UK Govt to restrict online porn access

[Rahul]

I remember that from elementary school. That was forever ago.

Maybe for you, Champ. I was fighting in the military when it happened.

[pocaracas]

I'd like to point out to that Google remembers your preferences, so if you're a family dad/mom with a shared computer, use Ctrl+shift+N or at least have the decency to delete your browsing history. Because if your kids surf for other stuff and porn pops up firstly, guess who's to blame..

Good one.... or use private browsing for such sensitive material.

[Tiberius]

Untrue

The online culture currently is littered with porn. Look at yourself in chat... you post images for fun. Kids have no controls for that crap and it becomes normal to them.
The open availability of the stuff is more far reaching. It's the leap anyone can easily make to instant depravity.

...and how many kids are actually members of online cultures? Yes, if you go to reddit, you can find a load of porn. Same with 4chan, etc. The point is, it's never on the homepages of those sites, and often (especially with reddit) you have a warning message before you can even see it.

My point was, if you give a kid access to the Internet, the only real way they are going to find porn is by wanting to go see it. You can't just do a regular Google search and get porn as a result; it doesn't happen any more.

Another problem with this bill is the implementation. Presumably, they are just going to have a massive blacklist of known porn sites. Well, the problem is, most images on reddit / 4chan are not hosted on porn sites...they are hosted on regular image hosting sites like imgur.com or photobucket.com. Are those sites going to have to be blocked too?

Why can't parents be trusted to take the initiative and install parental control software? Why does the nanny state have to take this into their own hands, when it's clearly going to be badly implemented?

[Kayenneh]

[fr0d0]

I think you don't have to look. You get reprobate people you know showing it to you (current company excepted of course! ).

Kids have smartphones now and all the fast mobile towers are next to high schools. Filtering mobile web isn't really covered AFAIK. Danger for my kids is peer pressure and the the odd idiot sharing distasteful stuff.

Nothing wrong with increased control to protect kids I think. Minefield is the implementation I think. /Yoda

[Tiberius]

Kids have smartphones now and all the fast mobile towers are next to high schools. Filtering mobile web isn't really covered AFAIK. Danger for my kids is peer pressure and the the odd idiot sharing distasteful stuff.

I thought the legislation applies to all UK ISPs? That would include those providing Internet to mobile phones.

Nothing wrong with increased control to protect kids I think. Minefield is the implementation I think. /Yoda

Nothing is wrong with it, as long as people don't try to enforce it on everyone. If you have a kid, install parental controls. If you don't, you shouldn't have to have one installed for you because some other person using the same ISP has kids.

This raises an interesting point. Can I start an ISP for adults only (i.e. I only sell services to childless adult households) that can get exemption form the law?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Kids have smartphones now and all the fast mobile towers are next to high schools. Filtering mobile web isn't really covered AFAIK. Danger for my kids is peer pressure and the the odd idiot sharing distasteful stuff.

I thought the legislation applies to all UK ISPs? That would include those providing Internet to mobile phones.

It does, yes.

As far as I'm aware most mobile operators in the UK have already blocked access to the pirate bay too at the behest of Cameron et al.

Nothing wrong with increased control to protect kids I think. Minefield is the implementation I think. /Yoda

Nothing is wrong with it, as long as people don't try to enforce it on everyone. If you have a kid, install parental controls. If you don't, you shouldn't have to have one installed for you because some other person using the same ISP has kids.

This raises an interesting point. Can I start an ISP for adults only (i.e. I only sell services to childless adult households) that can get exemption form the law?

Interesting point. I'd assume no because we all know that the aim of this legislation, at least prima facie, is to prevent paedophilia online (as if).

If you were successful then I guess ISPs just create a duel system of "adult only" and "family" Internet connections, which would actually just do the same thing the law is going to; identify who wants to watch porn and who doesn't.

It wouldn't surprise me if the government actually allowed this to convince people it was a back door get out from the law, with few realising they're just falling into the same trap. So yeah, very interesting point.

[fr0d0]

I thought the legislation applies to all UK ISPs? That would include those providing Internet to mobile phones.

Apologies if i wasn't clear. I was talking about web filtering software not being readily available for mobiles.

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Surely this is the point... it's the hardcore stuff that needs blocking. The soft stuff just controlling better. It'd be good to see the end of 4chan and chat roulette in kids circles although the nature of the medium makes it difficult. Plus we have a culture already grown to grow out of.

[Tiberius]

Interesting point. I'd assume no because we all know that the aim of this legislation, at least prima facie, is to prevent paedophilia online (as if).

Yup, considering 99.999% of child pornography is only accessible over Tor, which means ISPs can only block access to it by blocking Tor connections, which if it ever happens, would escalate the level of filtering up from "privacy invading and a pain in the ass" to "China"

Apologies if i wasn't clear. I was talking about web filtering software not being readily available for mobiles.

Don't give your kid a mobile phone with Internet on it then. I think many of the mobile carriers already have opt-in options for content filtering; I know T-Mobile do because I've seen the setting on my account.

Surely this is the point... it's the hardcore stuff that needs blocking. The soft stuff just controlling better. It'd be good to see the end of 4chan and chat roulette in kids circles although the nature of the medium makes it difficult. Plus we have a culture already grown to grow out of.

The problem is, there is no way of blocking either the hardcore or the softcore stuff. You can block as many actual porn websites that you want, but people are re-uploading these things all over. You can upload a .gif animation of hardcore porn to sites like imgur.com (which are mainly used for sharing suitable-for-work images) and post it somewhere on the web if you wanted to. How is the government going to block access to that?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Why can't parents be trusted to take the initiative and install parental control software? Why does the nanny state have to take this into their own hands, when it's clearly going to be badly implemented?

I think this is the crux of the issue.

It's a given that this policy will be implemented poorly because it's basis is so shoddy and ill thought through. It's DC pandering to the daily wail (who are already touting this a victory for them btw!) who have been demanding for years that porn be blocked outright in every household.

If this comes into effect it will create the presumption of guilt on otherwise normal households, and there will be so many holes (landlords - will tenants have to ask landlords to remove the filter from their Internet in, for example, student households?) that it will create mountains of red tape and bureaucracy form the backlog of contests that will arise as a result.

And all this is an aside from the core issue that the government will effectively be legislating itself a right to determine what is good and what is bad to watch on the Internet with no clear boundary as to how this will be enforced or where the buck will stop. It's impossible for us on this forum to determine what the boundaries should be for us a very small collective, so imagine what it will be like trying to determine a boundary for 70+million people.

Here's an idea; want to stop paedophilia, or at least try and prevent it? Remove the taboos on discussing it, and move away from automatically labelng those who may find themselves attracted to children as 'evil'. Research into paedophilia is laughingly sparse considering how much of a topic it is for the average person on the street. We need more, and we need to stop driving people underground and bring them into the light without the stigma of the media circus that now surrounds even the slightest hint that someone is a paedophilia. Asking people to opt in for porn on the Internet is such a shit tactic I'm willing to bet that DC and co wrote it down on a legal pad before a cabinet briefing one day after legalising gay marriage and seeing how the daily fucking mail reacted to it (not forgetting that the daily mail is one of the most homophobic pieces of shit excuses for a newspaper there is).