British Telecom Blocks Access to Child Porn Sites

An anonymous reader writes "British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy."

Comments

Foot in the door

[Manip]

What worries me is this could be a foot in the door situation.. It is hard to justify the first ones but then easier for future blocks. P0rn, Warz, Hax all could be disappearing from a website near you!

Re:Foot in the door

[ftzdomino]

It's unlikely that an ISP will survive if they block all porn.

Re:Foot in the door

[allism]

It's considered a heinous crime, and so anyone who complains too loudly could easily be seen as supporting child porn rather than supporting free speech/free internet. From a political standpoint, child porn is a great choice to ban first.

Re:Foot in the door

[Anonymous Coward]

In most juristictions, child porn is already banned. This is a block, not a ban, and it prevents people from being going to prison or spending the rest of their lifes tagged as a "sex offender" for a crime that's frequently performed accidentally (on their part.)

Re:Foot in the door

[aflat362]

Pr0n, Hax, open source software, non-microsoft technology . . .

Re:Foot in the door

[mirror_dude]

Or have you ever thought that BT might "accidently" filter some non kiddy porn sites that speek badly of BT?
I'd prefer to keep the internet a dumb network thank you very much

Re:Foot in the door

[BasilBrush]

That all depends. They'll won't be a popular ISP amongst porn surfers, but they'd be popular with both families and companies. All three are big markets - plenty big enough to support many ISPs. Indeed an ISP can charge more for the service of blocking porn.

Although porn consumes a large percentage of internet bandwidth, it's easy to overestimate it's importance. Multimedia is just by it's nature a high bandwidth activity. If there were 10,000 people dealing with email and one person watching porn videos the one person would probably be using more bandwidth than the 10,000.

Re:Foot in the door

[Brad Mace]

No one here is going to oppose it because they want to see child porn. However, these types of censorship always involve a great deal of collateral damage. Previous adult filters have blocked sites about breast cancer, contraception, support groups for sexual abuse victims, etc. They'd have to block sites 1 at a time, and then later go back and check to see if they should still be blocked. Kidsrus.com could be child porn one day, and the website of an unfortunate toystore the next.

It also allows them to block other things they don't like. Blocking their competitors websites is probably too obvious, but if the boss wants to support some issue, throwing a warning about child porn in front of a page will make most people turn back immediately.

Finally, they could do just as well by setting up a department to find these websites and report them to authorities, which would be useful without the problems of accidental censorship.

It's a crime

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a crime to block these services on the end user's side whilst leaving them at large on the internet; they should be taking them down at the source.

Re:It's a crime

[Ianoo]

However, filtering is not without its pitfalls. I don't know how they're going to choose which sites to block, but it better not be via keywords. Otherwise you're invariably going to end up with false positives, and block perfectly legitimate sites because they contain unfortunate juxtapositions of words.

I can imagine situations, for example, where planned parenthood sites might get blocked because they have the words "children" and "sex" in close proximity. I wonder if BT has a plan to deal with kind of situation? My intution says "no".

What alternatives are there to keyword searching? Manually identifying sites? Who is going to do this, and isn't it a crime to download pages from such sites just to check whether they should be filtered?

no different than the real world

[jd142]

Before everyone does the kneejerk censorhip response, this seems no different than what goes on in real life. Access to child pornography is blocked in real life. Your local Kwik-E-Mart is not going to be carrying Russian Lolitas Monthly next to the Playboys and Penthouses. Nor should they.

The only issue to be concerned with is whether or not the list of blocked sites is accurate or not.

And of course, this will not stop the knowledgable pedophile, but if it can keep some companies from earning money via paid subscriptions, good for BT.

Typo?

[Glock27]

attempted in a Western democracy.

Shouldn't that read "attempted by a large ISP"? Could this result in mass-migration to other services, or are no others viable? As an aside, are cable modems available in Britain?

I do think this is a slippery slope, especially since "pornography" is always hard to define... Are "innocent" shots of (semi)naked teens on Scandinavian beaches "porn", for instance? Who decides?

Re:Typo?

[RogueProtoKol]

First off, yes, we have cable modems in Britain.

The low down on British Telecoms is as so, you have 3 major telecoms providers, BT, NTL and Telewest. BT are everywhere, NTL and Telewest have fairly large areas, some you can only get one or the other, but you can always get BT.

Now, BT are the major ADSL provider, NTL and Telewest are the cable providers. As stated in the article, BT have alot of ADSL resellers eg Yahoo! who according to the artcle, would come under this.

If you want to leave BT, this leaves you with either most likely NTL or Telewest for cable, or switch to another ADSL provider. There are quite a few ADSL providers, if you already have ADSL through BT it should be perfectly possible to come off BT and the pricing is pretty competitive.

However, even though there is an OK range of choice, I doubt we'll see any mass anti-censorship protest of people switching from BT as to the majority, you'll just look like you're against BTs efforts to clean up child pornography, and with alot of recent paedophile news over the last few years, you won't be very popular.

I hate to do it but...

[ZackSchil]

I'm going to side with freedom of speech (and thereby child pornography on the internet.) I in no way approve of or condone child pornography. I think it's disgusting the way that some people get off by exploiting children too young to fully understand the consequences of their actions. However, censorship is a slippery slope. Once we allow the child pornographers to be blocked, what's stopping them from taking the next step and censoring all they deem obscene? What about outlawing anonymous forums because they facilitate obscenity? How long until you have to get your sites white-listed by ISPs to even be viewed in the UK or any other nation that follows this same path?

I'm not insane, just concerned. I say fight the problem of child pornography (etc..) from the other end. Arrest the people, not the websites and protocols.

Re:I hate to do it but...

[ZackSchil]

But blocking websites is solving the wrong problem! Child pornographers are dodgy. Blocking websites doesn't stop them from taking photographs and distributing them via websites and proxies or other conduits. What this does do is frustrate the dumb-as-a-brick manager who made the decision to block the sites in the first place and cause him to start blocking proxies and more websites in order to see the results he expected. At that point, the child pornographers just keep finding new conduits and we are inconvenienced or end up blocked ourselves. And the children are still harmed.

The ISP is striking at a cloud of smoke with a sword. They can scatter the cloud and hurt people on the sidelines but they cannot make the cloud go away. You have to cut the problem at the source. The internet does not lend its self well to censorship.

Re:I hate to do it but...

[R.Caley]

So there is nothing wrong with blocking access to illegal material.

Yes there is.

There is a legitimate argument for blocking harmful material, and some would say there is a legitimate argument for blocking immoral material.

However, blocking illegal material is, by definition, blocking material the government doesn't want you to see, if you accept it as legitimate, you are accepting every possible act of government censorship.

In china, for instance, certain kinds of political material are illegal, so by your argument there is nothing wrong with the Chinese government blocking it.

I know this may sound pedantic, but this is one of those confusions which we are encouraged to make by the state and it's friends in the media. One we all need to be wary of. Slipping betwen `immoral' and `illegal' is easy and dangerous.

Re:Blocking Child Porn

[zoloto]

one more thing..

i know tons of you will say things like "this is just the beginning, wait till they think they can do this again" and you're right. They can do more, but I can gaurentee it isn't as important as this by magnatudes! Seriously, I would rather have not one child be sexually abused for losing one of those "inaliable rights" everyone loves.

dont' get me wrong. I'm a bit worried myself about the abuse of this system, but for now it seems ok.

But let's be a politically aware and active bunch instead of bitchers and whiners and actually _DO_ something when it's wrong.

Blocking kiddie porn = Good
Being proactive against bad laws = Good
sitting on your ass in your mom's basement and complaining about losing rights when you have no clue how politics and laws work = bad

This isn't a troll, but seriously THINK about what powers we as citizens have (of whatever country you reside in). You CAN make a difference if you try hard enough. Martin Luther King never was what he became without hard work, dillegence and direction.

Sorry about replying to my own post, but I had to clear a few things up. I hope you guys don't see this as a rant but something insightful.

Just my 0.02

Go BT.

[topynate]

If they can do that without any slowdown, good on them. However, presumably they aren't saying what they're blocking, exactly. There's a problem with this, because if customers don't know they can't assure themselves that their internet usage isn't being unreasonably censored. But if you publish a list of illegal websites, that increases the ease with which anyone can find them (and alerts the owners of these websites that they are being monitored). So, while I can't deny that I'm glad these sites are being blocked, I don't think they should be - it's unworkable from a more general freedom of expression perspective.

The alterative is trusting a government body that you have real freedom of information rights. Say no more.

WTF?

[Ratso Baggins]

Where on earth is child porn legal, such that these sites can't be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?

So I'm more that a little concerned the "solution" is to ban urls... wtf?

Re:IANAL yadda yadda yadda...

[dyefade]

What? No way! They're only going to filter known sites. It's not BT's job to go looking for child porn just so they can block it. What if a new website was put up, and BT users accessed it before BT managed to filter it? BT should NOT be held repsonsible then.

not a good idea

[nagboy]

i dont think this is a very smart idea, not as much from the free speach perspective, but from a law enforcement point of view. the only thing that will happen is that this kind of material will be distributed in other less transparent ways.

Every major child-porn bust in both western europe and the US has linked the end users with the web sites via their credit card, this is a good way both to bust end-users and to get a good statistical overview of the problem.

Also if the sites are actually on the web it is also much easier for law enforcement to trace people / places where this kind of material originates.

I mean, it would become a nightmare scenario for law enforcement if every end-user of child porn actually took the step and started downloading / posting everything anonymously w/PGP encryption on usenet or other message boards, it would be close to impossible to monitor and no credit card to trace.

just my two cents

Who is to decide? And what comes next.?

[nurb432]

And what about the first legit child abuse support site they block? Do they get blocked and shut down too?

Or next month, when its another 'crime against society' they decide to block?

There goes free speech out the window. Don't get me wrong KP *IS* wrong, but you don't deal with it this way, by beginning the process of restricting speech, as once you start, its far to easy to add another item to the 'unapproved knowledge' list out of political pressure.

Ever hear of the Salem witch trials in America? This is similar to how that got started: People in power, imposing their twisted views of right and wrong on others.

Re:Who is to decide? And what comes next.?

[kfg]

And what about the first legit child abuse support site they block?

Why, then the public simply infers, since they are blocked, that they are child pornographers.

KFG

Re:Who is to decide? And what comes next.?

[KhusTheRed]

And what about the first legit child abuse support site they block? Do they get blocked and shut down too? No, when (probably not IF) that happens, an apology is issued and they site is put back up. Not the end of the world, and it certainly wouldn't be the ONLY child abuse website. Decrying the loss of free speech is absurd in this case. Parent was right--child porn creators and users forfeit their rights. It doesn't matter whose socio/religious/cultural values one is holding. Same is true for whites supremacists and other various hate groups; when the views expressed by someone are universally, irrefutably, unquestionably harmful to other people, that person should not have the right to speak. I know, I know, I've heard it before: "They take this awful thing away, soon they'll come for US!" Watch out for that 90-degree slippery slope there you've established. And please, at least study the Salem witch trials before using them in an analogy. It was not about power; it was about mass hysteria and groupthing, largely fueled by the fear of superstition in a hostile New World, harsh living condidions and a strict fundamentalist religious mindset.

Re:Is this a good idea?

[orangesquid]

But, there's a difference between taking actions whose target is the pornographers (shutting the sites down) and taking actions whose target is the general public (blocking access).

Plus, I don't understand why it's so wrong that child pornography gets exchanged. Obviously, the creation of the images in the first place is bad, but, by banning the exchange of them in addition to the creation, we're creating a legal taboo and sending a message, saying that, if you like pictures of naked kids, then, Houston, we have a problem.

What about sites like rotten.com, for people who like pictures of violence and decay? Shouldn't those images be illegal, too? Some of them are photographic evidence of criminal acts!

I don't think it's really appropriate to declare any private exchange of information illegal, ever. I don't think it's really appropriate for the government to interfere much with what property a person can own and what they can do with it. It's all paranoia. If someone wants to have guns and bombs, maybe they should be watched carefully, but the key point is, have they caused any harm to anyone or anything else yet, by merely having those items?

Maybe they just like pyrotechnics *shrug*. I know I've made gunpowder and little film-canister explosives, with the intent to detonate them just for fun, without causing harm to anyone else. Sure, maybe detonating them without a pyrotechnics license would still be a very bad idea (because then there's no guarantee I have proper training), but, if I had a license to do something dangerous, there's no reason I shouldn't be allowed to do it.

Nobody ever said freedom was an easy thing.

I suggest that anybody who believes in freedom like I do move out and colonize some area with me. We'll set up a country centered around freedom..

Oh wait! They already did that, it's called the U.S. of A. But then why does said country have so many laws prohibiting so many types of possessions and a few types of speech?

Very Frightening Possibilities

[One Childish N00b]

A lot of people are screaming about how banning child pornography cannot possibly be twisted into A Bad Thing, but it is not child pornography that this debate really centres on.

The issue most people have is a large corporation having sway over what it's users can and can't view.
It's not just child porn, what happens if someone posts anti-BT comments or messages? I've seen enough companies censor their support forums by banning users and deleting posts that criticise their service, do we really want a company able to censor the entire internet? the 'net is one of the few havens of totally free speech availible, and if BT is given the power to block one sort of site, then they will use it as a 'test case' to gain the right to block other kinds of sites.

Next will go the anti-government sites. Websites that criticise the government, simply blocked from view thanks to BT. Then regular porn sites. Scream at me to say I've got my tinfoil hat on over this, but all I see is a large corporation taking it's first tentative steps towards 'sanitizing' the internet. Blocking child pornography is just the start - the company can block child porn and live safe in the knowledge that anyone who objects will be labelled a paedophile or a supporter of child pornography. Then they can start sliding other categories onto their block lists, safe in the knowledge that anyone who objects to it will get the full wrath of the following knee-jerk reaction:

"Oh so you don't like internet censorship, then, do you? what do you want, then, you want kiddie porn all over the place then? is that what you want!" - BT looks good by proxy of public hysteria.

First it's the big, bad child-porn sites. Then it will be the big, bad anti-government sites. Then it will be the whole porn sector, then whole swathes of the internet that do not agree with 'company policy'. Like I said, I might have my tinfoil hat on over this, but the world seems to get a little closer to something out of a cyberpunk novel everyday.

Re:Is this a good idea?

[elpapacito]

No it isn't a good idea.

Remember Prohibitionism era ? It was effectively trying to cut the production and distribution of alcohol, but it never worked because the demand for alcohol was consistent and was probably reinforced by the fact alcohol become a "forbidden thing" and we all known how youngsters are attracted by things that are forbidden by adults during their transition to maturity. Police spent enormous resources trying to address the "alcohol" problem, just to see all the effort wasted because it was a pointless investment to begin with.

"Tracking and hunting" approach, typical of today knee-jerk reactionism, doesn't address the psycological problems child pornographers have, which probably is caused by an unhealthy approach to sex, seen as a "problem" or "filthy issue" instead of a completely natural expression of human beings. Education on the subject of sex works in the long term, while repression and prohibition has done more damages then good.

Re:Is this a good idea?

[Short Circuit]

Have any IPs that hit child porn sites logged and investigated.

I believe that's called "entrapment." And if you can find a way to legally justify it for suspicion of one type of crime, it becomes easier to justify it for other crims.

For example, let's say someone is writing a book. For research, he wants to know how much contract killing costs. He googles for rates, and may or may not find the information he's looking for. Within days, however, his apartment is raided and his equipment confiscated. Shortly, he's charged with some sort of pre-murder or conspiracy crime.

What good is freedom of speech, if you don't have the freedom to find out what to say?

Re:Blocking Child Porn

[UberOogie]

Seriously, I would rather have not one child be sexually abused for losing one of those "inaliable rights" everyone loves.

Which is exactly why you shouldn't be making those decisions. Well, we lost some rights, but now all children are safe. (Well, they aren't actually safe. We gave up free speech on the Internet so that pedophiles would have to find other ways to get kiddie porn, and the abuse rate hasn't gone down much.) How many more rights should we give up for the illusion of safety?

And what if we did give up all our rights and were made relatively safe? What's the point of being safe if you can't enjoy basic human rights?

"Think of the children!"

We'll do more to protect them by protecting their freedom.

Re:Is this a good idea?

[dipipanone]

Plus, I don't understand why it's so wrong that child pornography gets exchanged.

OK, so how about me and a few of my buds gome pay you a visit, strap down you and your girlfriend for a hot bukkake fest, film it as we do so and then we make your shame and humilation available for perverts to wank over via the internet for all eternity?

Can you still not see what's so wrong about that?

Re:Is this a good idea?

[orangesquid]

But the argument is, child molesters are disturbed individuals. Do economic rules apply so simply to them? They will be disturbed and wanting to molest children regardless of the price associated. Decreasing the supply, which drives up the "price" (scarcity), is not going to make fewer people want to molest children, which seems to be implied in a lot of arguments against child pornography (it might lessen how much it happens, but it won't decrease the desire to). "Looking at dirty pictures of children" is always listed as "contributing" to the molestation of children. If I run across some random picture of some naked 12-year-old who reminds me of a girl I had a crush on in junior high, how exactly am I contributing? It's not as if I went out looking for that picture, and, unless I communicate my interest to suppliers, they probably won't even know that one more person saw that picture, because information, unlike a physical object, is easily reproducible. Do you think the suppliers sit there watching their hit-counters and access logs and think, ooh, more people are finding my site, I need to molest more kids!

Of course, is it really necessary to assume such individuals are through-and-through disturbed? That's what society argues, but, psychology is not an exact science.

Re:Is this a good idea?

[stwrtpj]

No shit, it's a good idea.

And I don't like the NRA. Should I demand my ISP block those sites too? And I believe in a woman's right to choose, so maybe I should demand my ISP block anti-abortion sites? I don't like the republican party. Should I demand that the ISP block their sites?

Anyone who now responds with "but that's not the same thing!" is missing the point. Blocking something that most people (myself included) is a universal evil sounds like a good idea, but it sets a dangerous precedent. It can be twisted around to allow someone to start blocking sites that have unfavorable political views by associating them with child porn in some way. Do this enough times, and eventually they'll stop even trying to make the association since censorship will become a fact of life.

Freedom of speech means NOTHING if it is not open for all. Freedom for all, or freedom for none.

Also, consider this: Child porn would not be around if there was not a demand for it. Perhaps the problem should be addressed there, rather than accepting this band-aid solution.

Funny thing is ....

[argoff]

I can do alot to protect my daughter from perverts, but how do I protect her from people trying to micro-regulate the internet?

Slippery slope? fuzzy logic versus binary logic

[Whumpsnatz]

I've seen numerous comments lamenting this action as the beginning of a "slippery slope". I think this is a side effect of seeing the world as binary. Regardless of all the binary computers, the world is fuzzy. Too bad more people can't apply that. Defending kiddy porn because you don't like the idea of a secretive psycho-moralist witch-burning society is lame. I personally don't care whether the sites are blocked; I just want to kill the child molesters who set up these sites.

In some ways, it comes down to deciding on a lesser of n evils (or, in rare circumstances, n goods). I don't want any government or private agency or person to secretly search my house, library records, or financial records. I don't want to be thrown in jail with no charges, no lawyer, and no acknowledgement that I've been imprisoned. Nor do I want murderers to get out of jail before pot smokers; it usually comes down to making unclear choices. And what is a "kid"? 6-year old - kid. 17-year old, in a country where 16-year-olds are adults - different answer.

The abortion rant is similar; partial-birth abortion sounds to me like 99.9% murder (of an infant, no less), while a day-after contraceptive sounds like .25% murder. Our legal system has no sensible way to deal with these issues.

So I suggest we assess each action as it happens, and stop forcing it into a binary view.

~, not ==/!=

Re:Is this a good idea?

[Jim Starx]

Child porn doesn't operate with the same pay-site mentality that you're talking about. It's illigal, it's underground. People aren't molesting kids to make money from it, people are molesting kids cause they want to molest kids.

Eh... wha?

[Orne]

The difference is that the first two were targeted judicial actions brought on by a "vindictive" accuser. The "third", as you put it, is not a witch trial in any sense of the Salem trials or McCarthey trials. Noone's work has been blacklisted, no opinion made illegal, no person unduely arrested, much less executed as in Salem.

The Dixie Chicks still hold concerts. Half of the Senate are vocal opponents of the administration's policies on terrorism. Michael Moore still got his movie out, and he's won a few awards I hear. Speaking out against authority today is nothing like how it was in ages past.

It's one thing to learn from history, but it's another to realize what portion of history is fact and what is propaganda. It's best that we all learn perspective from the past, instead of blindly believing what we are told today ... I mean, hell, it's the anniversary of D-Day, when a whole lot more people died in one battle on one day than the most recent war in 4 months across a nation... perspective.

Look at this discussion...

[cribcage]

I think it's a sad and telling statement about our society that every poster in this thread who criticized this decision also felt compelled to include a disclaimer, "I do not support child pornography."

That fact is what makes actions like this insidious. You begin by pushing an issue that is so black-&-white, it's nearly indefensible. You begin by condemning something that absolutely no one wants to support. And you gain momentum.

crib

Re:Look at this discussion...

[malkavian]

One good argument.
Keeping it in the open.
As soon as you drive it underground, the people that REALLY want it will find a way to distribute it. Charge more for getting the 'goods' to the 'consumers' and it becomes another string to the bow of organised crime.
Drugs. Prostitution. Alcohol in prohibition..
Think it got rid of the problem? Or did it simply make a lot of money for just the kind of people you really didn't want the laws to be making money for?
Whoever thinks that simply filtering child porn websites is a quick fix is smoking something strange, and hasn't thought about the effect it'll have (i.e. driving it underground, and the police being then less able to track potential paedophiles as other methods of distribution are found).

Knee-jerk Reactions

[NtroP]

What is child porn?

My mother has pictures of me as a young child taking a bath in her wash tub. She also has many pictures of my brothers and sisters and I swimming in the local watering hole. We're all starkers. They're all in her old photo albums - she even used some of them as part of a collage at my HS grauation party as part of a "roast the grad" display. Is my mother a child pornographer? What if one of the guests looked at it a little too long? Obviously that makes them a pedophile and they should be locked away.

My brother just e-mailed me a picture of my niece playing in her wading pool - topless! What about pictures of my wife on the beach (in her bathing suit) with someone else's topless child in the background? Is that kiddy porn? My local hospital has a large full-color poster of about a dozen toddlers, lined up "cheek-to-cheek", with some sort of cute saying on it? KP? Why not? Are the toddlers too young?

What about a picture of a 12 year old girl in her underwear? That can't ever be right! Except in the Sears catalog. But only pedophiles read that section right? Is Sears contributing to the lust of pedophiles? Boycot them!

What about that Discovery Channel show about growing up and aging where they line up 100 people from infant to 100 years old, one for every age, all naked?

The argument for pornography, and by extension, kiddy porn, is "I'll know it when I see it". The problem with that argument is that what is one person's porn is another person's art (or research, or marketing, or memories, etc). Another problem with "kiddy porn" is that the subject is SO taboo and SO reprehensible that there is an instant knee-jerk reaction to it without any rational thought.

Even my questioning the "status-quo" like this will invariably brand me as a pedophile. This makes about as much sense as my being branded a terrorist because I question the effectiveness of "security measures" that substantially inconvenience me and terribly embarrased my 14 year old daughter who was "caught" wearing an underwire bra on our trip to Europe and had to be "felt-up" by "the lady", in front of everyone.

The cry is: "It's for security!"or "It's for the Children!". Well, security is good - if not taken to mindless extremes, and protecting children is also good. But are we really about protecting the children? If so, why is is so easy for people to find KP online but so hard for the police to find it and shut it down? And, as another poster pointed out, what about totaly computer generated or hand-drawn material? What happens when "no children were harmed in the making of this film?".

Yeah, I know, "the material will fuel the lusts of the demented pedophile" and he will therefore be forced to hunt down neighborhood kids. Just like my neighbor downloading pictures from alt.sex.bdsm.* will force him to become a sadistice rapist, or like playing GTA will force the my son to steal cars and run down pedestrians or, God forbid, the next time I see a cross-post of bestiality, I'm going to just have to take out after my poor dog.

OK, I'll admit that I'm stretching the connections a bit. But it seems to me that trying to censor the end-user is not the solution. While it MAY help those who use Internet Exploder from being "accidentally" exposed to KP when their computer get hijacked and bombarded with pop-ups, shouldn't the effort be focussed on finding the people who are actually exploiting these poor children? And don't tell me that viewing a cross-post on Usenet is "contributing to the exploitation". I didn't ask for it, I didn't pay for it, and I'm sure as hell not gonna act on it.

In my personal opinion, people who get sexually excited by looking at pre-pubescent children have a phlychological problem, just like people who look at a pony and get that "special feeling". But, and I'm going out on a limb here, I'd be willing to bet that, of those who don't just view ALL pornography as wrong, a vast majority prefer to look at younger,

It's called WEDGE POLITICS.

[Anonymous Coward]

You force your opponents to take an unpopular stance. Just as "Give Sen.Corruptus Money And Power In Order To Save The Children" is becoming tired and cliched, "Give Sen.Corruptus Money And Power To Save Us From Nukulor Terrism" is on the wane, but "Give Sen.Corruptus Money And Power To Save Us From The Pedophile Menace" is a fresh and new scam. You won't give Sen.Corruptus money and power? How dare you support pedophillia!

Forget that most sexually molested kids are interfered with by their relatives or even their parents, the thing that people fear the most is evil strangers, hiding in the bushes in children's playgrounds, "grooming" children on the internet, jerking off to strangers' baby photos. The press have whipped the public into an absolute hysteria over the Evil Pedophile Menace, and it's fertile political capital for anything you want to do.

The first thing any opponent of yours has to do is concede that Pedophiles Are Evil Agents Of Satan, which is basically agreeing with 99% of whatever you propose to do. If he doesn't, then He Is Siding With Those Evil Monsters. His hands are completely tied. All he can propose is something even stronger and accept your position even more than you do. Of course, your proposal will do fuck all to save anyone, let alone the children, from the pedophiles. It's all a ruse to get money and power. But if anyone dares suggest that, They Are In League With The Sick Pedo Beasts.

Definition of Kiddy Porn

[KrisHolland]

As well what is the definition of 'kiddy porn'. Is simple naked children, i.e. nudist web pages, kiddy porn? In many places that *is* becoming the standard: take a picture of your children bathing and you goto jail.

Is this painting the next to be blocked? This one or perhaps this?

Perhaps spamming such art around would desensitize people to the hysteria that has developed over the past 20 years surrounding this topic.