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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."

22 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. What is wrong with pornography? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Interesting

      To be fair to the US and UK people, most of them probably don't want this bill to pass either and every other country in the world has prude powermaniacs in political office as well. You just read more about it because both countries speak the same language as this website.

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    2. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by Avoiderman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not all Uk people. Certainly a wanker here :)

      I really don't think is is even the majority in UK - cdertainly not the majority that I speak with. But it does appear to be a repeated obsession with a small but influential group of (mostly) chrisitan influential groups.

      My interpretation is that Christianity never really made its peace with sexuality, like more natural religions, from the strange inheretence path of the greek cult of virginity into what was originally a Jewish sect.

      I also believe strongly that those argueing for censorship here are missing the real dangers. The internet is public space and should be treated as such. If you are not yet ready to allow your child alone in public space and talking to strangers, don't let them access the internet alone and unmonitored. There are actually worse dangers for children than finding images on the internet, such as predatory grooming, that no amount of filtering will prevent.

    3. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We had some fairly good posts on this in the 'Egypt pornography ban' story earlier today. The general consensus (I think) is that it is a threat to the kind of compulsory, loveless marriages that are common accomplices to conservative values. It's not anyone's fault; merely an unfortunate equilibrium that built up over time. Personally, I'm still waiting for the complementary ban on Harlequin Romance novels.

      ...and sarcastically: escapism is clearly an unacceptable coping mechanism for a bad relationship that you're duty-bound to maintain by a bundle of two-thousand-year-old fairy tales and comic books.

      Conversely, have you seen some of the absurdities they get up to in hardcore porn these days? Catering to private fantasies is one thing, but the amount of violence contaminating the general pool of smut at this point is pretty unsettling. It's enough to make me think that a concerted effort to reduce violence in the media might help clean up how sexuality is perceived by the people currently trying to oppress it.

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    4. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by FrootLoops · · Score: 5, Informative

      You do know this is OPTIONAL right?

      Actually, no. The summary should have been clearer, but from the bill itself,

      ... they must ensure this service excludes pornographic images unless all the conditions of subsection (3) have been fulfilled.

      (3) The conditions are—
              (a) the subscriber opts-in to subscribe to a service that includes pornographic images;
              (b) the subscriber is aged 18 or over; and
              (c) the provider of the service has an age verification policy which has been used to confirm that the subscriber is aged 18 or over.

      From (3a), the filtering is on by default and requires an opt-in to disable it, along with age verification.

    5. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by rainmouse · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My interpretation is that Christianity never really made its peace with sexuality, like more natural religions, from the strange inheretence path of the greek cult of virginity into what was originally a Jewish sect.

      There are many scaremongering documentaries and news articles being spewed out about the dangers of porn to teenagers such as this. While I cant argue if there is truth to their claims or not, the real issue seems to be a lack of sex education at school, I certainly don't remember any. Perhaps there is something to your theory about religion, over the years, continually interfering with this process.

    6. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by santosh.k83 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We had some fairly good posts on this in the 'Egypt pornography ban' story earlier today. The general consensus (I think) is that it is a threat to the kind of compulsory, loveless marriages that are common accomplices to conservative values. It's not anyone's fault; merely an unfortunate equilibrium that built up over time. Personally, I'm still waiting for the complementary ban on Harlequin Romance novels.

      ...and sarcastically: escapism is clearly an unacceptable coping mechanism for a bad relationship that you're duty-bound to maintain by a bundle of two-thousand-year-old fairy tales and comic books.

      Conversely, have you seen some of the absurdities they get up to in hardcore porn these days? Catering to private fantasies is one thing, but the amount of violence contaminating the general pool of smut at this point is pretty unsettling. It's enough to make me think that a concerted effort to reduce violence in the media might help clean up how sexuality is perceived by the people currently trying to oppress it.

      Huh. Love has been hyped up far more than it is in reality. There's a vast gulf between marriages were the couple aren't romantically set on fire by each other (but which work very well nonetheless) and abusive and destructive relationships. It takes all kinds to make this world apparently. I think both rigidly orthodox, conservative societies (which tend to produce insecure, reactionary people as this House member being discussed) and amoral libertarians represent two extremes of the spectrum, and a middle-ground of a healthy society exemplified by "all for one and one for all" is the ideal we should aim for.

      Like every other Internet user, having been exposed to all kinds of pornography, I'm now heartily sick of it and realise one ounce of a real relationship (no matter how imperfect it may be, as long as mutual respect is present) is worth tons of worthless fantasy. "Make love, not war" is excellent, but it's sad how it has been slowly transformed into "Make sex, not love."

    7. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would argue that there's an awful lot more evidence that exposing children to religion is much more dangerous than exposing them to pornography. So, why isn't anyone trying to pass a bill to ban religion?

    8. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Does their inclusion in Italian goverment negate the posibility of other politicians in the same government being prude powermaniacs?

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    9. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by Evtim · · Score: 4, Interesting

      US and UK are mostly protestant, right? So is the Netherlands. Do I need say more...it's about culture, no so much about religion. Though I certainly think that from all popular religions Christianity has it very wrong when it comes to sexuality....

    10. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by Kjella · · Score: 5, Informative

      Conversely, have you seen some of the absurdities they get up to in hardcore porn these days? Catering to private fantasies is one thing, but the amount of violence contaminating the general pool of smut at this point is pretty unsettling.

      Yes and no, the market for porn is getting completely saturated. If you just want amateur porn there's tons on xHamster and RedTube and PornHub. If you want professional porn then HD only made the porn skanks go away, there's plenty girls that look stunning in 1080p. For $10/month you can get 100-200 GB of new "mainstream" porn in 30 categories each month at Brazzers (not affiliated, just to take an example). If you just want to download there's enormous siterips with more porn than you could ever get around to watching. If you're not adding anything unique to the pool, then your standard porn flick adds about 0.02$ of value.

      Because of that, sites specialize. If you want just erotic pictures go to Met-Art. If you want porn but still stylish go to X-Art. If you want movie with a story get movies like Pirates,. Pirates II, The 8th Day and many more. If you have a fetish, there's probably a site dedicated to you, whether it's redheads or girls with glasses or interracial or midgets or bukkake, hell there's probably one for redhead midgets with glasses doing interracial bukkake too. Obviously somebody is going to try out just how far you can take pain/violence/BDSM too, but it's not going mainstream. They just have to make it more extreme to provide something new, like giving an addict an even stronger drug to get a new kick.

      I suspect that in not that long these niches will start to saturate too, that yes we've now done pretty much everything imaginable while having sex and there's tons of videos out there already. Here in Norway some production companies did Norwegian porn for a few years when they lifted the ban like 2004-2008, today they're all shut down. Not because of legal or political reasons but simply because there's so much free porn the niche "Norwegian porn" no longer is a viable business. Not that I'm doing anything silly like predicting the death of the porn industry, but I think it'll be in decline for some time.

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    11. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by digitig · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not all Uk people. Certainly a wanker here :)

      I really don't think is is even the majority in UK - cdertainly not the majority that I speak with. But it does appear to be a repeated obsession with a small but influential group of (mostly) chrisitan influential groups.

      There's also a strong feminist element in the opposition to porn, and with Baroness Howe's background in the Equal Opportunities Commission I suspect that's where she's coming from. I can see the sense in that as far as some porn goes -- some does seem to carry a message of oppression and abuse of women. But most of the stuff I've seen just carries the message that some people enjoy sex with each other (ok, with perhaps a bit more interest in facials than I've experienced in real life, but that seems to be just so the camera has something to shoot). Have I been sheltered in the porn I've seen?

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    12. Re:What is wrong with pornography? by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Even in the UK, we thought that was just amusing.

      We don't quite have the liberal attitudes that Europeans do - we used to have a TV show that just showed foreign TV commercials so we could (amongst other things) gawp at the pretty Swedish ladies with their shirts off.

      The American attitude seems so schizo though - they'll sexualize everything to the hilt, but no further. Lots of cleavage and skin, even on very young ladies, but heaven forbid you reveal anything that everyone sees every morning in the mirror...

  2. Retarded by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Retarded by mapkinase · · Score: 4, Funny

      There is no BREAK in BASIC.

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  3. ISP's are already compliant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  4. Re:Inbreeding... Just say no. by kwark · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dude, it isn't about stopping porn on the internet, it is all about thinking of the children.

  5. Re:Inbreeding... Just say no. by stms · · Score: 5, Funny

    People looking at porn on the internet should not be thinking about children.

  6. My poor brothers by zippo01 · · Score: 4, Funny

    My poor brothers across the pond. I can only imagine your pain. Blue and swollen pain.

  7. Re:Inbreeding... Just say no. by radio4fan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Elspeth Rosamund Morton Howe (Baroness Howe of Idlicote in her own right and and Lady Howe of Aberavon because she's the wife of Baron Howe of Aberavon) is 80 years old.

    This might give everyone a clue as to why she's got no idea about the net, or about the wide acceptance of pornography in mainstream culture.

    Thankfully, this bill has no chance of passing, as there's no money in it for any of Cameron's cronies. Anyway, I can't think of a single bill from the last ten years that started in the House of Lords that became law, never mind one from a cross-bencher.

    BTW: she was created a baroness, and her husband was created a baron; they're not hereditary peers, and her father was the noted architect and writer Philip Morton Shand, so putting it down to inbreeding rather than her simply being out-of-touch, over-privileged and superannuated is maybe a bit harsh!

  8. Think of the children by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Best sex-ed by s0nicfreak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.