No Porn From Public WiFi Hotspots In the UK Proposed

whoever57 writes "Prime Minister David Cameron is proposing that porn should not be available through WiFi hotspots in public areas. Exactly how this will be implemented has not been identified, even to the extent of whether the ISP or the hotspot operator should implement the blocking. From the article: ' The Prime Minister said: “We are promoting good, clean, WiFi in local cafes and elsewhere to make sure that people have confidence in public WiFi systems so that they are not going to see things they shouldn’t.” His intervention comes after a long-running campaign from children’s charities to ensure a blanket ban on unacceptable sites on public WiFi networks.'"

Comments

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[John Allsup]

The what happens is that people move their porn to Linux, take a file like, say 'manandwoman.mov' and do:

split -b 10M manandwoman.mov $HARMLESSFILE
for s in $HARMLESSFILE*; do
$ENCRYPT -password "${HARMLESSFILE}MrFlibble$HARMLESSFILE" $s -o $s.bin
done
# copy the files to multiple free cloud storage facilities and post links to friends, passing instructions for reassembly
# via other means (sneakernet?)
# do this for many innocent files too, so that if someone catches you, you may deduce how they did it before
# you do and realise that they have been cheating at the Game of Life, or else have supernatural powers.
# In case you need to buy yourself out of jail, present evidence in completion of a certain challenge.

OpenDNS

[troon]

Of course a complete block would be impossible. What's needed is something like OpenDNS. I use it for my home network, with (in)appropriate categories blocked. This means it's far less likely the kids will stumble across (in a few years' time, read "successfully search for") anything we'd rather they didn't see.

The router acts as a DNS forwarder for OpenDNS's servers, and it blocks outgoing port 53 requests from machines on the LAN. This stops anyone configuring their own DNS server to get around my block.

This is by no means infallible: a proxy, a DNS server not on port 53, an external online IP address lookup - all of these will get around it. My intent is to reduce the likelihood of inappropriate material making it onto the LAN.

Re:OpenDNS

[Cenan]

I'm pointing out that there is no problem to solve with this "solution". Apart from the "solution" being a false sense of security on the part of the parent at the very best, there are no benefits to this.

The child who wishes to see pornography (or other controversial content for that matter) will do so through other channels. The solution has already fostered an atmosphere where the child cannot tell this to the parent, because there is already a blanket ban on porn in the household. So as a parent implementing this kind of thing you have effectively cut yourself out of a very important part of your child's life and upbringing.

If the parent chose to talk to the child about these things, and many other things they are bound to run into out in the real world, the "solution" is not necessary. It is akin to the debate on drinking. You can either ban it and risk having you teenage girl featured on girls gone wild, or you can teach your kid to drink responsibly (because trust me, chances are high that they will drink) and significantly lower that risk.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

That's where the whole notion of sex/porn being "dirty" and "bad" comes from. Churches and mental illness.

It always comes up, this, in discussions about porn. Sex is normal and healthy. What could be wrong about looking at depictions of a couple engaging in this healthy, normal act.

And if that's what porn was about, I'd agree. But a great deal of porn is about transgressive acts, and nasty attitudes. Rape fantasies are common. The notion that "no means yes" is common. The notion that all women turn into sluts when you scratch the surface. Getting pleasure from spitting, slapping and insulting someone (or I guess from being subjected to that). And of course, body parts of abnormal size.

Most adults can tell the difference between fantasy and reality (although, possibly, fewer than you'd hope -- especially when there's the 'gonzo' genre that masquerades as amateur). But children find it more difficult. So we have boys growing up with these unpleasant ideas about what it's OK to do to women, and girls growing up with these harmful ideas of what society expects of them. (I'm talking about hetero porn, because that's what experience I have).

Sure, there *is* porn in which two people are mutually attracted and have mutually enjoyable, considerate sex. But it's not all that common, and consumers tend to shift up to something more interesting (i.e. more extreme and transgressive).

I don't know the answer. I'm opposed to censorship. But neither am I dumb enough to say that porn is harmless.