this authority in his civil actions against corporations and criminal prosecutions against their officers." Damn shame.
Spitzer was going after human trafficking and prostitution as AG and Governor while he was committing Mann Act Violations on the side. I want the folks on 'my team' to have integrity so their agendas don't get derailed.
After all, that's what they want for us.
(a) Voluntary acts between adults
(b) Fantasy
(c) Preventing the use of porn by adolescents
(d) Protecting children (and others) from horrific crimes
In my view, the reason for that "mix up" is simply old fashioned prudery and religious fanaticism. (d) is the only thing that governments should care about.
For as long as there's politicians "protect the children" will always be B.S.. As if Cameron cared..
> [T]he team also found a relationship between porn use and the feeling that it wasn't necessary to have affection for people to have sex with them.
However,
> [R]esearchers can't say for sure whether access to Internet porn causes certain attitudes and behaviors.
This study:
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2005.8.473
Showed a correlation between children who seek out porn on the internet and delinquency. However, there's no indication of causation.
> For most people, pornography use has no negative effects—and it may even deter sexual violence
The last thing we need is a broken Internet here. The economy is fucked enough already.
Add to that the whole is censorship right debate (it's not unless it's opt-in), the pre-crime list this generates and we're right into blatant fascism.
Where do we even start at fixing all this? I think we're helpless.
Yes, the mobile filtering in the UK is completely useless and blocks many, many sites that having nothing whatsoever to do with porn in any form, and probably fails to block the majority of the porn on the internet but that's where we are.
It didn't however happen for nearly a month after I made the selection so perhaps I'm now logged as a potential sex offender somewhere...
Certain scenes in Game of Thrones might trip this rule. More interestingly, the show is partly filmed in the UK.
I guess Martin, Benioff, and Weiss are all a bunch of criminals. But all those scenes of people stabbing, slashing, and killing each other with all kinds of blades are not a major THREAT TO CHILDREN in a country with a knife-crime problem.
can't believe that people still fall for this shtick
So if you are to censor something, suicide descriptions would be far more morally defensible to censor than porn, as to my knowledge there's little to no evidence that increased access to porn leads to increases in harm to other people.
Yes, some people might reasonably not want their children to run across pornographic material on the internet. Here are some other things some people might reasonably not want their children to run across on the internet: Anti-religious material. Religious material. Depictions of violence. Any mention of prejudice against racial minorities, women, etc. Websites offering do-my-homework-for-me services. News about upsetting things like tens of thousands of children starving to death every day in poor parts of Africa.
I hope it's clear that the internet would not be improved by having opt-out filters for all those things. I think it's clear, in fact, that the internet would not be improved by having opt-out filters for any of those things.
Yes, I hope my daughter will learn about sex in better ways than by stumbling across porn on the internet. And I hope she'll learn about those other things in better ways than by stumbling across them on the internet, too. It is not the government's, or my ISP's, job to make that happen by making things harder to find online; it probably won't work, and it will probably break other things (as such filters always have in the past), and it's the wrong way to solve the "problem" anyway.
And I also hope that if in the fullness of time our daughter wants to find porn on the internet, she will be able to, and she won't be (or feel) obliged to disclose the fact to her parents, and doing so without telling us won't require her to seek out dubious illegal channels which are likely to be full of stuff much "worse" than she'd easily have found without all the censorship.
Having NO kids puts you in a better position to judge, because you are not emotionally attached. You should however impact the effect things have on your children.
And the only way to do that is to expose them to it ... You are not a bad parent are you?(Fallacy: Attacking the man).
The only ones remotely able to say 'think of the kids' are shrink that deals with children with issues/research.
My daughters, since they've been a couple years old, have had unrestricted access to the Internet via tablets and laptops. Quite frankly, I'm far more worried about the impact of shitty cartoons and crap Disney productions than I am them watching porn. Indeed, if I discovered my daughters were viewing such materials, I'd take it as an opportunity to discuss and find out what's going on.
[0]: Or the government censors whatever they like with their filtering infrastructure.
I fear a world where my children cannot express themselves freely FAR more I do a world where I have to explain to my children that some people are just kind of weird...
Censorship of the internet is NOT ok.
Usually that's when politicians concentrate on less demanding, more emotional issues.
Also, nice power-grab right there - cause you never know!
"Sorry Angela, I can't open that WikiLeaks link you told me about." "Nigel, could it be that you forgot to let your porn filter be lifted?"
This is bad and as always not only for UK citizens because politicians like to look at other countries for inspiration and validation. Clearly in Austria some pundits will applaud this.
More info: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/magazine/god-save-the-brit...
Mandatory internet Filters on every ISP as a precaution against pornography or child pornography. Same crippled laws as Turkey. Nobody is prevented reaching porn. But most of the time filters are used against so called "piracy", "extremist" political or "regional" views and these kinds of political agendas. Currently websites pro-evolution are struggling censorship.
I think we need to stop thinking of censorship as an on off switch. Total prevention of information transfer to motivated parties is not possible in this day and age. What is possible is making content more marginal, less likely to be stumbled onto, etc.. That doesn't mean it's not powerful though. It's a different type of power. You will not prevent hardcore political dissidents from learning relevant news through internet censorship. You can however influence mainstream views. You can increase the publics exposures to one view and decrease exposure to another view. You can make certain positions feel safe, mainstream. This works particularly well within the context of a "tribe" you identify with.
Censorship's influence on political opinions is similar to its influence on sexual morality. The influence is strongest near the mainstream, weakest at the extreme. If you have to call up and request access to porn, use special software, etc., it will feel like you are doing something slightly abnormal. Like walking into an adult cinema in the 70s.
My guess is that the film lobby is trying to get the government to push the cost of preventing piracy onto Internet firmshere. The end user will pay for it and have a more restricted Internet.
Don't get me wrong: People that look at children and the like should be caught and prosecuted. But really, the way to go about that isn't to ban ALL of pornography. Are we to ban butter knifes incase someone goes on a rampage with one? No, we identify the issues that cause someone to do that and go after them.
I don't see the point in spending millions of pounds blocking search engines when those millions could be spent on the core issue. If someone wants to look at illegal illicit images, I can guarantee you the majority aren't going to search for it on google using their home internet connection.
I think it's because there's still a generational divide between people who grew up with easy access to Internet (and to porn, obviously) and people who didn't (those at 40+, including our politicians).
>"You're the people who have worked out how to map almost every inch of the Earth from space; who have developed algorithms that make sense of vast quantities of information. Set your greatest brains to work on this. You are not separate from our society, you are part of our society, and you must play a responsible role in it."
Yeah, come on clever technical people. Get it sorted. We've decided you need to uninvent nuclear weapons as well please. Immediately.
What embarrassing ignorance from a major public figure.
This is about developing filters to prevent piracy. You'll see.
[1] - http://www.openrightsgroup.org/
[2] - https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/cameron-demands-ac...
Are there any arguments against an opt-in filter? The legislation is for an opt-out filter.
However, one of arguments for an opt-in model suggests that removing the necessity for parents to make this 'active choice' about what material their kids could be subject to online, just ignores the problem and, if anything, makes it worse because parents don't ever need to think about it. (Should I talk to my kids about the dangers of the internet/world? Oh, I don't care about that now, because the Government has decided for me)
Personally, I agree with you, I think it's a good idea to have an extra layer of filtering like this (not every parent is tech savvy enough to install and manage local filtering) but it has to be Opt-In. How hard is it to ask the question when you sign up with an ISP? (Sir, if you have young children in the household we suggest you choose our network level filtering)
Besides if you want to opt-out of porn you can already install filters on your computer or your router if you want to.
The govt has no business telling Google/Bing/Yahoo what their development targets are.
If you want an opt-in filter just search for it.
You'd have to ensure that we don't ask people what the state of their filter is. If it becomes routine for (say) politicians, teachers, nurses to be asked at job interviews/elections what the state of their filter is ("Have you opted in to the filter? No? So you watch porn then.") then you're going to be forcing lots of people to be anti-sex and anti-porn.
I wonder what the legal tests for that are here? Non-consensual fantasies are very popular among women who don't actually want to be victims of crimes. Will they ban romance novels?
Then next they could go after the female fandoms for Loki from the Avengers movie, yandere characters, and those girls who write love letters to serial killers. Okay, maybe the last ones could use some help.
Also, I read somewhere on the subject of child pornography that allowing those people to look at images cuts down on the act because they seem to "get their fix." I can't remember where I read this so I can't provide a source, but it seems to make sense.
Not really. They want a special kind of freedom where censorship is not allowed... unless the stuff that's getting censored is the kind of stuff that they don't like. Lots of people would enthusiastically support their moral standards being written into law.
I do wonder how many people will accept to this out of shame.
The news here is more subtle. What the internet is, was, how it works and how its changing. It no longer feels like an anarchy that no one can control. We can argue about the why and how but I don't think we can dispute that the internet is no longer unregulatable, anonymous anarchy. That is the news here.
Governments, large corporations and other traditional power sources feel they can exercise influence and control over the internet. It's within their jurisdiction and physical capabilities.
Personally I don't have huge a problem with the default filtering; most households (with or without kids) don't have the knowledge to effectively enable filtering for all their devices - giving them 'protection' by default, and allowing the option to have full access is currently what most - maybe all - mobile phone operators do in the UK anyway in 3G/GSM connections.
However, its important that the opt-out is incredibly straight forward - an online form for example (ideally during signup with a new provider) - no need for 'humiliating' phone calls where you have to explain why you want to see Super Army of Boob 2, for example.
I do wonder what this will mean when accessing sites like The Pirate Bay - which often have boobs-a-plenty in the sidebar ads. Does it mean that people who visit sites that happen to have 'pornographic' ads ALSO need the filtering off.
My bigger concern here is that these measures will very likely do nothing to stem child pornography (and I would hazard a guess sexual abuse in general); my reasoning is that I don't imagine your average paedophile just opens their vanilla browser in the morning and Googles for '[child related sex terms]' - surely this kind of activity hides behind systems such as Tor?
One other thing that springs to mind; presumably, unless there is explicit legislation against this, ISPs can now sell your filter preferences for marketing purposes; perhaps putting you in some 'boxes' you wouldn't want to be in.
Don't worry about the pirate bay, it's blocked in uk
First torrent site, then pornography, then what? arbitrary political movements?
That's a really slippery slope here once the tools are in place, it's hard not to use them.
Personally I'm not against some filtering but IMHO it had to be an opt in plus made at the router level with an "offline" list that you can review and modify yourself. A list made at the ISP level is just too totalitarian
> "Wow, censorship, totalitarianism and mass surveillance are great ideas. We really should implement them."
Secondly, it is impossible to filter information within a society that doesn't have North Korea like tendencies. As soon as this filter goes up, people will just rent servers overseas, and get their internet via encrypted lines that aren't subject to censorship.
Banning porn is like trying ban alcohol. Everyone knows that it's a vice, everyone still does it (isn't 20% of global internet bandwidth porn?), and banning it just puts money into the hands of organized crime.
Thirdly, won't a bunch of mainstream award-winning films that come out every single year become illegal under this act? Games too for that matter. Say good bye to crime shows and violent film in the UK.
Finally, this is just one step away the Great Firewall of China. The argument that we need to protect children from the "corrosive" aspects of society might expand to other political parties, or ideas that aren't in the interests of those already in power.
The thing with censorship is that as soon as a you do a little, it's funny how quickly that becomes a lot. You just have to think of the children now then don't you?
Really? That's just an undisputed fact?
And serious they might be indeed, considering they need some cheap win after years of economic mismanagement. The economy keeps stalling and the 2015 General Election is getting closer; considering bureaucratic timescales, if you want anything to actually be done by then, you need to start now.
Sigh. I guess it'll be a win for Swedish VPN providers.
Let me guess, David Cameron is going to appoint himself to head some special committee to dole out who gets to access to said database…
This is going go down well in history…
See http://www.nuigalway.ie/hbsc/documents/godeau_2008_contracep...
However, when we were kids, we traded pornography on floppy disks, so this solves nothing.
Then, people that want uncensored internet access can simply state that they liked to get to the innocuous cat pictures site - and that porn access wasn't part of their opt-in reasoning. Minimal-plausible deniability...
Of course, if someone is attacking this plausible deniability thing, then the question is "What do you gain from knowing I dislike censorship?".
Let's talk about what this really is. It's just the governments way of telling us what porn we should watch and banning anything they think is "not normal".
And if some legitimate sites get mixed up in this this filter we're suppose to believe it's an honest mistake right?
Stay away from my porn Cameron or I'll fuck you up.
Which presumably means that the legislation will have to use the term "child abuse imagery". Which means that it will be impossible to look up the legislation using a search engine. One has to wonder how we are expected to know whether or not we are complying with it given that we shan't be legally allowed to search for it.
/sarc
I'm wondering if a sizable number of the public is brave enough to get their names into the opt-in as a virtual "I am Spartacus" and two fingers to Cameron.
Irreversible?
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo?
Once Upon a Time in the West?
A Clockwork Orange?
Titus Andronicus?
Remember when RIPA was only supposed to be for terrorism?
Pedophilia is just like any other sexual orientation. It is not something you just turn off, pedophiles need counseling and ways to relieve their sexual frustration. Things like CG porn and Lolicon for example should be legal. It is just not realistic to tell pedophiles to just stop and then put them in prison for the rest of their lives when they act on their desires, they will most likely be stabbed because even among criminals pedophilia is the worst of the worst and you are more likely to be stabbed if you raped a 15 year old than a 16 year old.
And this whole argument that watching fake rape porn will turn you into a rapist is bullshit. It is just like the argument that violent video games turn you into a violent person.
Isn't this just telling parents that the internet will suddenly be safe, a government sanctioned message to that effect is quite a bit stronger than your ISPs salesperson. Of course, the filter will either resemble China or have holes so assuming the latter any responsible parent will still want to monitor their children's usage.
The effect of this law seems to be constrained to making David Cameron (and other not-very-technically-knowledgeable parents) feel that he's a responsible parent, but to be honest I'd rather taxpayers pay for a nanny for him than for this ridiculous law - cheaper and much more effective.
In any case, blocking access to an HTTPS site is not a significant technical problem.
But this isn't about "protecting the children" from porn, is it?
I'm on the wrong side of 40, and I've been online for 28 years. Professionally involved in the software and bitplumbing of "the web" for all of my adult life. I saw jwz's camo cube and montulli's fish tank with my own eyes, and years before that, wrote software alongside visionaries guided by the promise of building online communities and the freedom of information.
It wasn't supposed to turn out like this.
The people making these rules are incapable of building the surveillance apparatus without our involvement. Take this opportunity to look hard at what you're creating, and examine the motives of the people you're building it for.
b) He singles out Google as needing to do more. Google has received a lot of bad press recently due to tax avoidance. Therefore, criticizing Google will go down well with a lot of people.
>> "You're the people who have worked out how to map almost every inch of the Earth from space; who have developed algorithms that make sense of vast quantities of information. Set your greatest brains to work on this. You are not separate from our society, you are part of our society, and you must play a responsible role in it."
Do I read this right? So they don't care how expensive or hard the problem is to solve they just demand it to be solved. And even if the solution is bad or expensive, both customers and taxpayers must still pay to have it implemented. Got it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/books/fifty-shades-of-grey... (not even a new idea)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/493829.SM_101
Dear Mr. Cameron, you just saw how the gay marriage issue went and you where quick to jump on board. You really want to be on the wrong side of this issue?
Beware the Red Menace--er I mean child pornography (insert fear of the moment mongering here).
> I'm a social worker, and once this goes into force, I will know that any household where the kids have access to porn has come from a parent making a conscious choice to let it happen.
Just don't get dragged into a for/against pornography discussion, it's pointless in this context. Even if you're naive enough to believe Cameron is actually trying to censor pornography, ask yourself whether such an infrastructure can and consequently will be abused.
"Without changing what you will be offering (ie active-choice +), the prime minister would like to be able to refer to your solutions [as] 'default-on'"
active-choice+ is a set of filters that may be enabled on request.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/21/david-ca...
But, I think the implementation of anything that restricts the internet before content gets to the client will take things down a bad road, which is why similar efforts keep getting struck down in the U.S. When you give the power of restricting communication to the government or even to a contractor for the government, how will that not be abused? You may as well let them open every bit of mail and every parcel and check to see what you are wearing each morning to ensure it is appropriate.
BAHAHAHA.
Ouch. My sides.
If the filters are this poor and the blocked page banner tells you how to, a large percentage of people will opt out making this an ineffective "watches porn list".
Seems like the UK has just taken the lead.
> “We do not yet have enough concrete evidence that its introduction would be effective in reducing harms associated with problem drinking, without penalising people who drink responsibly.
Where's the "concrete evidence" for this new stuff?
Not something anyone can challenge either without putting their reputation on the line.
Along with many other respected works of art and culture.
The Anglo Saxon penchant for pruderish grandstanding combined with the British desire for an overbearing nanny state is a truly disturbing combination.
Unfortunately there are a lot of sheep on the British isles (as everywhere)
Disclaimer: No I do not get money for this.
He did an interview with the BBC Radio Four programme "Woman's Hour". He sounds computer illiterate.
Some time ago all UK ISPs blocked pirate bay. Next day hundreds of pirate bay proxies appeared. This law is just another propaganda...
On another note, some mobile providers in UK (O2 for instance) already block adult content by default, and you need to prove to them that you are 18 and above to have filter removed.
Porn is just a good justification for getting a "Great Firewall of China" system implemented in the UK.
And we think we've come so far with gender equality...
Just look at life before porn existed. Never any healthy societies or sexual relationships then - they did not even exist. What harm could porn possibly cause anyone? Putting into someones mind a fantasy of how sex really can and should be? How could that ever cause any future sexual relationship to suffer in any way?
How could putting sexual assault video or images into any 10 year old's mind - images that they will never come out, how could that ever cause any potential problems with their natural sexual development? Inconceivable.
People in a truly free country should be able to get their free porn on YouTube whilst buying their methamphetamine (legally) outside (or even inside) of the local welfare office. Now that it the country that I want to live in...
Just look at life before facebook existed. Never any healthy societies or social relationships then - they did not even exist. What harm could facebook possibly cause anyone? Putting into someone's mind a fantasy of how easy socialising really can and should be? How could that ever cause any future social relationship to suffer in any way?
How could allowing a child to interact with somebody who could be a paedophile cause any potential problems with their natural sexual or social development? Inconceivable.
People in a truly free country should be able to sit at home and speak to people on facebook without ever speaking to people face to face. Now that is a country I want to live in...
I wonder what you'd say when the list gets leaked and your name is there by mistake. Can't happen, right? It's not like the UK government ever leaked private info[1]. Maybe the moral busybodies will press to take your kids from you.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2000/jun/25/futureofthenhs...
There were pornographic cave drawings.
Sure, it could be. Might not though.
We're all gamblers when it comes to the truth, and you have to be holding some cards to be taken seriously most of the games worth playing.
Could is not a strong card. It really doesn't mean much when it comes to promoting a strong or extreme position without a high probability of harm or benefit attached to it. It's the start of an argument, not an argument of itself.
"Oh it could be... the aliens plotting to invade could be in his garage... sure it could happen that you win the lottery."
'Possibly' is like 'could' - almost directly interchangeable in fact:
"Oh it's possible... the aliens plotting to invade are possibly in his garage... sure it's possible that you win the lottery."
But, probably not.
Possibility alone is not an argument. Almost anything could possibly mess someone up, almost anything could possibly set a murderer off for instance. Have your read some mass murderers' messages? There's stuff in there like the women exercising at the gym made them realise how they'd never get anyone to love them and then they got snubbed by a woman and went mental.
So, possibly my going swimming will make someone kill someone, best not go swimming any more then!
Of course, you probable wouldn't suggest that women stop swimming because it might set some random nutjob off. Because the pleasure that many women take in swimming is taken to far outweigh a small probability of it doing so. Our rights trump the probability of their madness, people shouldn't have to live in fear that they're going to be someone's excuse. But, if the probability of madness was high - if men almost always went insane when women were swimming, if they were just physiologically unable to control themselves; well, I suspect that it wouldn't be the case that our right trumped their madness because the probability of harm would be so much higher.
Merely noting that something is possible is a potential beginning; somewhere to go and look up statistics and start measuring harms from if it seems probable enough to you on the basis of your prior and the actions you'd take on the basis of it being true or false to be worth looking into. If someone tells you there's an alien in their garrage the next step, if you think it probable enough to be worth looking into, is to go, 'Well, let's have a look then.' Not to start planning your response to the invasion fleet.
What the probability is matters. We can all imagine things possibly happening that are not implausible, yet in reality are not at all probable. And because our brains are not operating on floating point variables, we don't actually have a way to feel how small the probabilities behind various degrees of possible are. So, going with your feelings of shock about 'how could something possibly' is a bad call. To say something meaningful, in the sense that it ought to guide policy and action you have to use maths and numbers, not feelings. You have to use data, not instinct. You have to be able to promote an idea of how probable it is, not just note that it's possible.
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While we're here I suppose I should note that 'Just look at life before porn... it wasn't awful.' Is not evidence for porn being bad either. It's, at best, just an argument for it not being an all surpassing good - and even there you haven't controlled for socioeconomic factors so you can't really be said to be comparing like for like. Methodologically it's not sound.
And even ignoring all that, the argument still falls down. Maybe there were some healthy relationships before porn, but the days before porn included....
Oh, you mean the days when young girls were sold off to be fucked when they had their first period?
Or perhaps you're talking about the golden era of traditional gender roles, when it was legal to rape your wife and some women were essentially prisoners in their own homes.
Or perhaps you're going more traditional, Aesop's fables:
'A woman, a spaniel and a walnut tree, The more they're beaten the better they'll be.'
Even disregarding the methodological flaws, noted above, life before porn was not good for some people. Of course there probably were some healthy relationships back then, and maybe even the majority of such relationships were healthy. Or maybe not. As I'm sure you'll agree, the numbers matter in determining quite how horrifying history is.
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Aside:
Personally, I find the unequal treatment of women in the workplace and government in history to make even the definition of healthy relationships in historical terms very difficult. Were I to define a healthy relationship it would go something like 'An equal, fair, and mutually beneficial relationship that makes those involved happy....' But how can it be equal and fair when one side has the majority of the power? We, or at least women at various points in time, were deprived of access to significant power, and thus of significant agency, from a very early age.
Imagine telling someone that the most they could aspire to was to be some man's secretary and the only way they could hope to interact with most of society was through their husband. I've no doubt you could grow to largely ignore that, if you grew up with it, but then again people grow up to largely ignore being blind too. I'm unsure under that interpretation how you'd even begin to define a healthy relationship as distinct from Stockholm Syndrome.
I wouldn't be able to take that. I wouldn't want to live in that world and I'd be constantly timid and afraid of even someone I'd otherwise love if they wielded that sort of power over me.
Which isn't to say that all historical relationships were examples of such patterns. I'm just saying that even the act of definition there is going to be very difficult. You can't really talk about healthy relationships without reference to the psychology of those involved, and that also involves references to the surrounding power structures - which will vary both with time and place. You can't meaningfully abstract over large portions of history without putting in significant work to normalise your terms across contexts.
The aforementioned things do not have the consensus of psychologists and other professionals in the world agreeing that the content in question can cause psychological harm to a certain percent of society (particularly children).
That is the difference. The legal guardians of those who know that the potential is higher that their children may be affected negatively by pornography should be able to have the ability to make it harder for them to access it.
I see a lot of posts here talking about parents putting filtering software on their computer. Well, there is always easy ways around those. How many kids have iPhones today with unfettered internet access? how many kids use a public library? how many kids know computers better than their parents or grandparents and can get around any filtering software that may be installed on their home computer?
I remember the uproar at the proposition that porn content be delivered over an .xxx domain. Why was there such an uproar? How was it censorship to classify content that could be dangerous to some? Are movie ratings censorship? Are 8 year old kids legally allowed to buy tickets to NC-17 movies? It seems like the precedent had already been set.
It was all about money of course. The porn industry knows that the younger a person watches porn for the first time, the more likely they are to continue watching/purchasing porn indefinitely. The porn industry WANTS minors to view the porn. They do everything they possibly can to entice them at the earliest age possible. Does anyone think that the porn industry is high on the ethical and moral hill and would never take advantage of children to make more money?
Why should anyone outside the home have the power to do this? Why do parents have such little power and so little and ineffective tools to limit their child's exposure to pornographic material?
This is no more censorship than current laws requiring that porn mags be put on shelves a certain distance from the ground in retail stores so that 8 year old kids generally cannot reach them.
I had to activate grown-up mode on my giffgaff data (to buy swimmies, which were bogusly blocked by a bad filter). Even though I'm a sleazebag, I still felt a little squeamish asking for porn mode.
...now if that comes in on the monthly bills, "Data mode: Adult", then you have to explain it to your partner...