UK Govt to restrict online porn access

[Tiberius]

I've always thought European countries and Australia were much more progressive than the US but all I hear is how they want to restrict/ban porn.

This has really never been true in terms of freedom of speech / expression. You guys wrote that into your bill of rights. Europe on the other hand is a place where people are arrested on a regular basis for things they say or wear.

Some countries even have laws that forbid people from denying the holocaust. Now, denying the holocaust is a very ill-informed thing to do, but laws that try to prevent people from doing it are still restricting individual's freedom of belief. No good comes of that in my opinion.

[NoraBrimstone]

I'll just opt-in. It's a bit of a shitty thing, but not the end of the world.

No, but it is a violation of privacy. ISPs will have a nice big list of everyone who watches porn, which they will have to keep indefinitely.

Oh definitely. I agree. But everyone watches porn... So that list will include everyone I know anyway. I don't like it, but there's nothing I can do about it and I have more important shit to worry about in my life, I guess.

[pocaracas]

Ok, UK people, how much are you willing to pay up to use a Portuguese proxy?
Do bear in mind that there's a direct fiber connection from Lisbon to London, handling a gazillion GBps That just means that the data flow should be quick enough...

Oh, Tegh... The UK is strange... Remember their (before) last Prime Minister?




And don't think of one European country as "all of Europe". This is (still) not the United States of Europe.

[Minimalist]

"Ban it! Think of a children!" Hmm, when was the last time I heard it?

Probably in here....

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I'll just opt-in. It's a bit of a shitty thing, but not the end of the world.

No, but it is a violation of privacy. ISPs will have a nice big list of everyone who watches porn, which they will have to keep indefinitely.

That's what pisses me off.

I don't give a shit that people know I watch porn, but I certainly don't want my ISP knowing what I watch, and I damn well dont want the government knowing I watch it and what I watch.

It's the presumption of wrong doing from DC and co that really grinds my gears. DC clearly dislikes porn and subscribes to the whole 'porn kills childhood' bollocks. So now I and every other British Internet subscriber is held hostage simply because of a personal bias held by a politician less than a 5th of the voting population voted for.

I'm not sure of the implications but there is the possibility that by opting in it could be held against me in the future. Slippery slope. What will be censored next?

[Something completely different]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076

They are attempting to enforce a new piece of legislation that will make ISPs create an opt in option to watch porn. The is done in the guise of the protecting children, but in reality, it's simply a way of David Cameron imposing his personal views on the population and a way of the government trying to tell us what sites are good to go on and what are bad.

"Porn is bad and is destroying our children" - seriously, that's what they're going with, as well as trying to stop paedophilia online (yeah, because that's totally going to work).

And you guys in the US thought attempts to restrict your Internet freedoms were bad!

funny how english conservative politicians then also think that they can lecture the rest of Europe how democracy works

[Fidel_Castronaut]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076

They are attempting to enforce a new piece of legislation that will make ISPs create an opt in option to watch porn. The is done in the guise of the protecting children, but in reality, it's simply a way of David Cameron imposing his personal views on the population and a way of the government trying to tell us what sites are good to go on and what are bad.

"Porn is bad and is destroying our children" - seriously, that's what they're going with, as well as trying to stop paedophilia online (yeah, because that's totally going to work).

And you guys in the US thought attempts to restrict your Internet freedoms were bad!

funny how english conservative politicians then also think that they can lecture the rest of Europe how democracy works

I think a lot of people stopped listening to UK politicians a long time ago. Gone is the age when our politicians actually stood for something and came from a background that gave them an underpinning on the reality of what the average person actually lives in.

Now it's people graduating from elite colleges, becoming a special advisor for a parliamentarian or a local councillor and just climbing the greasy ladder.

Very few of them are connected to reality.

[Something completely different]

I think a lot of people stopped listening to UK politicians a long time ago. Gone is the age when our politicians actually stood for something and came from a background that gave them an underpinning on the reality of what the average person actually lives in.

Now it's people graduating from elite colleges, becoming a special advisor for a parliamentarian or a local councillor and just climbing the greasy ladder.

Very few of them are connected to reality.

Your country is technicaly speaking still a theocracy with a monarch "appointed by god" .
So technicaly speaking it wouldn`t even have the right to be a EU member.
British democracy didn`t come to exist through a revolution or a brutal change in society through war, as it did in almoust every other European country. Instead, english democracy evolved out of a class of nobles and rich people gradualy giving more and more rights to the lower classes of society to ensure that they do not revolt, like in the rest of Europe. I am certain that this has a major impact on how democracy in the UK works today. Just how in France the impact of the former monarchy and it`s nobility on France`s todays republic is that it has a powerfull and extremly big central goverment, or how in Germany the history of the small states shows it`s impact in todays democracy through the individual states having more political powers of selfdetermination to act more independently from the central federal goverment.

Alot of things look weird there from my perspective, for example the lack of a constitution. And some things just look outright undemocratic and horrible, like the extrem political power of the tabloid media and the fact that having a private dinner with the prime minister can get you a decision made by the goverment which will stand in your favor.

[Bad Wolf]

Imagine if David Cameron had some really weird porn fettish! You know how it goes, your sitting in Number 10, wife and kids are out, office door is locked, why not?

[Rahul]

Wouldn't you just be able to connect to porn through an anonymous proxy?

That should get you around the ban and protect your privacy.