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David Cameron 'Orders New Curbs On Internet Porn'
First time accepted submitter fustakrakich writes with news reported in The Telegraph of new anti-pornography regulations ordered by UK Prime Minister David Cameron: "The new measures will mean that in future anyone buying a new computer or signing up with a new internet service provider (ISP) will be asked, when they log on for the first time, whether they have children. If the answer is "yes", the parent will be taken through the process of installing anti-pornography filters, as well as a series of questions on how stringent they wish the restrictions to be, according to a newspaper."
I'm afraid that your first sexual experiences will have to be with a trusted friend, family member, or respected community authority figure, rather than the internet...
Finally, internet pornography will be thwarted, and David Cameron will go down in history.
Gently reply
I doub't it would have much effect. You cannot stop human nature. Besides the view that sex is "bad, dirty, evil..ect", I'm going to throw a broad sweeping generalization that most men in a household take care of the tech stuff anyways, and will answer the question with a "no" and go on about their business, or answer "yes" and set the limits to off.
"No, I don't have any kids."
At least until it becomes illegal to answer untruthfully.
I don't mind this - I think a lot of people who buy computers are not particularly, shall we say, well versed in protecting themselves. If this could also be bundled with some firm general advice it might help. One of my kids, visiting their grandparents, managed to conjure up some pretty sordid images of bestiality in no time by just googling one of her hobbies, horse riding. It was a bit of a shock for all concerned. No harm done, as far as I can tell (I wasn't there). I am however fairly sure her grandparents would have preferred that this had not happened and were able to take steps to prevent it from happening. At the moment, a lot of people are exposed to the internet in it's raw form and this isn't necessarily something that is healthy - giving people the choice of restricting their browsing freedom might be welcomed.
I really really hope my kids rather watch porn than all the violent entertainment which for whatever twisted reason seems to be OK accoriding to society.
I simply don't undertand how consentual sex could possibly do more harm than violence.
The best advice about porn that I got as an adolescent was really simple: Watch all the porn you want, don't just confuse it with real life. (99% of all porn is rather unrealistic fantasy, after all.)
.: Max Romantschuk
I'm actually surprised that it just asks for kids. Given their established record I would have thought the question should really be "Do you have any kids or MPs in the house?".
A brilliant move to improve public computer education in the UK. Now kids will have incentive to learn networking, system administration, and generally how the internet works in order to defeat the feature. A much better, practical lesson, than they'd ever get in formal classroom training - and it's free to the governemnt.
And normally, you'd be able to ask the nerdy Linux kid to fix your computer for you, but what interest would they have in porn?
The trouble is, if you opt out for an unfiltered connection, you will be labeled as a pedophile, and if you do have children in the house, the government (whatever their version of the department of child welfare is called) will remove them. </sarcasm>
What will actually happen is that the adults will be told to fetch the kids and then be told to go away. The kids will then be asked if they want parential controls, i.e. stuff to stop the parents logging on to dodgy malware-infected sites etc.
...went to the seashore at Southampton and commanded the tide to stop coming in.
Linux is a tool for child porn! Ban it!
Barring that, it would be just loads of fun. In a world where I can't even buy an airline ticket without having to fire up IE and the so-called "support" of pretty much all companies get throughly confused when I say I don't have Windows, It'd be great to say "sure, take me through the legally required steps of securing my computer against evil, evil porn. By the way, I use OpenBSD. Go."
As other comments point out, the story really comes from the Daily Mail, a right-wing total rag of a tabloid. It's typically more accurate than the Weekly World News, but it's not the Times or The Register.
So yes, if they were to literally implement the Daily Fail's description of how service will work, that means that any computer system, operating system or browser you get in the UK would have to have modifications to ask The Kids Question when you install it, and every Internet provider would have to redirect connections for Port 80 to the filter sign-up sheet (because Teh Internet is the same thing as Teh Webz, innit?) Wot's that about links in some arch?
Assuming David Cameron isn't quite is ignorant as the Daily Fail wants him to be, that's probably not something he'll actually propose. (If this were Australia, the answer would be different, because the pro-censorship politicians there really do appear to be that dumb.) Much more likely, if they do anything like it at all, they'll make ISPs offer censorware and/or have filtering set on by default, but filtering at the ISP level is really expensive and the ISPs will push back.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
What you mean is that all families should be forced to be atheist, because you're an atheist. That would, after all, be the effect of banning exposure of religion to children, and your goal is clearly to make more atheists. You are advocating an end to freedom of thought -- forcing your personal beliefs on everyone.
It really is amazing how many internet-atheists (not to be confused with the majority of quite reasonable atheists) are exactly as bad in the exact same ways as the religious people they hate so much.
With a UID as low as 137 I would not rule out old age.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold