UK Bill Again Demands Web Pornography Ban
nk497 writes "A new bill presented to the House of Lords demands both ISPs and device makers filter adult content. The Online Safety Bill, raised in the Lords by Baroness Howe of Ildicote, asks for ISPs and mobile operators to 'provide a service that excludes pornographic images' and for device makers to include ways to filter content at the point of purchase. The Bill follows efforts by one MP to make users "opt in" to access pornography, and comes despite ISPs already agreeing to offer all customers parental control software. However, as a Private Members Bill, it doesn't have the backing of the Government, so is less likely to actually be passed."
Seriously, I can't understand you US and UK people. Pornography is nice. It's one of the basic human instincts. Why do you want to deny it? Are you jealous when other people look sexier than you? Still, I can bet that 99.99% of you wank. And did so as teen too. Stop being so fucking jealous.
That woman is actually stupid enough to believe that a single country can stop porn on the net.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The political cycle
10 introduce bill that screws over the people, sponsored by either the fundamental right or a corporation
20 society tries to rally and shoot it down
30 if people are down trodden enough pass bill; break, else throw out bill
40 sleep 5 years
50 goto 10 with same bill
Politics and corporations are moving at a glacial pace compared to society, it's getting stupid.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Nearly all ISP's in the UK have a service which allows the customer's Internet connection to be set to "off." When the "off" setting is activated, all pornographic Internet content can no longer be accessed. This technology is cutting edge — no other filtering is 100% effective.
Asking the ISPs to OFFER THE CHOICE of a feed filtered for adult content, GOOD. ....
However the danger Australia showed with this is, once politicians get this, they get carried away and start making blocking of websites mandatory (the usual terror/kiddies claims), which then becomes a list that grows and grows and starts including proxies and sites discussing how to use a proxy and and and
Already the UK block list had Wikipedia listed on it, (the Scorpions album cover features a topless girl, as if that was somehow porm) so they're already way down the route of state control of what you can read on the net.
IMHO, having seen what happened in Australia, its better not to go down this route.
It's called "change the channel" or "disable connections to the primary Internet."
Seriously -- if the government or some other organization wants to create a walled playground for their own fun and games, then by all means do so. Lots of organizations run networks of interconnected computers spread out geographically around the world. Some of them even keep their network separate from other people's networks, with the most security-conscious even using air gaps and other barriers. The most famous of these networks is The Internet. But it's not the only network out there that can host and serve content.
Thankfully if you RTFA it looks like this is just the ranting of someone in the House of Lords, and it appears that those with a pint of good sense over in the Government are quite opposed to this whole idea, with the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport saying that "self-regulation...can be more effective than a regulatory approach in delivering flexible solutions that work for both industry and consumers.”
coding is life
Offer a 1£ a month internet plan with a firewall that drops every incoming packet, since it is the only theoretical and practical way to prevent the user from getting any porn (breaking encryption and steganography for each possible algorithm for incoming traffic is theoretically impossible and practically next to impossible). So this is what the law says must be done.
just remember to offer users a trial period so they cannot claim they are unsatisfied with the service after subscribing.
Warning IANAL and I don't live in that fascist place (I am in another one)
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
It's rather ironic, a Private Member trying to ban private members.
Anyone trying to put a bill through like this should be able to answer this question first. Preferably in essay form, and then present something comparable to a thesis defense.
Every single time I see one of these stupid bills the first thing that comes to mind is 'won't work.
You can set up the most intelligent, crazy whitelist type system in the world, then it'll get thwarted by someone sending an email, or someone posting something on a forum. And that's assuming that the blocking itself works (hint: it doesn't).
There are too many sites on the internet, there is too much of a wide definition of what is porn or not, and if you block agenericpornsite (blacklist), then someone will come up with anothergenericpornsite - and your filter is useless. The fact that you can get domain names pretty cheaply doesn't help either.
While we're here I'd like a system which excludes all malware please. K thnx.
Since no one seems to agree to a simple, easily understandable definition of what pornography actually is, and software have yet to be able to recognize images with a 100% success rate... well, I guess the only sure way to filter out all the pornographic images is to suppress all the images on the various websites the user requests. Or mandate the use of a text based browser such as Lynx.
Next up; a bill to stop all the pornographic stories and words out there on the evil, evil interwebs...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
That's the good thing about living in a democracy . . . stop whining and get out in the next election and vote for somebody else, instead!
Now, when, is the next election for the House of Lords . . . ?
Oh, hmmm . . . well, how do you get rid of a member of the House of Lords? Can they be expelled by the Queen, or something like that?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Web p0rn? Is this what they are talking about? http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=992&bih=773&q=spiderweb&gbv=2&oq=spiderweb&aq=f&aqi=g1g-s3g1g-s2g3&aql=&gs_l=img.3..0j0i10l3j0j0i10l2j0l3.9070l11052l0l11211l9l9l0l2l2l0l83l423l7l7l0.llsin. Disgusting stuff, I say ban it right away.
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
Sorry Baroness Ho' but rule 34 guarantees that you cannot do this unless you block all internet traffic.
If they hadn't banned the use of .xxx domains then maybe by now most of the port sites would have switched over and used those domain names and browsers could have a parental section that would stop children from loading .xxx addresses... It's THAT simple... but banning porn altogether, it's a pipedream of an idiot...
Are they still a bunch of old scared white men with broomsticks up their asses? And how are the plans going to change all that?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
The Baroness Howl of Idiote obviously is a woman, although it probably is a good guess that she's old, white, and probably also with the scared and the broomstick thing
I would propose to block the "jarretiere" keyword on Internet .... and see what royalists think of this proposition ;-)
What is unsafe about seeing pornography?!
...thou doth protest too much.
From the article: "It also seeks to force device manufacturers to provide customers with a way to filter adult content "from an internet service at the time the device is purchased". That would apply to any devices that can connect to the internet."
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; the people that write these things must have been living in a cave for the last 30 years to have such a limited understanding of technology.
Would this mean that hardware is effectively illegal (as such a requirement would be practically impossible to meet)? Would this apply to manufacturers of ethernet/wifi components or just to companies that assemble complete, internet-accessing computers?
cultured, aren't they?
Don't use it.
Parental control software is utterly useless, the vast majority of kids know a lot more about computers than their parents and have no trouble bypassing a parental control system that is purely software based... It's a classic case of client side security.
If you want something like that to be even remotely effective, it has to run at a layer further up the network that the kids have no access to.
That said, porn and sex are a fact of life.
Your kids will encounter them at some point wether you like it or not... When they're really young they wont be interested in it, and when they get older they will actively seek it out.
To a kid, if a subject is forbidden then its automatically more interesting... The more you try to prevent them seeing porn, they more they will look for it, and this is nothing new.
When i was a kid, internet access was very rare and porn on computers was pixelated and dithered.. So we acquired porn from magazines and on vhs tapes.
And something else important to consider, if you try to prevent your kids from learning about such things as porn, then they will just get introduced to it by other kids at school instead... Surely better for you to educate them in a controlled environment, so they are prepared for what they will encounter when they venture out into an environment that you don't control.
If you wrap them in cotton wool and shield them from any thoughts or violence, sex, bad language etc, then they will be completely unprepared when they encounter such things form other kids at school, and will have far more interest in them because its new to them and forbidden at home.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Reading the provisions in the bill its not so much a ban on porn but rather restricting access to it unless the primary subscriber has expressed a desire to see it and can prove that they are 18 or over.
All of the mobile (cell) providers in the UK already operate a similar system for Internet access over their networks. The ISPs will introduce a similar system if they feel that their consumers want it.
If the subscriber opts in though anyone in the household will be able to get all of the porn that they want so its pretty much a fig leaf exercise for the Daily Mail readers.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Expect a sudden rise in crimes of sexual nature soon after this bill becomes law. Its not like they could predict this sort of thing happening they're politicians, people who are incompetent in every area imaginable but with strong opinions about everything.
Most of the time people who seek to be in position of power are exactly those that should never be allowed to do so. It happens everywhere: in politics, work environments and summer camps.
Without interfering in my masturbation?
Bill demands service from ISP which could be chosen or rejected by users. Users will still have this wonderful opportunity to see humans degrade themselves on camera for money.
So, no, "UK Bill DOES NOT Demand Web Pornography Ban"
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
My poor brothers across the pond. I can only imagine your pain. Blue and swollen pain.
Some commenters here posting about when they were a kid, they'd read dirty magazines with photos and VHS tapes but the Internet today is unfiltered. Kids can easily stumble upon shock sites and sites which primarily host death material. The mags and VHS tapes were filtered before they went on the shelves so no, times are different and different policies must be employed.
A good way, is if you have kids, you have a white list. Plain and simple. Of course you can't stop them looking at material their friends houses but at least it prevents some trauma they may not get from some material found on the Internet. The best case scenario is having ISP's have a default white list if the family has kids and the parents get a password in their broadband package that they put in for unfiltered access. This is because most parents don't know how to filter or install safe guards (some parents don't care) but its important there are some limits on what kids can see, unless you honestly think a 8 year old won't be traumatised by some material found on the Internet like real deaths as mentioned before.
Wouldn't you think of the children? Those very children, whose future you are selling out by putting all of your current and past expenses on their tab?
Wouldn't you think of the children, those very children that you are leaving with all these hatred around the world because of all the illegal and immoral wars that are you sending children into?
Wouldn't you think of the children, the same children that have no sound economy to look forward to, because you have chased away all of the savings and investment capital and all of the manufacturing and production out of your countries, because you just have to buy everything you, including the biggest governments can with fake money?
Wouldn't you think of those children, whose freedoms you are stealing by creating all these laws that ensure that the children basically end up leaving in prison like conditions, strip searched at every point, fined, jailed, regulated, taxed, etc.?
Wouldn't you think of the children, same ones that will have no knowledge or real education but huge debts, because you are lying to them that they need all that government education while putting them on the government guaranteed (and thus seemingly endless) loan needle?
Wouldn't you think of the children, who won't be able to run their own businesses due to all of the protections you are giving to your preferred monopolies, all of the regulations, laws, taxes, licenses, bail outs, stimulus, etc.etc., everything you do, when you prop up failing corporations you like so much and ensure that nobody can compete with them?
But at least you are making sure that the children don't see those 'offending' pornography images and videos. Of-course that's just a pretence that you are running in order to secure some form of total control over the information on the Internet, the only real outlet of actual data that those very children can use to learn something useful about the world around them.
You can't handle the truth.
... especially in the House of Lords mean nothing. They are individual bills introduced by members to usually provoke conversation versus any real intention of becoming law. They get debated and discussed and almost always get struck down. It is a customary process that allows the UK to consider and discuss things that would not be discussed by normal routes. So even mentioning (and mis-characterising it) is just to just sensationalise something that shouldn't be. The fact that the UK Government is actually considering unwarranted surveillance of the Internet in the UK is far more "dangerous" because of the way they are introducing it, via the Queen's Speech, which means it is setting out what the Government supports and actually plans to do over the next 12 months. Usually what is in the Queen's Speech gets banged into Law one way or another.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
35% to 60% of the subscribers that surf the internet would vanish in a week (maybe more) they would cancel their ISP accounts, and sell their computers or use them for strictly offline use, (computers do have a purpose other than surfing the internet)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
For anyone unfamiliar with UK politics, it's a Private Member Bill, which means some random Lord came up with the idea, not the government as a whole. It has no chance in hell of being passed.
Are wrong unless you are buying something.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Porn definitely should not be used as sex ed. The fact that porn was your only source of sex ed shows a huge failure on the part of your parents, your school, and your culture. But anyway I'd be willing to bet that the banning of porn would just happen to catch valid sex ed information, too.
Has anyone here ever seen porn without opting in? Even back in the days when porn rules were a lot more lax on the internet, I never once accidentally viewed porn. It's always on a site that I know has the potential to have porn, or I have to actively seek it out. And I've been on computers since the BBS days. The closest thing I can come up with is when goatse was new and a friend told me to check it out; But even then, it was my choice to go to a website with no prior knowledge of what it was about, I knew it could potentially be porn.
My kids have unfiltered/unlimited internet access and have never accidentally looked at porn. This whole idea of "ensuring people opt-in" stems from people getting viruses from porn sites, or porn in their history and then lying by saying they accidentally stumbled upon the porn site. Nowdays, pretty much every porn site requites you to click/check that you are 18+. Why wouldn't they? People under 18 don't pay for porn or anything the porn sites are advertising; those people don't make them any money. There isn't some secret conspiracy to shove porn into children's faces for no reason.
and on and on
So I guess they want to spend taxpayers money and have the private sector do that to, as well as establish censorship, only to promote anything related to sex within the black market in real life .
I find it quite amazing that these kids watch so much porn, yet all they ever see is the condom-less, silicone, shaved pubes type. I also love how it smoothly connects teens viewing porn and the sexualisation of children - which are really two very different things - in the reader's mind.
I had trouble accepting this for Egypt, but for UK it's pretty much impossible.
WHY is it that these morons can't seem to get it through their thick heads that what they're asking to do is not technically feasible??!? You don't like porn? Then don't look at it, morons!!!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
wanting judges in frizzy wigs and pleated muu muus to rule against British subjects who see their Lords in porn online.
Back in my day, Internet connections were so slow you would lose your erection between loading images. I was lucky enough to have a stash of my dad's old playboys and victoria's secret catalogs I had collected over the years. Those less fortunate than I had to wank to sears catalogs, canoe boxes, and pictures of their second cousin in a bikini.
Go fuck yourself you prude bitch.
I bet you like to take it up the ass from your black gardener.
This is not meant as a "we're better than you are" comment, because America is not better than the UK. Certainly not anymore.
But enshrining aristocratic fops in the House of Lords makes me gakh! Isn't it time for Britain to cast off such bizarre anachronisms like the aristocracy and monarchy?
Shedding such things is one good thing America did do. Yes, the Jamie Dimons and Lloyd Blankfeins and their 1% ilk are trying to fashion themselves into functionally the same thing as an aristocracy, which we will shortly deal with, but we do have a history of deposing them.
I dunno, watching an otherwise modern country like Britain wear the trappings of a monarchic past is like encountering a sysadmin that communicates with the rest of the company via paper memo typed on a typewriter.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Porn definitely should not be used as sex ed. The fact that porn was your only source of sex ed shows a huge failure on the part of your parents, your school, and your culture.
It's a failure of sex-ed materials is what it is. If nobody is seeking them out on their own, they must not be very good. It's not like there's no interest.
Don't you understand the control system now? Just like Religion, Politics, and TV (of which porn is a branch of) it's all about controlling you and your perception of what is 'right and wrong' in this reality we call life.
Funny how so many people have been brainwashed what to think by the controlling of the above.
...but maybe it'd just be easier to ban having sex with females.
THEY HAVE COOTIES!
Heh-heh, you said "private members"! Oh, and BTW, your post is now banned in the UK. :)
Here is the official UK government portal to e-mail Lady Howe of Idlicote. If you live in the UK, then I urge you to write to her with your opinions:
www.writetothem.com
Communist nuns in charge. UK is the new little China.
I disagree. People don't think they need them; they think they learned it all from porn, or they think the advice they got from a friend is true. I have met adults in the US that honestly believe that if you "wash out" a vagina in a shower after sex you won't get pregnant.
"UK Bill Again Demands Internet Ban"
FTFY