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

Does that include Women Porn?

[mozumder]

Like People Magazine and fashion sites?

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[Joce640k]

It'll be much simpler just to ban children from cafes.

They've got no business drinking coffee at their age anyway.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[Fluffeh]

Seriously, this belongs in the "clueless idiots want to control something they have no right to control..." basket.

Sometimes I think that the world has a chance of evolving in the right direction when insightful or intelligent laws are passed, but for each of those moments, I seem to have at least a dozen facepalm or forehead-table moments.

If a cafe owner finds that many of his/her customers are turning away to other cafes because there are too many folks holding coffee in one hand and their other hand is under the table - shouldn't it be up to them to install some sort of blocklist/filtering software? Why the fuck does it have to be a government mandated, nay regulated, nay again, state policed offence to NOT have this set up?

I am all for libertarianism, but with a touch of ethics and morals thrown in - I want people to be able to do whatever they want, and sincerly hopethat they will do the right thing - but if they choose to have effectively a red-light-district cafe, then they should be able to - hopefully ina red light district part of town. There MUST be some point where common sense kicks in with capitalism surely. You have a cafe, in the center of three primary schools, politely ask folks watching porn to move on as they are disrupting your normal business of soccer moms. Oh, you don't want a dingey establishment in the first place, okay, ask anyone watching risque content to move on if anyone notices. And if no-one does, who the fuck is it harming?

I really want to beat some common sense into idiot meddling politicians trying to force their public policies down the throats of others with a really big hard, solid, heavy stick - with nails in the end of it. There is a difference between making laws that prohibit unsafe buildings, or fire hazzards or man-eating-star-wars-type-desert-creatures and trying to ban anything that the politician doesn't want to admit to or show that he/her is doing in public from being an offence.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[drinkypoo]

I am all for libertarianism, but with a touch of ethics and morals thrown in

So, you're more liberal than anarchist? Welcome to the club. People think Liberal is a bad thing because people think Democrats are liberals, which couldn't be farther from the truth.

I really want to beat some common sense into idiot meddling politicians trying to force their public policies down the throats of others with a really big hard, solid, heavy stick - with nails in the end of it.

It's actually worse than that because most of these politicians aren't actually trying to get a law passed. They're just trying to look like they're trying to do something about a problem which concerns their constituents, in order to ensure reelection.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[jbeaupre]

I read Scientific American, Analog, Popular Science and a few others in bed before falling asleep. A pile of these magazines accumulates on the bookshelf next to my bed. I've taken to calling it my Nerd Porn.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[redwraith94]

That's a good point; how do you define what porn is? There are plenty of scantily clad women in photos all over the web. From a technical perspective, how do you ban a certain type of picture?... I guess when the DARPA robots with the AI neural nets are deployed (which haven't been built yet) they could actually take a stab at it. That would be too technically advanced for government. I find it more likely that they would just pay someone to watch people browsing the web, at least this way they can claim it makes more jobs...

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[Migraineman]

The ugly truth is anything can be porn. Are you shopping for shoes, or do you have a high heel fetish? Hard to tell simply because you have the Christian Louboutin website on your computer's display.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[Baki]

Or ban children alltogether. It could replace many other prohibitions with a single one.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[Yakasha]

I really want to beat some

You already said what I wanted to say, so I'll just take a quote out of context and giggle a bit.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[lgw]

You might find the phrase "classic liberal" handy.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the way all cafes currently work. Politicians are yet again proposing to solve a non-existent problem with mass surveillance and state censorship.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[SuricouRaven]

"They're just trying to look like they're trying to do something about a problem which concerns their constituents, in order to ensure reelection."

Then they are doing their job: Representing their constituents.

The problem isn't just with the politicians. It's also with the wider public, most of whome will happily throw their rights away to satisfy their pet cause (whatever that may be) while simutainously condemning all the other people who will happily throw their rights away for a different pet cause.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[Ian Alexander]

Is this even a thing? People jerking it in coffee shops? I've been using the Internet in public spaces all around the world for many years now and I've never ever seen it. If you don't have Internet access that's one thing but it would seem to me that if I was in that situation and I was that desperate I'd use a public access point to _download_ porn but not view it in the goddamn coffee shop. Obviously, the world is a large place and people do all sorts of strange things, but I'm hard-pressed to believe that this is actually common enough of a problem anywhere that there needs to be a response by ISP's or government or cafe owners or whatever to stop these dedicated cadres of cafe wankers from leaving unsanitary stains in coffeeshops across the country.

Re:Does that include Women Porn?

[drinkypoo]

"They're just trying to look like they're trying to do something about a problem which concerns their constituents, in order to ensure reelection."

Then they are doing their job: Representing their
constituents.

That's not their only job. It's also their job to do what is best for their constituents. They should still do their will, but they should also seek to educate them. Further, their constituents would actually like something done, but they are not trying to actually do anything. They are only trying to give the appearance of trying to do something, as I stated previously. This is not representing their constituents' interests.

Define pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Define it first you Socialist prick!

Re:Define pornography

[Bahamut_Omega]

Better to be a smart socialist libertarian, than a whiny tory maggot that wanks off to the biggest overpaid bankster.

Would this mean high finance porn (i.e. CEOs that happen to be celebrated for being overpaid and underperforming) could be put under the scope as well? I might say so, just to bring in some equality to the world.

Re:Define pornography

[tehcyder]

Define it first you Socialist prick!

Whatever kind of prick David Cameron is, it's not a socialist one, genius.

Re:Define pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to be a smart socialist libertarian, than a whiny tory maggot that wanks off to the biggest overpaid bankster.

But what people voting for the left are actually getting is socialist totalitarians wanking off to, and paying off, the biggest overpaid bankster, i.e. the worst of all worlds. We need to push all parties, left and right, to be more liberal and less corrupt.

Re:Define pornography

[StoneyMahoney]

I didn't think Cameron and Clegg were that easily confused.

Re:Define pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Further more here's what the socialist's are up to.

Re:Define pornography

[slim]

I'm not sure the Lib-Dems would claim to be socialists either.

I don't think there's a mainstream socialist party left in the UK -- although I still cling to the hope that Labour will swing back to the left one day.

Re:Define pornography

[eennaarbrak]

To an American, the UK is socialist end of story. I mean, we have stuff like universal medical care and welfare and stuff.

Re:Define pornography

[Pax681]

Define it first you Socialist prick!

David Cameron... a socialist? BWAHAHAHAHA! what planet do you live on?? that prick is slightly right of Atilla the Hun!

Re:Define pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

we have stuff like universal medical care

Not if fucking Webcameron had his way we wouldn't. He's already managed to privatise the NHS, which is something even Maggie wouldn't have dared try.

Re:Define pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but until they decide to start using their own language rather than piggy back on ours I think it's fair to remind them what words actually mean.

Re:Define pornography

[dkleinsc]

You Brits also have pensioners, instead of the "Let your mum die" plan advocated by one of the two major political parties in the US.

Re:Define pornography

[Pax681]

I'm not sure the Lib-Dems would claim to be socialists either.

I don't think there's a mainstream socialist party left in the UK -- although I still cling to the hope that Labour will swing back to the left one day.

the only main stream left of centre party in the 'UK' only serves the Scottish Electorate bud, it's the Scottish National Party who hold to the principles of free healthcare, free education, free care for the elderly, free prescriptions..yadda yadda yadda. The other parts of the UK, as you say are pretty well stuffed with the major jumps to the right labour has taken. i am pretty sure that Kier Hardy would not just be spinning but shouting "WTF?" in his grave at what is called the Labour party these days.
eennaarbrak in England you don't have much of a national health care system left at all, it's privatisation is pretty much done with ALL things now out to tender now.

Re:Define pornography

[Cwix]

Shit, here in flyover country many people would call that communism. Don't worry they will pray for you though.

Re:Define pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly National Socialist.

Re:Define pornography

[Fluffeh]

Holy shit, the US has universal medical care and welfare and stuff? Fuck me running, I think I must have had a blackout again. On the upside this is the best news for the US since... like slavery was abolished! No more insane medical bills, everyone gets the choice of adequate public heathcare and paying more for a fancy room and a three course meal. This is truly a day to rejoice and be merry! Oh, and you now have welfare available to all your citizens? Holy fuckerooney! That is truly amazing and exceptionally joyous news!

The dick in me says to vote +1 if you would like this to be the case, and -1 if you think that the US health system is perfectly fine and you don't need no commie state funded healthcare or welfare system.

Re:Define pornography

[N Monkey]

I didn't think Cameron and Clegg were that easily confused.

I know there's a joke in there somewhere..... :-)

Re:Define pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

... that prick is slightly right of Atilla the Hun!

Which is still on the left side of the American political spectrum. I assume the poster must have been from the US.

Re:Define pornography

[bill_mcgonigle]

Whatever kind of prick David Cameron is, it's not a socialist one, genius.

Going just by the context of this article, it sounds like the government is trying to take control of the public wifi service industry. Which is either pure socialism or economic fascism, depending on how it's implemented.

But Cameron is the guy who's a war hawk and servant to the central bankers, right? That would exclude pure socialism from the choices above.

Re:Define pornography

[slim]

The inaccurate "socialist prick" bit distracts from the other half of what you said.

It is notoriously difficult to define pornography or obscenity. "The explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual gratification" is clear enough, except that it's sometimes hard to be objective about the "purpose" of a given work.

There's a big grey area of work which some people would like to suppress on the grounds that it's pornography, but its creators would argue was art.
There's are also works which the creators intended as pornography, but which they claim is art anyway, in an effort to avoid suppression.
The grey area presents a problem of classification when making laws.

But, there's a huge amount of stuff that doesn't fall into the grey area. Work where the creator, the distributor, the consumer and the authorities are all happy to agree that the material is pornography. I don't see any problem with moves that make it easier to keep that stuff away from children. Of course, they'll find it eventually, but hopefully late enough that they'll have learned a bit of context.

Re:Define pornography

[91degrees]

Usually, this sort of thing is called "regulation". Pretty common really. Most countries have laws.

Re:Define pornography

[bill_mcgonigle]

Usually, this sort of thing is called "regulation". Pretty common really. Most countries have laws.

You're right - I got the gist wrong from the summary. They're definitely talking about controlling businesses, not running it themselves. That's economic fascism when it implements a preference ("so that they are not going to see things they shouldn't"). If it prevents crime, that's an exercise of police power. 'Regulation' can cover both and many other feedback mechanisms, so it's non-specific in this regard.

Re:Define pornography

[Yakasha]

BWAHAHAHAHA! what planet do you live on??

America you dip!

Sorry I can't get a proper hick accent here.

Re:Define pornography

[magarity]

Never mind defining porn, define "public". The wireless networks in cafes and shops are not for just anyone; it's for patrons of the business. One could parse that to not mean "public" for several definitions.

Re:Define pornography

[p00kiethebear]

I am an American and regardless of policy I have never once perceived the U.K. as socialist. I was raised being told that the U.K. was our powerful ally and friend in the fight against Nazis and Communists. Our country is pretty fucking big and diverse and I don't speak for all regions and people here but I would venture to say that my classmates also did not perceive the U.K. as being socialist. I wonder which Americans you've been talking to. I'd like to give them a piece of my mind but it would probably fall on deaf ears as my countrymen have proved over and over again that once they've made up their mind about something it can't be changed.

Re:Define pornography

[tehcyder]

To be fair, after the Second World War, Britain did become fairly socialist. We introduced the National Health Service, nationalised major industries like railways, coal and steel, had a progressive tax regime, provided council housing and benefits for those who were unemployed or sick, and so on.

Then the Wicked Witch came along and started dismantling anything socialist. As a result, Britain is now a great country to be a very wealthy banker in, just like it was before about 1914.

Re:Define pornography

[Hognoxious]

The socialist's what? His gerbils?

Re:Define pornography

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is either pure socialism or economic fascism, depending on how it's implemented.

Which is for joining two clauses into a sentence, not for starting one [1].

However, whether it's fascism or communism depends on what the intention is; to give wifi to everyone would be sosherlussum, to tell people what they can fi with their wi would be fascism.

[1] Unless it's a question.

Porn is bad and dirty

[loufoque]

You definitely shouldn't see it!
We, the British government, will protect you from this bane.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of the children!

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[lennier1]

I'm sure there's a joke about the catholic church somewhere in there.

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.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it just be easier to host an OpenVPN server at home, then subsequently routed through your paid for VPN and out via various exit points around the world?
How long before we get to vote these lunatics back out on their arses?
It's like we let them back in to see if they weren't batshit insane any more.
Turns out no.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Opportunist]

If you think of the children that much, you are a pedo.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[telchine]

We, the British government, will protect you from this bane.

The British Government can go suck my **** !

(just so long as they don't watch the recording over public wi-fi)

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Rufty]

Ban the "hacker tool" linux :-(

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could use a VPN

Re: Porn is bad and dirty

[Rhurazz12]

Yep, almost sad when you think about it.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[jawtheshark]

I'm more worried that there actually would be a recording....

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[slim]

What makes you think this kind of thing is just for Linux users.

Splitting and encrypting files is userland stuff that you can get done on pretty much any OS.

I like to use Linux, but it's not magic.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Coisiche]

Aye, the CCTV cameras are just being installed everywhere these days.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[GenieGenieGenie]

the catholic church

There, found it for you.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[rioki]

bash == Linux ... you know command line and stuff...

For real, I use Cygwin on Windows7 since it beats any tool specifically built for Win.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

I found one in my muffin this morning.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

That, or just use BTSync!

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you haven't used UWIN then (Or MSYS if completely unavoidable).

I use UWIN (With ksh93 and most of the libast stuff as builtins built with the Microsoft Compiler)

It works very well as a UNIX like environment but it doesn't integrate properly into the OS in the way that Powershell or even perl does.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Big Hairy Ian]

Surely this ridiculous ban is already covered by existing statutes why are we making more laws rather than enforcing the one we already have :(

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[ArcadeMan]

I would absolutely LOVE to see a politician use that line against another.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Opportunist]

He would have my vote instantly!

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[John Allsup]

Linux makes this example easy, and also more importantly, it puts in your face the lessons you need to learn to be able to construct such examples at will, varying according to whatever new restrictions lawmakers come up with. I'd have to install software onto anything else to make the above work, but linux out of the box I can just bring up a Terminal, type it in and it will work.

Most important thing about linux is the way it allows you to learn how things work.

Even though I use Linux a lot, I am still conditioned psychologically to expect Mac and Windows solutions to have GUIs and require lots of code. If I want to do small is beautiful, eventually I end up writing command line scripts and stuff on one of my Linux boxes. Seriously, it is easier to get a Debian image working in VirtualBox and do things there than to bother trying to sort things out on the Windows command line.

Re:Porn is bad and dirty

[Common Joe]

Ban Windows too. 7-Zip can easily achieve this too... either through a GUI or command line interface.

wtf, mate?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell does the UK government have against porn? This is the second time they've tried to ban it.

Re:wtf, mate?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

You can say that again. I thought the US was very anti-pornography, and if you believe anything Bill Maher says, Americans are more sensitive to that kind of thing than anybody. Yet other than child pornography, there hasn't been any significant effort to ban it from either private homes or public places. This, as well as the recent European parliament nearly banning all forms of pornography, hints to me that it may not be quite what it seems.

I probably shouldn't be surprised though. The US has this reputation as being one of the most racist countries in the world, yet all of the known race baiting groups in the US are relatively silent compared to those in Europe where neo-nazism is far more more common, apparently. They even have people who are openly neo-nazi in their parliament ffs.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/neo-nazis-and-right-wing-extremists-gaining-support-in-greece-a-894596.html

Re:wtf, mate?

[tehcyder]

What the hell does the UK government have against porn? This is the second time they've tried to ban it.

I think you'll find that a large proportion of the UK population would agree that porn in public is a bad thing. We still cover up "top shelf" magazines in newsagents so you can't see the boobs. It wasn't until the advent of widespread internet access that any sort of hardcore porn was legal here. (I assume they just gave up at that point).

Supporting porn is not a vote winner here.

Re:wtf, mate?

[stenvar]

Most Europeans only know about the US what is spoon-fed by their government-friendly media and their state-run education systems. And those governments love to tell their people how evil the US is because it allows them to advance their own extreme left and extreme right agendas. That's not a new phenomenon: monarchs and dictators have been telling Europeans how lucky they are not to be in America for nearly 200 years (just as millions of Europeans were voting with their feet).

Here's a quote from a famous German "politician":

I don't see much future for the Americans ... it's a decayed country. And they have their racial problem, and the problem of social inequalities ... my feelings against Americanism are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance ... How can one expect a State like that to hold together - a country where everything is built on the dollar?

It's scary to think that a large fraction of German politicians think and say pretty much the same thing today.

Re:wtf, mate?

[AK Marc]

In the US you don't hear about them because they aren't news worthy. Remember David Duke? A presidential candidate who was a leader in the KKK, and was later elected to a state legislature. Why be race baiting when the racists are open and holding public office? Racism is "illegal" but "Bob" is much more likely to get a job interview than "Shaniqua" is.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Lemming Mark]

I don't really agree with that in modern day Europe. The media companies don't toe the government line more than you'd expect in any country with a free press. There are often concerns about the closeness of ties between politicians and media but I think that's pretty common in Western countries. Moreover, in the UK the government itself makes a big deal of how important our relationship with the US is. Besides that, I'd argue that you're underestimating the reach of both the Internet and US culture generally. The Internet makes it easy to get access to a wide range of news sources, at least for those who are motivated to do it.

Probably more importantly, I'd guess that easily half the popular TV and most of the movies in Europe (and probably much of the world) comes from the US - there's a lot of information about US culture, self-image, even simple turns of phrase that continuously percolates into everyone's minds from this alone. People continually get (arguably idealised, since this is Hollywood) images of what the US stands for, what it's like to be American, etc. In terms of the vast entertainment industry, I'd argue that Europeans are routinely shown the same image of the US that Americans themselves receive.

Re:wtf, mate?

[DeBaas]

What the hell does the UK government have against porn? This is the second time they've tried to ban it.

They want to keep it all for themselves

Re:wtf, mate?

[TheRaven64]

There's a difference between being opposed to porn in public and being in favour of government-mandated censorship. No one has yet produced a porn filter that restricts access to all porn, but doesn't restrict access to anything else, so we'll either end up with a system that has false negatives and still allows porn through (in which case why bother) or has false positives and blocks things that should be completely acceptable (in which case it's very easy to abuse). Worse, this will likely end up with the same lack of accountability that the IWF ended up with, where the government didn't legislate the block list, they just threatened the ISPs with stricter legislation if they didn't 'voluntarily' comply, so you have a private organisation with no public oversight responsible for censoring almost every UK web connection.

And, as the other poster pointed out, there is a difference between a public hotspot and being in a public place.

Re:wtf, mate?

[jandersen]

I'm not sure they are against pornography; this is the sort of thing that comes out of listening to your voters. The thing is, many people are concerned about internet porn, perhaps especially conservative voters, and perhaps especially parents who don't want their children to find that sort of things too easily.

Personally, I'd say 'Screw the children' - except, that sounds a bit wrong, doesn't it? What I mean is, porn is one of the things I just can't be bothered with, and the less chance I have of stumbling over it the better, as far as I am concerned; porn is too much like that idiotic advert for "Cillit Bang": some screeching idiot in a cheap suit trying to sell an indefferent cleaning product.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I looked the IWF were a criminal organisation. They are downloading and viewing child porn in order to rate web sites. However good their intentions, this is against the law.

Or it used to be. Does anyone know if the IWF has any legal basis yet?

Re:wtf, mate?

[BasilBrush]

You can say that again. I thought the US was very anti-pornography, and if you believe anything Bill Maher says, Americans are more sensitive to that kind of thing than anybody. Yet other than child pornography, there hasn't been any significant effort to ban it from either private homes or public places. This, as well as the recent European parliament nearly banning all forms of pornography, hints to me that it may not be quite what it seems.

Oh, American people are far more sensitive to porn and even nudity than the vast majority of Europe. In Europe Britain is probably the most uptight, but even they are rather less so than Americans. The reason that bans are easier in Britain than America has nothing to do with their people's respective views on porn, and everything to do with their respective views on free speech.

Free speech being in the American constitution mans that calls for censorship nearly always fail. Britain (and the rest of Europe) doesn't have free speech as a right held up over virtually all others, but a right that's balanced with other rights.

As to Greece's neo-nazis - you often get right-wing extremists making gains when an economy is in the toilet. Don't think there's anything different about the USA, if your economy is ever as bad as Greece's, your right wing extremists will also be sabre rattling. Except it won't be sabres, it'll be guns and nooses, tar and feathers.

Re:wtf, mate?

[BasilBrush]

I'm not sure they are against pornography; this is the sort of thing that comes out of listening to your voters.

Sadly it's not about listening to voters, it's about listening to the Daily Mail. For sure the Daily Mail does reflect the view of some, and moulds the views of others. In the same way that Fox News does in the US. But with a circulation under 2 million, that's a small minority of voters.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the least biased is from my experience Al Jazeera even the BBC who are not too bad compared to most have things that they would never report on. (Unless it is after everyone has reported on it for ages.)

Re:wtf, mate?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Hollywood makes things a bit more dramatic than they actually are - be it positive or negative.

Re:wtf, mate?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I don't think you read the article I posted - the neo-nazi group mentioned has 18 seats in the EU parliament. People who are currently active and practicing members of neo-nazi groups are elected officials presently holding office.

I don't know David Duke, but I am familiar with Robert KKK Byrd, who was elected into the US senate.

Both of them, at the time of their political office, disassociated themselves with the KKK. I think both of them are dicks anyways, but at least they can claim that much, and there are only two of them.

Re:wtf, mate?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

From the article I linked, it's already guns and nooses in Greece. There's also a sizable skinhead problem in the UK. A rather wealthy neo-nazi was just tried for something in sweden, don't remember what though, but he still has a lot of loyal followers there. And there are 18 practicing neo-nazi's in the EU parlaiment.

In the US, outspoken racists are rare. It's borderline impossible for outspoken racists to even find a good paying job here, and they don't last long at even the most right wing universities.

Re:wtf, mate?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

The US still has laws that ban certain types of pornography that they call obscene material, and there is even a supreme court case which provides a litmus test for upholding that ban. Nobody has enforced that in recent times though. 40 years ago you couldn't have a man and a woman lying in the same bed on terrestrial television, they were required to have at least one foot on the ground, and words that could even in some way even remotely hint at sex, like the word pregnant of all things, were outlawed. Elves Presly's wild dances were seen as sexually suggestive. In the early 1900's, most places had ordinances that forbade women from wearing anything smaller than a t-shirt (bikini's were right out.)

I things have changed quite a bit since then. Adultery among politicians is still taboo here where it isn't in Europe, but other than that there isn't any large scale effort to remove sexual references from the public eye in the media, whereas there is in Europe apparently. I think that particular taboo is on its way out though. We've already had a few politicians repeatedly get re-elected after admitting to having sex with a minor (see Bawny Fwank.)

Re:wtf, mate?

[rioki]

Fun fact: In France there is no such thing as a search warrant. The Police can search you if the have reasonable suspicion. (You still have legal recourse against unreasonable searches.) But because of television and movies, that regularly show US shows and movies they demand a search warrant and trow a tantrum about it, until they contact a lawyer, that will explain that it is OK.

Re:wtf, mate?

[BasilBrush]

There's also a sizable skinhead problem in the UK.

No there isn't. (I live in the UK.) You need to get better sources of information. Just because you can find a website that says something, doesn't make it true you know. Not even when that website points to outliers as if they are typical.

Re:wtf, mate?

[FireFury03]

Worse, this will likely end up with the same lack of accountability that the IWF ended up with, where the government didn't legislate the block list, they just threatened the ISPs with stricter legislation if they didn't 'voluntarily' comply, so you have a private organisation with no public oversight responsible for censoring almost every UK web connection.

Happilly pretty much anyone can avoid the IWF these days: although you've always been able to use an ISP who doesn't subscribe to the IWF, previously it was pretty much mandatory in schools due to BECTA requirements, but with BECTA now gone, no one cares about the IWF any more. Which is good, because not only were they unaccountable, they also grossly misrepresented themselves (e.g. they claim to be funded by "voluntary donations" but when you look into it, those "voluntary donations" are fixed non-voluntary amounts ranging in the thousands to the tens of thousands of pounds which you are required to pay in order to get access to their list of 100 or so URIs which they have proclaimed are kiddy-porn (including, on occasion, the likes of wikipedia). For comparison, other commercial URI categorisation databases come in at well under £1000 and contain several million URIs.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Hatta]

There's a difference between being opposed to porn in public and being in favour of government-mandated censorship.

No, there is no such difference.

Re:wtf, mate?

[BasilBrush]

The US still has laws that ban certain types of pornography that they call obscene material, and there is even a supreme court case which provides a litmus test for upholding that ban. Nobody has enforced that in recent times though. 40 years ago you couldn't have a man and a woman lying in the same bed on terrestrial television, they were required to have at least one foot on the ground, and words that could even in some way even remotely hint at sex, like the word pregnant of all things, were outlawed. Elves Presly's wild dances were seen as sexually suggestive. In the early 1900's, most places had ordinances that forbade women from wearing anything smaller than a t-shirt (bikini's were right out.)

It echos a similar change in the American right wing moving from the bible to the constitution as their religious document of choice.

We've already had a few politicians repeatedly get re-elected after admitting to having sex with a minor (see Bawny Fwank.)

You do realise that neither misspelling his name, nor posting under a pseudonym here, can save you from being sued for that lie.

Re:wtf, mate?

[rioki]

Yea but the implementation is stupid. We are talking about a public WiFi, where people connect using their own hardware, that will connect to the internet using other means. So if parents really are so scared about it, just install a filtering software on the device. End of story. If they are really so scared, why are they going after the ISPs and not mandating optional filters implemented by device vendors? I get the cause, but what they utter misses point and just shows that they don't understand technology.

Re:wtf, mate?

[FireFury03]

Last time I looked the IWF were a criminal organisation. They are downloading and viewing child porn in order to rate web sites. However good their intentions, this is against the law.

No it isn't. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 explicitly protects IT staff who have to deal with illegal content as part of their job.

Example regarding "making" copies: "Where the authorities are satisfied that the facts indicate that the intention of the “making” was genuinely to prevent, investigate, or detect crime under the 1978 Act a prosecution would not be pursued, because the defence would apply"

Re:wtf, mate?

[bill_mcgonigle]

No, there is no such difference.

One is a preference, the other comes at the end of a gun barrel.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Zero__Kelvin]

I think it is pretty obvious why he wants to ban it. He just found out that the internet involves transferring bits. He is, quite understandably, afraid that the naughty bits will get through and cause what may possibly be irreparable damage.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I think you'll find that a large proportion of the UK population would agree that porn in public is a bad thing."

Well that is completely different than in the US. Over here we encourage our children to watch porn. In fact, they cannot pass from grade school to high school until they have watched 1000 hours of porn, and not less than 500 of those hours must be done in public at the local coffee shop.

On a serious note, if you watch porn in the cafe in the US you will be thrown out of the cafe at the very least, and there is a high probability you will be arrested for lewd and lascivious conduct.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Europeans only know about the US what is spoon-fed by their government-friendly media and their state-run education systems. And those governments love to tell their people how evil the US is because it allows them to advance their own extreme left and extreme right agendas.

No. We are very much capable of seeing how evil the USA is by ourselves.

Fuck you very much.

Re:wtf, mate?

[interkin3tic]

I don't live in the UK. Perhaps there's a huge problem with men masturbating to porn in public places? I'd say if I saw ten dudes jacking off while clutching smartphones and tablets every time I went into a coffee house, I'd want to ban porn in public too.

What's that? This is not the situation in the UK? Oh God... that would imply that some politicians are trying to convince idiot voters that they're needed to regulate morals in society! It might further imply that people who try to use government to clean up societies are fucking idiots who are absolutely worthless and should be deported to a Taliban-ruled country where everyone is castrated and forced to wear a tent in public!

Re:wtf, mate?

[Hizonner]

Since when are the IWF "IT staff"?

Re:wtf, mate?

[jandersen]

I get the cause, but what they utter misses point and just shows that they don't understand technology.

Of course they don't understand - they are politicians. Show some charity.

Another question is whether it is feasible. It may be; but a lot of the point in banning something is simply to set up a set of rules so eg. the police or a regulator can go out and punish those who don't follow the rules. The police can't do anything about things that aren't explicitly against the law, even if those things are obviously wrong; so this is about empowering the police and the regulators, not directly about stopping porn from being accessible over public WiFi.

Re:wtf, mate?

[SuricouRaven]

Most of the world has has to set up 911 as an emergency services number, for much the same reason. It's just the first number people think of.

Re:wtf, mate?

[SuricouRaven]

The children are going to see porn, one way or another. Filter or no. If the internet doesn't provide some accidential encounter, their friends at school will. The time-honored tradition of pass-the-playboy has gone digital now: They send pictures via phone, messanger and facebook*. Sometimes exchanges of USB stick for the big files.

* No modern teenager would be caught dead using email for social correspondance.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, UK tv shows spew obscenities and display explicit sex. So would they block viewing of this material?

Re:wtf, mate?

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: Governments spin the news to make themselves look better than other countries.
More at 11.

Every single country does this, including the US.
European countries keep saying how the US is going down the shitter with their drugs, guns, and wars.
The US keeps saying how the EU is going to collapse because of their money problems.
That's not to say that neither have any problems, but mostly both sides are exaggerating the problems of the other so the inhabitants don't all up and leave for greener pastures.
Also, I'd say in Europe we have a better view of the US than the US has of Europe, because we get all the american media.
Not that hollywood accurately portrays america, but at least it's something.

Short ramble:
I love certain aspects of living in Holland. The freedom of drugs and prostitution for one,
the healthcare, the biking, the cheese. But then again, I also love certain aspects of the US.
Namely the freedom to go shoot some shit whenever I feel like it, the opening hours of stores, the fact that I can easily find pretty much anything I might want to buy, and the weather and random other most of all the job opportunities.
I'm not sure why, but I get payed almost twice as much in the US as I do in Holland.

Re:wtf, mate?

[stenvar]

People continually get (arguably idealised, since this is Hollywood) images of what the US stands for, what it's like to be American, etc. In terms of the vast entertainment industry, I'd argue that Europeans are routinely shown the same image of the US that Americans themselves receive.

Well, I think there's the problem: you think that Hollywood represents what the US stands for. Hollywood is completely removed from US life. In addition, Hollywood designs its movies to appeal to an international audience.

In terms of the vast entertainment industry, I'd argue that Europeans are routinely shown the same image of the US that Americans themselves receive.

In the US, a few of hours of movies every month is balanced by nearly 24h experience of real life. Europeans lack that information.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Anonymous Coward]

government-friendly media

ahem..

have been telling Europeans how lucky they are not to be in America

That's just the Russians and perhaps the French. The Americans seem to manage making disparaging comments of their society just fine. Although, it's a very popular past time in almost every country in the globalized world to seek what is wrong in the other countries so that one wouldn't have to act on the local problems and pay the cost of being responsible. The US is easy target due to the very vocal and sensationalist media industry.

Re:wtf, mate?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

How is it a lie? He even admitted to it. Somebody wants to sure me for it? Go right on ahead.

That isn't why I don't like the guy though, I don't like him because of all of the stupid decisions he's made, one of which gives him a great share of responsibility for the sub prime fiasco. Worse is how he denied saying things that were recorded on camera ffs.

If he wants to sue me over that, he should contact the Slashdot editors, show them this post, and tell them they have my consent to give him my email address. Upon request, I'll gladly give that lispy moron my real name and address.

Re:wtf, mate?

[BasilBrush]

No he didn't.

And if he had that ought to be a good reason you don't like him. So there's your cognitive dissonance showing through right there.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Anonymous Coward]

who throws tantrums? French people who see US movies and expect that or Americans visiting France?

I'd be pissed if I were in France and the police searched my stuff sans warrant, but at the same time I'd realize it's a different country with different laws and I'd have to put up with it while I was there.

If it's French citizens who don't know their own laws, then they're idiots.

Actually, it's kind of annoying to have to deal with cops searching you with or without a warrant. It's just that you can't really say much at the time.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Hognoxious]

Yea but the implementation is stupid. We are talking about a public WiFi, where people connect using their own hardware, that will connect to the internet using other means.

And these people are at home, or in private rooms and cubicles?

Don't think that's what this is aimed at.

People don't want to be in MacBucks or StarryD with their kids & gran and you're at the next table looking at lemonparty or tubgirl on your ipad.

Re:wtf, mate?

[Hognoxious]

The police can't do anything about things that aren't explicitly against the law, even if those things are obviously wrong

You'd be surprised how wide the law against breach of the peace stretches, before even including behaviour likely to provoke one.

Did you get your LL.B off a cereal packet?

You can ban public wifi porn but you can't enforce

[Anonymous Coward]

Because i'll still masturbate in the starbucks bathroom to 2girls1cup and there aint shit you can do about it.

Wrong question

[ruir]

Who exactly is paying/or promoting this? This seems to be a shady manoeuvre to put out free competitions to ISP.

Re:Wrong question

[Anonymous Coward]

Religious oppression.

Only n00bs pay. Professionals manipulate world views. And the churches are the established leaders in this for thousands of years.

Churches invented the link between sex and "dirtiness". Could have been food. Or communication. Or anything basic that allows one to control people.

Re:Wrong question

[Opportunist]

I could see a few groups who would enjoy to make sure you cannot access certain content. The idea is mostly that porn is dirty and bad and everyone who is against filtering it must be a pervert. Then, if it is installed, a certain group comes in and says that if you can filter porn out, you can certainly filter other content, too.

Re:Wrong question

[chaos_technique]

Or ISP trying to avoid bandwidth-hogging freeloaders. As an ISP, I'd try to block YouTube and P2P next - but I've got the feeling that innocents trying to fire Torrent clients on public Wifi hotspots will realize the latter has been done without as much publicity as porn.

Re:Wrong question

[samjam]

Darn right. This is the way to close free wifi hotspots.

Providers will not be able to pay for "approved" filtering, so one dodgy site slipping through would be grounds for prosecution; and so all free hotspot vanish.

Re:Wrong question

[jonbryce]

I'm guessing the mobile phone companies. Porn is already banned on mobile internet, so they have the infrastructure to do it. At the moment if I am on O2, porn is illegal (unless I prove I'm over 18 and opt in to receiving it) over the 2.1GHz 3G network, but if I go 0.3GHz up the dial to their public wifi network, which my phone will do any time it is at a train station, pub, McDonalds etc that has O2 wifi, then I can get all the porn I want.

Re:Wrong question

[xelah]

This isn't the US. Far more likely to be a political maneuvre than some sort of corruption or lobbying. It isn't hard to imagine the Conservatives seeing it as a way to pander to their core voters (just before the local elections), and to make life hard for the Liberal Democrat half of the coalition, who are generally keener on civil liberties. The Conservatives are also even more under threat from UKIP (the UK Independence Party, anti-EU and more conservative than the Conservatives), especially in things like local elections because people don't think they actually matter.

Re:Wrong question

[Threni]

It makes no sense to say something is illegal over one network. Something is illegal or it's not. It's also not true, at least on GiffGaff, which uses O2's network. You do have to prove you're over 18 - this has nothing to do with the law.

Re:Wrong question

[digitig]

I take it jonbryce means "illegal" in the sense a compiler might complain of an illegal instruction or a shell prompt might complain of an illegal operation. Not against the law of the land or the laws of physics, but rendered impossible by local constraints. A command that's illegal in Java might be perfectly legal in C, and an operation that's illegal on 3G might be legal on WiFi.

Language is like that: sometimes words have multiple meanings.

Re:Wrong question

[AmiMoJo]

Well, I certainly think that children should not be exposed to filth like the Bible (Ezekiel 23:20 for example) or the Koran. If this law comes in I will be submitting links to every online copy of said books for blocking.

Re:Wrong question

[BasilBrush]

Torrents haven't been stopped on UK public hot-spots so far. Though most porn sites have already been censored on them.

Re:Wrong question

[Bucc5062]

You got me to read the whole chapter which was interesting since I normally don't read the Old Testament (to wordy). I enjoyed how the writer (The Lord God?) used the metaphor of prostitutes to talk about two fallen cities. The aliteration of sexual acts suggests the writer has some experience with the subject to write so eloquently about it. A good read, right up there with the two daughters having sex with the old man. Nothjing like the Old Testament to help define a religious belief.

Re:Wrong question

[BasilBrush]

Most UK hotspots are run by the big networks like O2, Talk-Talk and BT. In some places they are free, where businesses want to use it to attract customers - McDonalds, Pubs, Motorway service stations. And in some places they are charged at extortionate prices where customers are trapped - hotels, airports.

Occasionally there's a area wide free wifi system, done as promotion for a company, in association with some public body. Such as on the London Underground, or during the Olympics.

Filtering software is no significant expense to the networks, and would be outweighed by savings in bandwidth anyway.

Free hot-spots done as charity or out of public spirit, which could potentially be harmed by such expenses. Very rare. I've only ever come across one of them.

Re:Wrong question

[Pax681]

Free hot-spots done as charity or out of public spirit, which could potentially be harmed by such expenses. Very rare. I've only ever come across one of them.

and you came across it coz you were watching porn!

Re:Wrong question

[Pax681]

I'm guessing the mobile phone companies. Porn is already banned on mobile internet, so they have the infrastructure to do it. At the moment if I am on O2, porn is illegal (unless I prove I'm over 18 and opt in to receiving it) over the 2.1GHz 3G network, but if I go 0.3GHz up the dial to their public wifi network, which my phone will do any time it is at a train station, pub, McDonalds etc that has O2 wifi, then I can get all the porn I want.

3 mobile don't filter it at all. never even had to ask to have any filters lifted.

Re:Wrong question

[Threni]

> Language is like that: sometimes words have multiple meanings.

That's why it makes sense to be clear in what one is saying. When talking about the Prime Minister proposing stopping something in one situation which is already illegal/constrained in other situations, and where the preceeding sentence has already (incorrectly) stated that something is 'banned', the use of the word 'illegal' is not quite as unambiguous as it could perhaps be.

Re:Wrong question

[Anonymous Coward]

3 mobile don't filter it at all. never even had to ask to have any filters lifted.

Either there was some kind of mistake, or they've changed their policy at some point. I've definitely hit the 3 Mobile adult content barrier. I didn't bother asking for it to be removed, because it was too much hassle for too little gain -- I looked at the site later on when I was on WiFi.

Re:Wrong question

[FireFury03]

I could see a few groups who would enjoy to make sure you cannot access certain content. The idea is mostly that porn is dirty and bad and everyone who is against filtering it must be a pervert. Then, if it is installed, a certain group comes in and says that if you can filter porn out, you can certainly filter other content, too.

The issue is possibly not so much the idea that you can filter porn if you want to, but the fact that all the bills on the subject which are coming through seem to be mandating filtering by default and possibly allowing people to opt-out. How many people are going to phone their ISP and say "please opt me out of the filtering because I want to watch the dirty kinky porn"? Not only that, but now your ISP has to maintain and protect a list of people who want to watch porn, which is arguably rather sensitive information.

So once you have the majority filtered, because so few will opt out, you can start increasing the scope of the filter - you start out with the kiddy porn, because obviously no one could oppose that and anyone who opts out must be a kiddy fiddler, then all porn must be filtered, then "offensive" non-porn material - hate speech, anti-religion discussions, etc. It is a slippery slope until you end up with a very sanitised web where even political discussions could be filtered by default. Even better if the organisation behind the filtering has no public oversight and isn't answerable to anyone (which was the case with the IWF).

Whereas if you start with a opt-in system, only the people who are actually interested in being filtered will opt in, and where you only have a small proportion who are using a filtering system, there is a lot less scope for progressively blocking more and more content. For one thing, with the majority able to see and link to that content, the minority who are being filtered will constantly see how much the filters are blocking, and will turn them off again if it gets too much.

One thing that _would_ be useful for the government to do, is to legislate that adult entertainment websites insert HTTP headers to classify the content so that people who *want* to have their connection filtered can do so more reliably. Of course, porn comes from all over the world so that won't catch all websites, but if the EU and US both passed that sort of legislation then it would allow filtering systems to become much more accurate.

Also, some things that people forget:
1. Most home internet connections are used by all members of the family through a single NAT router - this means that a one-size-fits-all solution at the ISP is probably going to be fairly ineffective and tailoring content for all ages.
2. Filtering systems can stop the majority of "oops I accidentally stumbled across porn" incidents, but if someone actually wants to see porn they're going to find it and there's nothing technological you can do to stop that.
3. The best solution is a combination - a bit of filtering to avoid accidentally stumbling across porn (which is the purpose of google safesearch, etc.), education and discipline. Stop making sex such a taboo subject!

Disclaimer: I produce web filtering systems for schools in the UK.

Re:Wrong question

[xorsyst]

'cos opting in is so hard - pop into the shop, ask them to opt you in. Takes 5 minutes. I only did it because the filter was blocking some web comics.

Alternatively use opera mini, which bypasses the filters on most networks. Or set up a vpn if you really care.

Re:Wrong question

[digitig]

Then perhaps your claim that "Something is illegal or it's not" is also not quite as unambiguous as it could be?

Re:Wrong question

[Opportunist]

To sum my position up on the subject: If you want to "protect" your kids from sex, it is YOUR decision to do so and YOUR responsibility to do it. It's YOUR kids, you didn't ask me when you made them (how did you, if you're so anti-sex, I'm curious?), so don't bother me now!

Re:Wrong question

[FireFury03]

To sum my position up on the subject: If you want to "protect" your kids from sex, it is YOUR decision to do so and YOUR responsibility to do it. It's YOUR kids, you didn't ask me when you made them (how did you, if you're so anti-sex, I'm curious?), so don't bother me now!

Quite. That said, I think there is a lot to be said for ISPs providing services to customers beyond being a dumb pipe - no reason why your ISP can't operate a firewall for you instead of you having to have a firewall on your router. And similarly, *opt-in* filtering may be a sensible thing for the ISP to offer their customers instead of the customer having to go buy their own filtering system (and have the know-how to set it up).

However, this comes at a cost to the ISP and most of the people complaining would probably go for the cheapest ISP they can (who wouldn't offer these services), and then hold the ISP responsible when they discover their connection is unfiltered. ISPs themselves seem uninterested in offering these kinds of services - they've probably concluded the same as me that people simply won't pay extra for this stuff.

People want computers to Just Work, like their toaster - they don't want to learn how to make it work or pay someone who knows, they just want it to work. Well guess what, the internet is more complex than your toaster and it *does* require some knowledge, that's just how it is.

Re:Wrong question

[Threni]

You're right, of course. From now on, whenever I talk about a faulty compiler emitting an illegal opcode, I'll be sure to add the comment "Note: whilst I'm describing this compiler output as illegal, as I believe it's unlikely to result in the desired execution of your application, whether or not it technically constitutes a breach of criminal or civil law in your jurisdiction is difficult to tell without further investigation. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice", just to be safe.

Re:Wrong question

[digitig]

Only if you need it to remind yourself. It seems everybody else has no trouble understanding this.

Re:Wrong question

[jonbryce]

I mean illegal as in the government told them to voluntarily agree to do the filtering.

Re:Wrong question

[Opportunist]

Ok, the computer is not a device that "just works". It requires you to know something about it to make it work in a way that will not cause damage to third parties. And if someone who can't be bothered to learn just enough to keep himself and others from harm from his machine, he should probably not operate such a machine.

Re:Wrong question

[CrimsonAvenger]

the writer (The Lord God?)

Nah, that would be Ezekiel, if you're talking about Ezekiel 23:20

Though God could arguably be considered the ghost writer....

Re:Wrong question

[ruir]

It is idiotic to arrive at the coffee shop, or the brief period I was unemployed to the coffee shop, to discover idiotic freeloaders are not letting anyone do jack, just to keep there all day using bit torrent "for free". I fired up arpspoof and firewalled everything, so just web browsing and MSN worked for a while. ;-P

No technical solutions for social problems

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, you shouldn't try to solve social problems with technical solutions.

And in this case, it's not even possible unless you also forbid encryped sessions, which would mean people can't access their VPNs. And nobody in his right mind would surf from a public hotspot without a VPN or at least an SSL/TLS encrpyted session.

And as if that's not enough proof for you: a determined person can still use steganography to embed an encrypted stream inside a regular port 80 HTTP session. Therefore you cannot prevent people from accessing porn over public wifi. All you can do is make it more inconvenient for everyone to browse securely.

Conclusion: You can't stop it, so don't even try.

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[zwei2stein]

In general, you shouldn't try to solve social non-problems with technical solutions.

Conclusion: You should't stop it, so don't even try.

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[Anonymous Coward]

But understanding this would require undestanding about how Internet works. You cannot expect that from a politician.

After all, it is a series of tubes, and not everyone is a plumber.

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Conclusion: You can't stop it, so don't even try.

Thank you Captain Binary Logic. It's also not possible to prevent murders from occurring, so murder should be legal, right?

The point is to make it so that if you want to view porn in Starbucks you have to jump through hoops to do it. Sure, every nerd on here can bypass this but hopefully nerds have the basic social skills to know not to view porn in Starbucks. Maybe I'm wrong.

It also means that if you prosecute someone for it (permitting a minor to view pornography is a sexual offence) they can't claim "oops I didn't mean to do it".

Got it now? Sheesh. Go watch that Simpsons episode where the nerds run the town and STFU. (And that goes for 95% of the YRO posters here.)

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[Geeky]

And nobody in his right mind would surf from a public hotspot without a VPN or at least an SSL/TLS encrpyted session.

Yeah, when I'm reading the BBC news website in Starbucks it's vital that it's over a VPN or SSL. Not.

Public wi-fi should be fine to use. Most email now uses encrypted connections, and beyond that just teach people the rule of thumb that if you don't know what you're doing (i.e. can't confirm it's secure), it's best to avoid using sites that you log on to when using public wi-fi.

And no, you can't stop it, but that's because it's impossible to identify. Do you block google image search? Only have whitelisted sites? Other than that, it's impossible to block, but can be made hard enough that most people won't bother.

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[digitig]

hopefully nerds have the basic social skills to know not to view porn in Starbucks. Maybe I'm wrong.

I think you're over-optimistic. But it doesn't matter, because the sort of nerd who doesn't know better still isn't going to be doing it. At least, not until Starbucks open a branch in his mom's basement.

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[eennaarbrak]

Although everything you said is true, it is all irrelevant. David Cameron does not care whether you can stop accessing pornography through public hot spots. He just needs to prove to his voters that he is doing his best.

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, but that doesn't mean that you can't/shouldn't ban sites that mark themselves adult. Itwould be a simple thing to do, and would perhaps stop most accidental viewing.

While you can stream netflix TV-MA videos in your local cinema while watching Bambi, that doesn't mean you should let a 9 year-old into watch an 18 film, just because they could bit-torrent it at home.

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[cheekyjohnson]

It's also not possible to prevent murders from occurring, so murder should be legal, right?

I see your point, but fortunately watching porn isn't like murdering someone. I do not believe there is truly a problem, so I think nothing at all should be done.

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[Reverand Dave]

The real headline should read

"British PM David Cameron openly admits he has no clue how technology works"

Re:No technical solutions for social problems

[CODiNE]

Seems another pointless law invented just for covering internet cases.

If porn in public is considered a public disturbance or some kind of obscenity then there are already laws to cover this. If someone is reading his flesh magazine in McDonald's and people are disturbed by the images then wouldn't that be enough to either ask him to leave or notify someone?

How is it any different if it's on a laptop verses on paper?

Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[gweihir]

There is really no other way he could claim something as stupid as this otherwise. Just your average clueless control-freak politician. I do not even find the strength to despise him, this has gotten far, far too common.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[tonywestonuk]

I dont think they care, about VPN or proxies. If you have these, then you're obviously old and wise enough to be able to look at whatever you want, whenever you want.

This is about minors, kids, who end up getting porn on there phones/tablets by accident, while looking for something innocent.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Anonymous Coward]

How about redirect all http requests to a webpage to enter your name and birth date. And if you are too young you either don't get access or you get kid stuff.

If the kid is too naive to lie about his/her birthday and name then he/she is not ready for the internet.

Of course just because you lie about your birthday doesn't mean you're ready to see the worst of the internet... ;)

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[tehcyder]

99% of peope have never heard of VPN or proxies.

If the average user can't access porn easily, they won't be able to access porn full stop.

Anyway, what is the big deal? Who wants to view porn in a McDonald's anyway? I just don't see the terrible infringement on liberty here. You're not allowed to pull down your trousers and start wanking off to a printed porn mag in your local coffee shop anyway.

The idea that you should be able to do whatever you want wherever you are because it's on the internet is ridiculous.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Opportunist]

Hate to burst your bubble, but there are more 15 year olds out there who could set up a VPN network than 50 year olds...

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[dkf]

Just your average clueless control-freak politician.

He's not just a politician, he's a world leader!

So, slightly more objectionable and clueless than average for a politician, but within normal variation. Of course, this is an uncosted kite that he's flying, so who knows whether it will manage to get implemented. (Mind you, it's a stupid policy that I'd bet is driven by the latest moral panic in the Daily Fail, so it's got far more legs than it actually merits. Oh well.)

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Inda]

I disagree. This is about Cameron getting his photo opportunity and creating soundbites for the media. He's so shallow. He'll u-turn this when it's found to be unworkable too.

Who the hell stumbles on porn by accident? In my 15 years of internet use, I have never ever hit a porn site by accident. I have seen too many adverts for porn though; perhaps he should start there.

I do visit a site with funny pictures, and they have a sub-section where lovely ladies like to show their tits. Would that be on the list too? This is my concern. Where does it stop?

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[locofungus]

This is about minors, kids, who end up getting porn on there phones/tablets by accident, while looking for something innocent.

I don't think it's anything to do with "accident". Yes, occasionally, some idiot posts some disguised link and managed to get people to click on it (I've been caught out a couple of times in slashdot posts before they started putting the domain after the link)

But mostly I suspect it's 13+ year olds going looking for porn. Which we all did. Back in my day though it was all still photography in magazines. VHS was around but I never even saw a pornographic VHS cassette, let alone watch what was on it.

One of the problems is that what is depicted in porn, especially today when video is easily accessible, is not "normal." Children are getting a distorted view of what normal relationships are about.

The solution, however, is to educate them about what normal relationships are. To teach them that porn is, for the most part, a fantasy. That within a normal sexual relationship some people do live out some fantasies and that it's OK for others to say "that's not for me" and that it's not OK to pressure others into doing things that they aren't willing to do or ready for. It's most especially not OK to use porn as an example to say "well they're doing it."

A porn block won't work. Teenage boys are going to get porn regardless of what adults try. Accept that fact and work with it instead of trying to deny it.

Tim.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Kentari]

After surfing around for 15 years I can say: Anyone claiming the porn got there by accident is lying. Certainly if it's 15yo kids.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Ardyvee]

Let us all remember that since we are on the Internet, some kind of guide is bound to appear and be searchable through google. Such guide will show you how to bypass the filter (bypassing localhost filters anyone?) and with enough word of mouth teenagers will be all over them. I mean, in my high school, facebook was blocked (or at least they tried to). My classmates found a way around it, and a rather simple one (I believe they used google cache and exploited the lack of blanket filter on facebook.com/*). Who says the same thing won't happen with porn?

Regardless, I see no problem with the ban. It's public wi-fi, and you can get a vpn/proxy easy enough :|

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[StripedCow]

So:

The smart kids will successfully circumvent this by setting up VPNs, and if they prevent encryption, possibly using steganography.

The stupid kids will not get their daily fix of digital porn and will start looking for the real thing, and procreate.

Sounds like a brilliant plan!

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[AmiMoJo]

Google is pretty good at filtering porn from its results. I don't know about Bing and Yahoo but I would imagine they are too. That is where the filtering needs to be - in search results.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Anonymous Coward]

>This is about minors, kids, who end up getting porn on there phones/tablets by accident . . .
Yeah. I told my dad the same lie.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[mwvdlee]

Google is pretty good at filtering porn from its results.

It's getting more difficult every day.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[azalin]

Well it happened to me a couple of times and it was rather annoying at that time. Not because I saw nude people, but because all the porn drowned out the stuff I was really searching for. The topic in question had a linguistic overlap though: Images from the James Bond movie Golden Eye, the tank driving scenes. In retrospect I have to admit that "bond golden eye pictures" was not a perfect start, but even with lots of additional terms and exclusion rules it was rather difficult to find what I was seeking in that huge steaming pile of nakedness and crap.
I didn't follow the naughty links though, so I don't know if it still counts.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[rioki]

Yea but did you see the amount of storage you can get into those phones? If you rally want to watch porn in starbucks, bring it with your...

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[rioki]

But the point is irrelevant. You are already not allowed to publicly watch pron in the coffee shop. What goes over the connection is thus irrelevant and imposing legislation and fines are just waste of taxpayers money.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[cheekyjohnson]

Regardless, I see no problem with the ban.

I do; it's a ban. Regardless of how easy it is to get around it, I do not believe workarounds should be necessary.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Anonymous Coward]

Who doesn't want to watch porn at McDonalds? If you are stuck there anyways and they are taking to long on your order you need a way to pass the time.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[petermgreen]

Such guide will show you how to bypass the filter

I remember spending ages googling for "cgi proxy" and looking for one that the filter hadn't categorised as "proxy avoidance systems". I wasn't actually interested in porn but many other sites were blocked too on the connections I was using.

The biggest problem I see with this is it's essentiall imposing an extra burden on operators of wifi hotspots. For the big guys who sell wifi hotspot services this is unlikely to be a problem, for the little guys who want to offer free wifi independently it is likely to drive up their costs significantly as rather than just buying an off the shelf access point they have to buy some kind of commercial filtering system as well.

There is also the question of who is responsible when someone does manage to get porn through the clearly flawed filter.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Who the hell stumbles on porn by accident? In my 15 years of internet use, I have never ever hit a porn site by accident.

I have, but only once. It was a google search on some error message returned from MS Access and the first link on google looked legit based off of the brief snippet provided. I clicked and right as the site loaded my boss had walked up. It was a small company with an understanding boos who's question was what are you doing and I showed her that I had clicked on a link that appeared to have a solution to the problem I was looking into. Other than that I haven't stumbled upon porn by accident. There was a time when just about any search on yahoo would return some porn results (mid to late 90s) but that was just because everyone was spamming keywords on pages.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Ed_1024]

I suppose being Slashdot, everyone is immediately thinking of technical workarounds but the main issue for those wanting to filter "porn" is defining what "porn" actually is, such that it can be recognised by an autonomous system. No two humans can agree on a definition other than "I know it when *I* see it", so how a computer is meant to cope I don't know.

Yes, you can blacklist/whitelist sites but you'd end up with the British Library, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the British Medical Association blocked while hotbabesinswimwear.com gets allowed because there's just enough covered.

For those overseas readers who are not well versed in British politics, this is not really a serious suggestion - we're approaching the "silly season" and things like this are run up the flagpole to impress the gullible and distract attention from other matters.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[gweihir]

You think kids today do not know about VPN and proxies? What planet are you living on?

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[gweihir]

Hmm. You could be on to something. Easier control of the population is always something politicians crave. Seen that way, I have to reverse my assessment and call him a brilliant evil mastermind!

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, the drivel about 'protecting' kids is just window dressing.

This is about creating another chilling effect on offering unrestricted, anonymous wifi to the general public. Because if we can't (yet) get away with introducing the Great Firewall of Britain, at least we can ensure that everyone has to stay on their own, private, monitored connections.

The brilliant thing about this new law is, it works on so many levels. Macdonalds and Starbucks will have to serve up a nice squeaky clean version of the internet without things like porn, the pirate bay, wikileaks etc. On the opposite end of the scale, anyone who simply leaves their home wifi unsecured and unfiltered for anyone who wants to use it, is in the firing line of the full force of the law. As yet another wondrous side effect, it hammers the final nail in the coffin of "I didn't download that movie, anyone could have been using my wifi".

Expect to soon read stories about people being harassed and dragged into court by wardriving police.

Re:Guess he has never heard of VPN and proxies

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the real point isn't to ban porn at hotspots, but to force hotspot providers to hire a service or buy software to make sure they're in compliance with the law.

Think of all the people who died in WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

All those people died in WWII just so this guy could enact Hitler's policies in Great Britain anyway. Once GB settles on a definition of porn for WiFi, it will become the accepted definition throughout all of the United Kingdom.

Re:Think of all the people who died in WWII

[tehcyder]

I don't recall WW2 being fought on the principle of access to pornography in public spaces, but maybe I missed something in my history lessons.

Re:Think of all the people who died in WWII

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it was fought to prevent the spread of authoritarian governments.

Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tried

[Chrisq]

Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tried to censor the internet for their UK subscribers: Blocking of breast cancer awareness sites, Penistone council websites, and so on.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

So you prefer that they get to see that inappropriate material elsewhere, where you can't see it and can't educate them about what they've seen? Because face it, chances are high that they will get to see such material.

Re:OpenDNS

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not, children aren't the slightest bit curious!

Re:OpenDNS

[Cenan]

Aren't you just creating an atmosphere where a child interested in the opposite sex (or the same sex for that matter) has to be ashamed of that, and subsequently have to go around you to satisfy said interest? How is your "solution" even solving a problem? The kid sheltered like that is just going to have a much harder landing when they actually do have interact with the rest of the World.

Re:OpenDNS

[Anonymous Coward]

The inappropriateness in humans being exactly like other mammals eludes me, anyhow.

What again is the objective problem with nudity, sex and pornography...?

Re:OpenDNS

[Cenan]

Listen, we can't have this discussion if you insist on using common sense and this "objectivity" thing. Get of my lawn.

Re:OpenDNS

[Stolpskott]

Aren't you just creating an atmosphere where a child interested in the opposite sex (or the same sex for that matter) has to be ashamed of that, and subsequently have to go around you to satisfy said interest? How is your "solution" even solving a problem? The kid sheltered like that is just going to have a much harder landing when they actually do have interact with the rest of the World.

Not at all. If you look objectively at most of the porn on the internet (I can think of a few people who would apply for a job, if that was in the description...), and consider that any children looking at the same material probably have much less sexual experience than you do (I say "probably", because I am sure there are one or two 40-year old virgin geeks on this site), that porn will come to form the majority of their "sexual experience" until they start to have such encounters themselves. So things like deep-throating, anal sex, DP, multiple partners, and guys (or women) treating women (or other guys) as a collection of holes that need to be penetrated while swearing and physically abusing the victim become normal.
For sure, parents have a duty of care to their children and should actually, you know... "talk" to them to explain about sex. Will teenagers find another way to get access to all that porn? Definitely, but denying them access to it at home is not going to engender shame in them. Your attitude as a parent when talking to (or not talking to) your children about the finer points of their relationships with other human beings will take care of that.

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:OpenDNS

[Anonymous Coward]

Man I hate this response.

Re:OpenDNS

[Anonymous Coward]

If porn were just about nudity and sex, you'd have a point.

But it's about a lot more, so you don't.

Re:OpenDNS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, OpenDNS is good. But... here's the problem. Even this service gives out false positives. All you need to do is to see the volunteers who flag websites and know that there are some trying out vote websites as something they are not.

I'd say it's one of the better servers and we use it here to block the nasty stuff people here don't probably even go to.

Its hard to say, but public WIFI providers should just handle it. Many Hotels and other places already have filters for porn. For me, if you are providing as a service free WIFI, put in something like OpenDNS or something else and leave it at that. Make it a recommendation or something. For it to be law, is to check all public WIFI in the UK, handed off as a service. This includes even the nice people who leave open their WIFI on purpose (yeah that are crazy people out there). Also what about BT's open WIFI service on everyones router? For their customers to access internet any where? Does that get blocked? Is that public WIFI? Also, just by asking customers require a code to access the WIFI, will stop the kids from accessing their WIFI without checking who's using it. Unless the kids parents ask for them to get a code whilst being in MacDonalds or where ever. Then its down to the stupid parents.

But it's another reason to filter the internet, which will drive some users (non-criminals) down VPNs, TOR etc. But also criminals who take the risk of using none secure channels and I am sure there are quite a few down the same routers. Giving police or anyone needing evidence, nothing to go by!

We'll have to see what happens on this one.

Re:OpenDNS

[leonardluen]

It seems appropriate to cue up that crazy hostfiles guy as it would potentially be on topic as a reply to your post.

just because they can't get external DNS, doesn't mean they still can't setup their own, and use alternate means to fill in the addresses for it.

Re:OpenDNS

[cheekyjohnson]

He even asked what the objective problem with pornography is. Many people seem to have problems with just nudity and sex, and even people who have problems with pornography seem to have them because they're easily offended.

Re:OpenDNS

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I'll fill in between the lines. GP asked what was wrong with "nudity, sex and pornography" as if that trio of words encapsulated what we were talking about. He could have said "What is the objective problem with nudity, sex, degradation, objectification and pornography", and the answer would have been more obvious -- but he didn't.

My point is that a great deal of porn is *more* about degradation and objectification, than it is about sex.

Now, in my youth the strongest stuff we were likely to stumble upon was a top-shelf magazine some kind soul had left in tatters in a hedge. Girls smiling or pouting in various levels of undress, perhaps holding their vagina open.

Nowadays, just browsing the free porn YouTube-alikes, you'll find material from (say) kink.com in which girls are restrained, spat on, called whores, made to repeat back that they're whores, deep-throat until they gag and choke, be multiply penetrated by abnormally large penises and even larger inanimate objects... and so on.

Most adults understand that this is fantasy. Quite a lot of men enjoy that fantasy -- up to you whether or not you think that's OK. Some women enjoy that fantasy too, and would enjoy roleplaying it. Fewer of them, but some. But we need to understand that women who want to be treated that way are very much the exception. Even the girl in the video probably wouldn't do it if she wasn't getting paid.

But a child watching that isn't equipped to know it's fantasy. After watching a few of them, it's easy to get the idea that this (or a watered down version of it) is how you should treat women. Or for women, to get the idea that that's how to expect to get treated.

And that makes for unhappy people in real life. Men who can't maintain a relationship because they've trained their minds into only getting turned on by stuff most real women don't want to do. Women who's partners treat them in ways they don't want (and don't treat them in ways they do want). Actual rape is just the tip of the iceberg.

So that's what's objectively wrong with porn. And that's coming from someone who enjoys porn (like the wealthy heroin addict, saying "of course, I can control it because I'm rich and educated, but what about poorer, stupider people" -- so apologies for the hypocrisy, but I'm right nonetheless.)

Re:OpenDNS

[cheekyjohnson]

and the answer would have been more obvious

Because he used the word "objective," I don't think so.

But a child watching that isn't equipped to know it's fantasy.

And how often do actual children watch that sort of thing? Or even if they do, how often does it have a permanent, serious negative effect on them? I seriously doubt that that happens often at all.

So that's what's objectively wrong with porn.

You never explained what is objectively wrong with pornography in general; you only expressed an opinion, and one about certain kinds of pornography.

What a great use of money

[PhamNguyen]

His intervention comes after a long-running campaign from children’s charities to ensure a blanket ban on unacceptable sites on public WiFi networks.

Because when I donate money to a children's charity, that's exactly what I'm hoping the money will be spent on. Think of all the children saved by these campaigns.

Re:What a great use of money

[tehcyder]

His intervention comes after a long-running campaign from children’s charities to ensure a blanket ban on unacceptable sites on public WiFi networks.

Because when I donate money to a children's charity, that's exactly what I'm hoping the money will be spent on. Think of all the children saved by these campaigns.

I would personally agree with the children's charities that preventing people from accessing pornography in public is an entirely acceptable idea. Even as an adult, I have no wish to see someone in a supermarket watching videos of goat porn, and I certainly don't want my kids to.

Re:What a great use of money

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if they identified WHICH children's charities are involved in this, so I know who NOT to send my money to.

captcha: record

Re:What a great use of money

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir are an idiot.

Re:What a great use of money

[tg123]

His intervention comes after a long-running campaign from children’s charities to ensure a blanket ban on unacceptable sites on public WiFi networks.

Because when I donate money to a children's charity, that's exactly what I'm hoping the money will be spent on. Think of all the children saved by these campaigns.

But did you donate money to censor what people can view ?

Um What are these kids parents your trying to save from viewing porn doing?

Its a case who's watching Big Brother ?

What happens when someone viewing (a hypothetical headline ) on "free" WiFi, British troops massacre Afghan civilians becomes unacceptable ? or horror of horrors Prince Harry mistaking kills an Afghan tribal chef in his role as Gunner on a Gunship ?

Is it considered war porn and therefor banned ?

Re:What a great use of money

[Anonymous Coward]

The somewhat-selfish way of determining this is easy:

Before you donate any significant amount of money to a charity, ask them: "What are you doing to prevent random children from seeing pornography on public wifi?"

If they say "That's not our concern", donate.
If they say "We're doing [whatever]", tell them you won't donate to a bunch of busybodies who are more concerned with censorship than helping needy children, and either try another charity or keep the money for yourself.

Re:What a great use of money

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I told you it's possible to access porn without WiFi? Mobile networks allow internet access, through which one can access goat porn just about anywhere, including gasp public places!

Shall we ban porn on all mobile networks too?

Re:What a great use of money

[Anonymous Coward]

you also don't want people to piss on the street or walk around wanking, and it is generally illegal to do so
but that doesn't mean we have to spend money and waste everyones time pad locking their pants when they are in public places

Re:What a great use of money

[Legion303]

We are in total agreement here. I *can't count* the number of times I've gone to the market and seen someone watching videos of goat porn.

(Literally.)

Re:What a great use of money

[Hatta]

Government censorship is a lot more likely to hurt people than icky videos.

Re:What a great use of money

[91degrees]

Requiring organisations that offer a free public service to take reasonable measures to ensure they comply with community standards isn't exactly government censorship though.

Re:What a great use of money

[Hatta]

Yes, that's exactly government censorship. It boggles the mind that you could consider it anything else. The idea that "community standards" should govern a communication medium is backwards and dangerous. The communication medium should deliver the information the users want.

Re:What a great use of money

[91degrees]

I'm not quite sure how you'd react to someone loitering outside a school, distributing free hard core porn to all the kids.

I guess that would have to be seen as okay under a strict freedom of speech principle, but I have to say I'd be a little troubled by it. I am curious what would happen though. I do invite you to do this.

Re:What a great use of money

[cheekyjohnson]

If complying with "community standards" means implementing bans or censorship because some people are overly sensitive, then I'll just go ahead and say that such standards shouldn't be complied with.

Re:What a great use of money

[Hatta]

In the absence of obscenity laws that define pornography as harmful a priori, I'm not sure much would happen at all. Parents might freak out, but I'm pretty sure the parental reaction would be more harmful to the children than the pornography.

Re:What a great use of money

[Anonymous Coward]

IRL != on the internet.

Please stop circulating these flawed analogies.

Re:What a great use of money

[91degrees]

The internet does exist in real life.

Re:What a great use of money

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't count to zero?

Re:What a great use of money

[Anonymous Coward]

What cracks me up is the implicit assumption that just seeing images of normal human anatomy and function *must* be severely damaging to kids. Let's all pretend we're not human and have no genitals. Right.

Re:What a great use of money

[PhamNguyen]

While I think there is room for debate on this issue, my problem is that this is essentially a political issue, and that people contributing to children's charities would be as likely to be on one side of the issue as the other. Maybe these "charities" are really just lobby groups that are technically charities, and that's fine if that's how lobby groups usually operate. But if they collect donations as generic children's charities and then use that money to campaign on political issues where the link to children's welfare is somewhat tenuous, then this seems like a bad use of the money that was donated.

But what sort of porn?

[auric_dude]

FTA; "His intervention comes after a long-running campaign from childrenâ(TM)s charities to ensure a blanket ban on unacceptable sites on public WiFi networks." It would be good to see the full list of sites that are banned because you never know some non porn sites may be slipped in at the behest of political, business, religious or assorted pressure / lobby groups.

Re:But what sort of porn?

[Reprint001]

Who defines 'unacceptable'? I personally believe that children shouldn't be exposed to all sorts of unacceptable things on the internet, a lot of which aren't pornography based.

Re:But what sort of porn?

[Opportunist]

Most of the stuff I deem unacceptable for kids on the internet is religion based, actually.

Re:But what sort of porn?

[91degrees]

You'd be able to get a pretty broad consensus from the populace over the majority, with a lot of grey areas where most people wouldn't care if it was blocked or not.

The UK already has guidelines about when inappropriate content is permitted to be broadcast in the UK. I imagine this would use similar criteria.

Re:But what sort of porn?

[Necroloth]

I too would like to see this list... for investigative purposes of course!

Re:But what sort of porn?

[Merls the Sneaky]

Someone in the UK aught to add that they want religious material blocked as well. After all if you're blocking "offensive" content you better make sure you block everything people find "offensive". You should block all "offensive" content or none of it. I personally find exposing children to religion is harmful, more so than pornography.

Re:But what sort of porn?

[wvmarle]

Wow, dozens of comments and then finally this. It was the first thought of mine: "unacceptable sites" sounds very political, and reeks of plain old censorship.

And while I know the sentiments against porn as such, there is a lot more perversion on the internet - and definitely far worse stuff than a beautiful naked lady.

Re:But what sort of porn?

[JockTroll]

And thus started Fahrenheit 451. The novel, you know. Next in line to be banned. It's high time we build a mirror factory, and make nothing but mirrors for a whole year, and then take a good look at them.

Re:But what sort of porn?

[azalin]

a beautiful naked lady.

We are still talking about the UK, are we?

Re:But what sort of porn?

[wvmarle]

That the page is requested by someone in the UK doesn't mean the lady can not be from Japan or so.

Re:But what sort of porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Keira Knightley being a sufficient counter example to your cheek?

Porn causes less crime

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you like criminals so much mister prime minister?

People who are in front of a pc spanking it don't have time to commit serious crimes that don't involve spanking it...

Re:Porn causes less crime

[tehcyder]

Why do you like criminals so much mister prime minister?

People who are in front of a pc spanking it don't have time to commit serious crimes that don't involve spanking it...

That is the most ridiculous pro-pornography argument I have ever seen. Do you seriously think that the only (or main) reason people commit crimes is because they've not tossed one off recently?

Re:Porn causes less crime

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you ever feel like doing any serious crimes after having tossed one off?

Exactly.

Re:You can ban public wifi porn but you can't enfo

[AlphaWolf_HK]

But is there anything you can do about the shit?

1984??

[Anonymous Coward]

You will only ever see what you search for on a WiFi system. Forcing ISP's and/or individual establishments that provide free internet access to monitor and block specific traffic is tantamount to authoritarian governance. I see absolutely no difference between this concept and how Egypt or Israel or Iran are manipulating and controlling the information that their citizens have access to. Honestly, please explain the difference? if any?

Re:1984??

[tehcyder]

You will only ever see what you search for on a WiFi system. Forcing ISP's and/or individual establishments that provide free internet access to monitor and block specific traffic is tantamount to authoritarian governance. I see absolutely no difference between this concept and how Egypt or Israel or Iran are manipulating and controlling the information that their citizens have access to. Honestly, please explain the difference? if any?

This is about accessing material over public wi fi. I may be unusual here, but I prefer to view porn in the comfort of my own home, and I certainly don't want to watch people jizzing into their coffee in Starbucks.

And even if the UK government banned porn entirely (which is of course not technically possible without completely abandoning internet access) it still wouldn't amount to censorship like in Iran or China.

Re:1984??

[Anonymous Coward]

"and I certainly don't want to watch people jizzing into their coffee in Starbucks."

That would already be illegal.

Re:1984??

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to sit next to the entrance at Starbucks and go to town beating off. But then perhaps thats why i am in jail.

Re:1984??

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is about accessing material over public wi fi. I may be unusual here, but I prefer to view porn in the comfort of my own home, and I certainly don't want to watch people jizzing into their coffee in Starbucks."... you'd go home to watch that, no need to double state it ;-)

Re:1984??

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about accessing material over public wi fi. I may be unusual here, but I prefer to view porn in the comfort of my own home, and I certainly don't want to watch people jizzing into their coffee in Starbucks.

So that's why they ask if you want to leave room for cream!

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL had that problem with the town of Scunthorpe too. (Profanity filter (look closer if you haven't worked it out yet).)

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.

Imagine they'd try the same for other basic human things like... for instance.. eating.
- I bet you like the smell of a freshly cooked meal... Perv!
- Of course food sites and cooking shows should be forbidden!
- A glass of milk being shown on national television? Moogate!!! Chaos!!
- You eat by yourself? Ewww, you perv! Don't you know you will go blind?
- You had dinner in public? Off to jail with you!
- A milk-drinking toddler saw you having lunch? Die you pedo!

This is the fucked-up world religious terrorism wants to enforce. I, for one, proclaim: NOT. WITH. ME!

Sex is not a sin.
Oppression is.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Yoda222]

UK and catholic ? Really ?

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[cbiltcliffe]

Sex is not a sin.
Oppression is.

As a Christian, I agree with this 100%.
Many sins have been committed in the name of God, and calling sex a sin is one of them.
I mean, think about it: assuming you believe in God, then you also probably believe people were designed and created by God. In that case, sex was also designed by God, so how could it possibly be a sin?

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.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

...sex was also designed by God, so how could it possibly be a sin?

Wow, you really said that? According to the people who believe in such hokum, god had to design in the capacity to sin so that he could sort people into the bad and the good. So apparently, "be fruitful and multiply" is "good", but be "fruity" (gay) and it is "bad". Being fruitful and multiplying out of wedlock or with multiple partners? Bad news - apparently also "bad". If there was really a god, he designed all sin. On purpose. So he could sort the souls. Must be fun stuff to do things like take attendance at churches and all.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Chrisq]

UK and catholic ? Really ?

If you count the number of people/services attended then yes.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[quenda]

UK and catholic ? Really ?

Yes, the UK church still claims to be Catholic, just without recognising any authority outside the island that might stop the king from getting a divorce.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that sex is dirty or bad... it's that sex outside of marriage is bad. This, coupled with the notion that deliberately choosing to imagine doing something that is sinful is on par with actually doing it makes it pretty clear that something like pornography would be forbidden. Where informative and genuinely productive discourse on the subject of sexuality crosses the line to pornography may very well be a blurry and highly subjective line, but that doesn't mean it's never possible to say for certain that some works have crossed it.

But the notion that sex is somehow a basic human drive anywhere even remotely on par to that of needing to eat is factually flawed, since a normally healthy person can physiologically survive indefinitely without sex, or even sexual release.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[slim]

If church attendance is your metric, then the UK is an overwhelmingly non-religious country.

In the 2009 British Social Attitudes survey 50.9% said "no religion", 19.9% Church of England, 8.6% Catholic.

That contradicts the 2011 census, mind you, which says 59% Christian (with no published breakdown of denomination). Must be slightly differently worded questions.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Chrisq]

If church attendance is your metric, then the UK is an overwhelmingly non-religious country.

In the 2009 British Social Attitudes survey 50.9% said "no religion", 19.9% Church of England, 8.6% Catholic.

That contradicts the 2011 census, mind you, which says 59% Christian (with no published breakdown of denomination). Must be slightly differently worded questions.

I think that part of it was probably because the question was voluntary in the census. Some agnostics, and people who might feel an affiliation to a religion but not believe it, would probably have not answered rather than picking the rather definite sounding "no religion".

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[cheekyjohnson]

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.

And how do you know this?

In any case, even if that were true, I believe banning it (even just in certain places) would be morally wrong.

But children find it more difficult.

Interestingly enough, I don't see children running around raping and murdering random people very often, so I highly doubt it's a widespread problem even assuming it actually happens.

But neither am I dumb enough to say that porn is harmless.

Porn is most likely harmless to a grand majority of people. There.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

God "designed" sin in the same sense that light "designs" shadow. The latter only exists as a consequence of the negation of the former.

God easily could have created a universe where sin could not have existed, but there would have been no freedom of choice. The latter, in God's judgement, was worth the price of having the possibility of the former, since even with the existence of sin, we can still consciously choose to use the time that we have in our lives to do good, and not evil, and how much more would such a conscious choice say for a person's character when they have lived a life of excellence amidst an environment where every thing that they were exposed to would seek to persuade them to do otherwise than if they had instead lived their entire lives in circumstances where there were much fewer temptations to do wrong, and so making the right choices was relatively easy?

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[mjr167]

I agree with you, but find your logic flawed. Sex is an action. If it was created by god and is therefore good, murder is also an action that was created by god...

Your reasoning falls into the "all natural things (like arsenic) are good and all man-made things (like computers) are evil" bucket.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

And how do you know this?

I know it because I consume porn myself. The stuff I've described is easy to find. "Nice" porn is more difficult to find (unless you're just talking about Playboy grade soft porn -- I'm not even considering stuff that doesn't involve penetration). Even if you can find "nice" porn, it's usually alongside stuff like I described above, and people will let their curiosity lead them there.

I'm an adult, but I have to consciously fight the changes porn makes to my brain. I have to remind myself that the pretty girl I see on the street are not like the fictional girls in porn.

But children find it more difficult.

Interestingly enough, I don't see children running around raping and murdering random people very often, so I highly doubt it's a widespread problem even assuming it actually happens.

How many would it take? My local news, in the last month, reported an 11 year old girl raped by a 15 year old boy (no, I'm not going to google that at work to get the exact ages, nor seek evidence that that particular case was influenced by porn). Earlier this year there was the widely reported rape of an unconscious girl at a US college party -- made all the more horrifying because so many of the people there thought there was nothing wrong with what had happened.

I'm told that there's a rise in teenage girls asking to have their genitals waxed because their boyfriends think pubic hair is "dirty" (the bad sort of "dirty" I assume). That teenage girls let themselves get pressured into sex they don't want because of a growing notion that you're not normal if you say no. That boys won't take no for an answer, because the girls that say no in porn always change their mind pretty quickly.

You may be interested in the short film "impaled" by Larry Clark (part of an anthology called Destricted, in which he interviews a number of young men who've watched a lot of porn, eventually choosing one of them to take part in a porn shoot with an experienced porn actress. Several of them -- the ones with real life sexual experience -- do stuff they certainly wouldn't if it weren't for porn. Shave their (male) pubic hair. Expect a rough deep-throat. Astonishingly: pull out early in order to ejaculate on the girl's face, breasts or belly. "Why do you do that?" "I dunno, I guess that's what girls want."

Before you ask: this is only Slashdot and I'm not going to go to the trouble of rigorously sourcing all of the above. You may if you like.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[shoemilk]

Prude much? Or just ignorant of ummm culture? Or just dumb?

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.

A great deal of people talking is about transgressive acts and nasty attitudes. Should we ban talking from places? Seriously how is "Pizza's here - open the box to my cock - fucking" worse than two frat boys talking about beating the shit out of someone else or wanting to? Or two girls trash talking another?

Rape fantasies are common. The notion that "no means yes" is common.

define "common". If you mean it to be more than 50% umm, then I'd like to see some citation. 30% isn't common. Even then this needs a big fat [citation needed]

The notion that all women turn into sluts when you scratch the surface.

Wait, I thought porn was about rape? Which is it?

Getting pleasure from spitting, slapping and insulting someone (or I guess from being subjected to that).

People don't need porn for this. People insult other people on a daily basis, if not more. I've seen 5,000 times more slapping on run of the mill TV shows than I have in all the porn I've seen. If you're that offended by spitting, do yourself a favor and never ever go to China. Or hang out near prepubescent boys.

And of course, body parts of abnormal size.

Fuck you and your holier-than-thou attitude on how people should look. So some people like fat porn. Oh, wait, you're talking about 18 inch cocks? So what am I not supposed to go outside anymore? Or are you talking about girls with big fake tits? If so, don't watch any sort of South American TV.

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.

You're so right. We need to get on banning Harry Potter before more children think they're wizards. Non-fiction is hereby banned because kidz iz dumbz.

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.

From porn?! Men beat their wives because they watch PORN?! Girls have weight issues because they watched PORN?! You're dumb and so are the retards that modded you insightful.

(I'm talking about hetero porn, because that's what experience I have).

I have experience with it all and well, I can tell you 95% doesn't have any of the shit you've been spouting in it. Except for that German stuff. Freaky~!

Sure, there *is* porn in which two people are mutually attracted and have mutually enjoyable, considerate sex.

You mean like most of it?

But it's not all that common,

Inconceivable! You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

and consumers tend to shift up to something more interesting (i.e. more extreme and transgressive).

Umm, you're full of it. I've got over 20+ years of pron watching experience and I'm not into BDSM, skat, snuff, beast, or anything more than guy-meets-girl guy-fucks-girl. Hell, I'm not even fond of anal. People like what they like. They don't start liking shit because they're bored. Again, you are stupid.

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

No, you're just dumb. I'm surprised you didn't say anything in there about going blind or hairy hands. The rest of the drivel you spouted sounds just the same.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[cheekyjohnson]

How many would it take?

A large percentage of the people who view pornography. A few news stories where the reporters make assumptions about the cause of whatever happened will not be enough.

Earlier this year there was the widely reported rape of an unconscious girl at a US college party -- made all the more horrifying because so many of the people there thought there was nothing wrong with what had happened.

You assume that that happened because of pornography? This is exactly what I'm talking about. You will not be able to convince me like that. As I read the rest of your comment, it looks like you just blame everything on pornography. But again, even if it was the fault of pornography (How could it be? It would be the fault of people who are influenced by it and take action, anyway.) that these things happened, that doesn't mean that those types of things happen often, or that education wouldn't suffice.

I have trouble believe that there are a significant amount of people who believe everything they see in pornography, and you certainly haven't done anything to convince me otherwise.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Evolution cares equally for eating and reproducing. You can't have one with out the other. I think sex is a more important drive. Humans will survive if you starve to death. They will not if everyone stops having sex.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a sociology researcher. I'll just put this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_effects_of_pornography

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to take a partial quote out of context. You have a glowing future waiting for you at Fox News.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[scot4875]

But a great deal of porn is about transgressive acts, and nasty attitudes.

Nice weasel words! Not only do you get the ambiguous, unquantified "great deal of" in there, but you also insert the completely subjective adjectives "transgressive" and "nasty"! Bravo!

--Jeremy

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[cheekyjohnson]

Studies go both ways. Furthermore, I see nothing to indicate that it's a significant problem even if some of those studies that say pornography can be harmful are correct.

I'd oppose censorship even if it was proven beyond doubt that pornography is harmful, anyway.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the wicked really do take the truth to be hard.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

How typical. No legitimate response, so you call him names.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

This line of thinking seems very dangerous. A lot of literature, artwork, films and TV shows which would definitely not be considered porn depict things which might be considered risque.

Sometimes these things can actually be more of a turn-on to some people than outright pornography. Of course, other times it's just trash - just look at most of what they show on daytime TV.

There's even a fair amount of sex in the Bible.

It would be a very dull life if you went to extremes to avoid anything which might make someone have the "wrong" types of feelings.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[chrismcb]

. But a great deal of porn is about transgressive acts, and nasty attitudes. Rape fantasies are common. ...

It has nothing to do with porn being about "bad" sex (whatever that means) it is because Lust is one of the 7 sins. One of the ten commandments is to not covet your neighbor's wife.And the new testament talks about not falling to temptation.
So you aren't supposed to lust, or be tempted, or covet the lovely naked actors in porn. THAT is what its about.
Or at least that is what the men in control want you to think.

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Hognoxious]

Indeed. IIRC high church had Latin (& Greek) even after the left-footers dropped it.

All your favourite smells and bells with none of that popery and bead-jiggling!

Re:It's a Catholiban terrorist dictatorship

[Sigg3.net]

Right now, who would want to eat pizza at your place?

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just encourage people to stare at public porn fiends? I mean, looking at porn in public is gross and weird. This is just one of those things that takes care of itself, though, you know?

Re:Why not...

[serviscope_minor]

Why not just encourage people to stare at public porn fiends? I mean, looking at porn in public is gross and weird. This is just one of those things that takes care of itself, though, you know?

Indeed. Looking at internet porn in public is no different than 20 years ago the grubby be-mackintoshed guy "reading" a dirty magazing in public. It's gross and weird and people like that were generally dealt with just fine.

It's a social problem (if it is really a problem at all---I'm sure the scale has been exaggerated) and needs a social solition.

"'ello 'ello 'ello what's going on 'ere then?"

"It's OK, officer, you see I downloaded these at home, not on the public wifi. In fact my wifi isn't even on!"

"I see sir. Make sure you only watch those ones."

"Would it be OK if I downloaded some new ones over my private 3G modem"

"Would it be over the public wifi?"

"No..."

"OK, carry on then sir."

Re:You can ban public wifi porn but you can't enfo

[tehcyder]

Because i'll still masturbate in the starbucks bathroom to 2girls1cup and there aint shit you can do about it.

Yeah! Fight the power!

"Think Of The Children!"

[StoneyMahoney]

The top trump rallying cry of those with no regard for anyone else's freedom. While I support the prevention of children accessing porn, I have greater support for maintaining cultural freedom for the majority adult population.

Imposing access controls (administered by who?) differentiated between two groups (on what criteria, exactly?) across all public networks (enforced by what means and deterrents?) will have huge costs (economic, cultural and social) that a technically and morally ignorant special interest group are trying to get the rest of us to pay for. (Profit!)

Ooooo-kay, that made me sound like a libertarian wingnut, but I'm seeing a pattern in these incidents now. As society progresses technologically and culturally, someone (eg: Mary Whitehouse) decides that something should be done to curtail the collateral damage of it's excesses. The actions taken are always overly broad and cause lots of collateral damage themselves. Someone else (eg: Mark Kermode) then has to undo the original cause of the damage and clean up the mess. The primary enabler of this cycle is politicians grandstanding for re-election. I'm looking at you, Cameron!

Thinking of the children a lot, Prime Minister?

[Opportunist]

Then you're a pedo.

That old excuse.

[cgimusic]

Oh it's the old "people might accidentally go to porn sites" excuse. Is this a particularly common occurrence? Has anyone here gone to a site and misspelled the name and ended up at a porn site?

Re:That old excuse.

[niftydude]

Oh it's the old "people might accidentally go to porn sites" excuse. Is this a particularly common occurrence? Has anyone here gone to a site and misspelled the name and ended up at a porn site?

I did once at work! Wanted to go to dictionary.com, but accidentally typed in dictoinary.com. Pop-ups with breasts were coming up everywhere. Both my boss and my boss's boss were standing behind me at the time... Turns out that kind of domain misspelling is often registered by unscrupulous operators.

But I can't say that it's a common enough occurrence that mandating massive amounts of infrastructure is indicated.

Re:That old excuse.

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Had a similar experience but I was looking for a solution to a MS access error message and clicked on a link that appeared to have a discussion or solution for it and instead up pops porn. Bad thing was my female boss was behind me but it was a small company and I hit back immediately. She asked what I was doing and I showed her the search, the snippet google provided, and then clicked again to show that I wasn't out looking for porn.

Wow! Slashdot really loves it porn!

[91degrees]

Is it really that much of a surprise that people don't think the ability to watch porn in public is not a fundamental protected right outside the US?

Re:Wow! Slashdot really loves it porn!

[serviscope_minor]

Is it really that much of a surprise that people don't think the ability to watch porn in public is not a fundamental protected right outside the US?

No, mostly because there are plenty of narcissicistic bigoted prudes who like nothing to enforce their backwards perverse and deeply broken "morals" on to others because they like the sense of righteous power it gives them.

Re:Porn is a waste of bandwidth..

[Anonymous Coward]

and largely copyright infringing and where its property paid for has negative implication for the balance of payments.

NB. From a non-American perspective - Damn but the US geeks like their guns and porn.

Do people look at porn in public ?

[Alain Williams]

Not that I have noticed. I will not pretend that I deliberately look at what is on other people's screens, but I have not seen anything. So if someone is looking at smut in public, but no one knows, what harm is being done ?

Is Cameron going to announce that people must not read playboy in a public place ? What would be the point, it is not a problem, so why fix it ? Oh: I see, this will appeal to those Torygraph & Daily Fail readers who have not yet come to terms with their own sexuality or have their minds infected with religious memes, so he will garner a few more votes. Others, like me, will soon forget this stupidity. On that basis I doubt that it will become law.

Re:Do people look at porn in public ?

[VortexCortex]

I agree, but you don't even need to pull out the physical analogues (nudie mags), you can just say: Well, what if they have a saved smut images and videos on their laptop / mobile phone. Can't they just pull those right up and look at them anytime anywhere? WIFI be damned, the censorship law does absolutely nothing. Hell, you could put your smart-phone in your pants, snap a shot, and pull it back out with porn on it.

Hell ditch ALL the tech: what's to keep folks from being lewd right there in public without even needing pictures or printouts?! What are you going to do if orgies break out in the streets?! Castrate EVERYONE! Including the Kids! It's the only way to be SAFE from PORN!!!

Guh, what a daft git Cameron is. Whatever indecency law that prevents folks from whipping out their cocks and having a wank any time they please in public already has you covered when it comes to free public WIFI porn on laptops.

Good clean wifi?

[sevenisloud]

“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.”

What on earth is good clean wifi? The wording here suggests that he thinks simply allowing porn is going to make it flash up on peoples' screens.

Re:Good clean wifi?

[Anonymous Coward]

The wording here suggests that he thinks simply allowing porn is going to make it flash up on peoples' screens.

No.

That's maybe what he says, but he's a skilled Tory politician, so that's probably not what he really thinks. (I haven't got a conspiracy theory handy to guess *what* he really thinks, btw).

When politicians say things in public, it's a mistake to assume that they're just being stupid or ignorant; usually they want to evoke a particular response in their electorate. That's what skilled politicians *do*.
That their words have nothing to do with reality (e.g. in this case, are people really watching porn in public cafés in the UK? I've never seen that, do you think it is common enough to be a problem for public decency?), is immaterial: as long as the words evoke the correct response in the electorate sub-group that the words are targeted at.

Re:Good clean wifi?

[jbeaupre]

What on earth is good clean wifi?

It's the same as regular wifi, but without the naughty bits.

People In Glass Houses...

[StoneyMahoney]

FTFY:

Most Americans only know about Europe what is spoon-fed by their lunatic-friendly media and their corporate-run education systems. Their government loves to tell it's people how backward the rest of the world is because it allows them to advance their own extreme left and extreme right agendas. That's not a new phenomenon: politicians and militarists have been telling Americans how lucky they are not to be in Europe for nearly 200 years (just as billions of Europeans were looking at each other with confused looks on their faces, asking each other "Is he really talking about us?" and then pissing themselves laughing.)

Here's a quote from a famous American "politician":

“Because European countries now resolve differences through negotiation and consensus, there's sometimes an assumption that the entire world functions in the same way. But let us never forget ... beyond Europe's borders, in a world where oppression and violence are very real, liberation is still a moral goal, and freedom and security still need defenders.”

It's scary to think that a large fraction of American politicians think and talk pretty much the same way today.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[stenvar]

So you're saying that Bush's quote is wrong?

“Because European countries now resolve differences through negotiation and consensus, there's sometimes an assumption that the entire world functions in the same way. But let us never forget ... beyond Europe's borders, in a world where oppression and violence are very real, liberation is still a moral goal, and freedom and security still need defenders.”

You're saying that Europeans are not using negotiation and consensus to resolve their differences? That beyond Europe's borders, the world is not violent and full of totalitarian governments? Really, I'm trying to understand what part of Bush's quote you find objectionable.

(The first part of your message just demonstrates your complete ignorance. "Billions of Europeans"? Corporate-run education systems?)

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Cenan]

As apparent from 50+ years of foreign policy fail, I'd say it is about time to abandon the meme that everything can be solved with guns and enough boots on the ground. It didn't work in Korea, It didn't work in Vietnam, it didn't work in Iraq the first time, it didn't work in Iraq the second time, it didn't work in Afghanistan (not even for the Soviets). How is that not sinking in yet? How fucking stupid do you have to be to not get that?

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[TrollstonButtersbean]

Guns and boots on the ground don't solve everything, but dismissing the aggressive approach to aggressive countries is counterproductive.

Third world countries are generally third world countries because they are prone to uncivilized and backwards politics and agendas.

If you don't keep an eye on them, they not only will tend to strong arm tactics towards their people, but externalize the source of the problems to first world countries leading to aggression. Like North Korea did little more than a week ago, like Libya once was fond of doing, etc.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Cenan]

Enough guns and boots can overthrow any regime, but that doesn't solve the problem. Answering aggression with more aggression is going to cause even more aggression (insurgents for instance). If you really want to solve the problem in a third world country, not only do you have to dispose of the ruling class/despot, you also have to educate the majority so that the country as a whole does not relapse.

You cannot expect swift application of bullets to be able to deliver the same kind of social evolution that has taken hundreds of years for the western world. This is not some kind of recipe that you can just point to and say "hey look, that's how society is supposed to work, now implement it". Education, information and negotiation is key. Once people understand why change needs to happen, you can apply guns at will. The people might even help you.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[serviscope_minor]

You're saying that Europeans are not using negotiation and consensus to resolve their differences? That beyond Europe's borders, the world is not violent and full of totalitarian governments? Really, I'm trying to understand what part of Bush's quote you find objectionable.

Comprehenshion fail, I'm afraid.

This is the point of contention:

an assumption that the entire world functions in the same way.

That outside Europe, negotiation doesn't work and violence is therefore necessary.

We tried that in Europe. We fouled up so badly that then WWII happened. Apparently we learned our lessons for the time being.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[BasilBrush]

The first part of your message just demonstrates your complete ignorance.

You half understood it. It was a satire of your original message which revealed you as an America nationalist with complete ignorance of Europe.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Wait...WHAT? Yes, it did work in South Korea, they currently have a democratic government and one of the most booming economies in the world. That wouldn't have been possible without US involvement. And they aren't going to become hostile towards the US any time soon, and the goals of the US were achieved there, so mission accomplished.

Revisionist history much?

There was only one attempt on Iraq (the first Gulf War we only intended to protect Kuwait...and that was quite a success) and we don't really know yet whether or not that one attempt has the long term desired result.

Same thing with Afghanistan, though Afghanistan looks less likely to succeed than Iraq.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Pax681]

The first part of your message just demonstrates your complete ignorance.

You half understood it. It was a satire of your original message which revealed you as an America nationalist with complete ignorance of Europe.

BOOM! BOOM! Basil! :P

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[AlphaWolf_HK]

The US occupied Germany for quite some time after WWII. Boots were definitely on the ground.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvcf9DKSpPw

"You are in enemy territory."
"Make that next war impossible."
"Observe their local laws."
"German people are not our friends."

Apparently the US took that attitude after leaving Germany early, and that turned out to be a mistake.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Cenan]

You sound like someone who only has a single source of news to follow if you actually buy that bullshit. Success is not defined by politicians or soldiers, it's defined by the people who has to live on the soil you bombed. Your nationalist interests mean jack shit to these people. You may hear some politician recite, over and over again, that the mission has been accomplished, but that's only true if you bend the meaning of "success" and "mission".

There never was a mission, there never was a clear definition of success. There was a will to lash out and to look strong. But we're talking about real people here, with real lives being wasted to stroke your national ego. It's really easy to sit in your armchair and spew garbage like that.

If the mission succeeded in South Korea, they wouldn't have a psychopathic neighbor with nukes right now. That they havn't fired any of those yet has nothing to do with the solution 50 odd years ago.

The war in Vietnam did jack shit for the Vietnamese population. It did kill off a generation of American and Vietnamese young, for no fucking reason. The insane amounts of bombs dropped and bullets fired in that jungle did nothing to improve the condition of the people. The country fell along with it's big brother, the Soviet Union, due to economic pressure, not flying bullets.

The first invasion of Iraq was an utter failure for the people there. If Kuwait didn't have oil it would be a province of Iraq right now, and you would have fuck all clue where to point on a map to find it. The second attempt has also failed so miserably that when bombs go off in the streets, nobody reports on it anymore. That's how much fail it is.

Oh Afghanistan. Not only has it failed, it has failed so monumentally that the occupying forces are running for the hills, spewing "they can take care of themselves now, honest" bullshit. The only thing achieved by that invasion is creating a huge fucking blank spot on the globe where militias can thrive unchecked. The people of Afghanistan? Who gives a fuck, they're not American.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[StoneyMahoney]

I just have to check, I'd assumed you were American before, but are you really a USA resident? Because if you are, I despair for your political system if you are truly representative of the political understanding and ability to consider and form an argument of a typical American.

Please understand, that's not a personal flame against you and I don't presume to be any kind of genius on current American politics myself, but your attempt to set up such a painfully obvious straw man argument while ignoring and denying everything else in that reply is genuinely concerning. Is this really what Americans deem to be an actual intellectual engagement these days?

I'm really hoping you're just screwing with me, the world is ****ed if you aren't.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[StoneyMahoney]

God, I'm glad someone else explained it, I'd get modded flamebait/troll into next week if I'd done that myself. Plus I could've done 3000 words (at least) on the comparison between Hitler and Bush that probably wouldn't have been read past "...comparing Hitler and Bush..." by the over-sensitive 'Murican political crowd.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[StoneyMahoney]

A ex-RAF regiment friend of mine and I have come to the conclusion that Afghanistan is where nations go to lose wars - including the Afghans.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Afghanistan is where nations go to lose wars

It isn't called "the graveyard of empires" for nothing.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give him a break on the billions, it's not easy learning to do intuitive conversions accurately to degenerate number systems.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[dadelbunts]

You are right. You need a shitload of bomb and planes. Guns and boots dont work when fighting against guerilla tactics in easy to ambush places. Carpet bombing the shit out of places untill they are rubble on the otherhand, always works. You will have to rebuild said ruble. But it works.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[stenvar]

You cannot expect swift application of bullets to be able to deliver the same kind of social evolution that has taken hundreds of years for the western world.

What makes you think Americans "expect" to be able to force social evolution? Most US military action has had other reasons: halt a genocide, protect the strategic interests of an ally, restore a friendly regime, protect US economic interests, prevent communism or fascism from spreading, etc. But once the US is involved in a nation, it might as well try to democratize it.

Education, information and negotiation is key.

And that's why the US has been investing tons of money in education, information, and negotiation for a century. But sometimes that fails, the US sees its interests threatened, and it intervenes.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[stenvar]

Is this really what Americans deem to be an actual intellectual engagement these days?

No, not at all. An actual intellectual engagement would require an educated and intelligent person to engage with, as well as a substantive argument to respond to. All of that is lacking in this case.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Kuwait didn't have oil, Saddam Hussein would never have decided to invade it.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Cenan]

What makes you think Americans "expect" to be able to force social evolution? Most US military action has had other reasons: halt a genocide, protect the strategic interests of an ally, restore a friendly regime, protect US economic interests, prevent communism or fascism from spreading, etc. But once the US is involved in a nation, it might as well try to democratize it.

I don't think they expect it. I don't believe it when they say they do either. The person I replied to expected it.

Halting a genocide is a very noble goal, yet so rarely achieved. And so spottily applied. If that was anywhere near the real motivation we'd see alot more US/NATO/UN military intervention. The only time it almost actually worked, the intervention happened in the Balkans, was very late, and the population was already educated. And people had already died in droves waiting for the western world to act. That it was so scarily close to both Turkey and Europe was just a bonus.

The overall motivation is closer to protecting strategic or economic interests, directly or indirectly. And that is the problem I was pointing out. Guns are really good at enforcing your will or forcing somebody to do something. The key word here is force. When it comes down to actually improving the living conditions for the people that were "saved", military action falls short.

Ever wonder why everybody just seemed to hold their breath when the Arab Spring swept across northern Africa? I'll give you a hint: the people in charge knew damn well that their motivations for "saving" people all those other times were completely bullshit, and it didn't work. Now here was multiple populations that actually wanted change, by themselves. And everybody stood by and watched. They bombed Libya into a bloody mess, but again, there was Oil and strategic interests at play. The population had nothing at all to do with that decision.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Third world countries are generally third world countries because they are prone to uncivilized and backwards politics and agendas.

LOL. Here goes a deep thought.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[StoneyMahoney]

True, your inability to defend your original argument or comprehend the context of a satirical rebuttal clearly demonstrates your lack of intelligence and education.

If you had bothered to look into the context in which Hitler made that statement you quoted, you'd realise what a total jackass you've made of yourself.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[stenvar]

The overall motivation is closer to protecting strategic or economic interests

You say that as if it's a deep, dark secret, but it's not. We pay a boatload of money for our military, and we expect it to deliver security and economic benefits to the US. Improving other people's living conditions is only a means to that end: it means more people to trade with, fewer places that want to attack us, and more places to travel to. And most of US intervention is economic, diplomatic, policing, and peace keeping anyway; military force is used only as a last resort.

For example, the US judged (correctly, it turned out) that it was in its own security and economic interest to rebuild Germany as a democratic nation, as opposed to splitting it up between the victors of WWII. That decision wasn't done for the benefit of Germans or even Europeans, it was done for the benefit of Americans. It's the same with Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and all the other places the US military has intervened.

Ever wonder why everybody just seemed to hold their breath when the Arab Spring swept across northern Africa? I'll give you a hint: the people in charge knew damn well that their motivations for "saving" people all those other times were completely bullshit, and it didn't work.

Just because a lot of media and progressives in both the US and Europe have delusions about glorious revolutions and the possibility of rapid social change doesn't mean everybody shares in those delusions. US politicians generally seem to be pretty realistic in their assessments (although both Bush and Obama have been real losers).

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[stenvar]

True, your inability to defend your original argument or comprehend the context of a satirical rebuttal

You can't satirize facts, and what I stated was fact, not opinion. Maybe you think that some of my facts are wrong, if so feel free to point out what. Are European education systems not primarily government-run, with government-designed curricula? Does Europe not have large networks of government-linked "public" television systems? Are anti-American messages not common among European politicians, in particular among fascist, communist and socialist parties? Have European monarchs and dictators not been traditionally anti-American? Which of these statements exactly do you believe is wrong?

If you had bothered to look into the context in which Hitler made that statement you quoted, you'd realise what a total jackass you've made of yourself.

If you have a point to make, make it.

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[Hognoxious]

You will have to rebuild said ruble.

In Soviet Russia...

Re:People In Glass Houses...

[dadelbunts]

i lold

Calling Mary Whitehouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Smut-master in chief from the days before the Internet.

Surely its up to the location owner/manager?

[Anonymous Coward]

If (for instance) the cafe owner or manager objects to the internet habits of his or her patrons then its up to them to approach and intimate their objection, and withdraw the invitation to the patron to be in that venue. If the screen can't be seen by him, or other patrons then whats the problem? No different to if a customer was making offensive remarks to others, or flinging cutlery on the floor.

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[Spottywot]

I remember trying to research into prehistoric music at college and I couldn't get on any sites that had the word homo in, ie Homo-sapiens, homo-erectus etc. Truly sad. Also in response to the person who suggested it would be helpful to stop children accidentally watching porn, it doesn't really happen, sure it probably happens on rare occasions, but not enough to be worthy of a sensational headline in the Daily Mail, let alone legislation.

Define public wifi

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you were staying in a hotel? Does the wireless service they offer there count as public wifi?

This is just another case of government ineffectiveness via non-big-issue distractions.

Re:Define public wifi

[oobayly]

Yes, but only to stop you getting free porn on the internet so that you have to pay them for access to the adult channels.

In general..

[intellitech]

Technically illiterate people shouldn't make policy decisions regarding technology.

Re:In general..

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately they have to, because the people smart enough to understand technology are so socially retarded they think "You can't stop it, so don't even try" is a valid conclusion regarding social policy decisions.

You get one of these people on a council and they end up getting so sick of the rest of the councillors rolling their eyes at them that they leave and claim it's because everyone else is an idealogue.

Meanwhile the people with actual life experience get on with consulting experts where necessary and implementing a system they know is imperfect but which can go some way towards fixing the actual perceived problem.

Welcome to the real world, where there's a reason that most politicians and philosophers are over 40.

Re:In general..

[cheekyjohnson]

Meanwhile the people with actual life experience get on with consulting experts where necessary and implementing a system they know is imperfect but which can go some way towards fixing the actual perceived problem.

And in turn, they help the government censor information and ban content. How noble of them!

I personally think "do nothing" is a far better solution as it doesn't strip people of their rights.

its a defintion

[Rainwulf]

define.. unacceptable.
and then. filter it.
do you filter on keyword?
or not, what else?

Re:its a defintion

[91degrees]

Unacceptable - base it on the reasonable man test. Most people will agree on what's unacceptable in this specific instance.

Filter based on a blocking list. These are widely available commercially, and based on community standards.

Re:its a defintion

[Rainwulf]

so who are you paying to pick what's acceptable in this modern world?

Re:its a defintion

[91degrees]

A reasonable person of average intelligence would be able to identify the sort of material that most people would find offensive.

I realise it's difficult to understand the viewpoint of other people if you have low level autism, but allow me to assure you, that most neurotypicals are actually quite able to do this.

Some merit

[Anonymous Coward]

Spending a little children's charity and tax payer money on developing a "safe-browsing" filter, accessible to all, compatible with the most popular web filter software, would get a fair amount of support. Having a legal requirement for public WiFi that uses a filter to state this fact clearly would be important.

However, attempting to place a blanket, non-optional filter across all public WiFi is ham-fisted, insultingly authoritarian legislation which, alas, has become typical in the nanny state.

internet marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

http://internetmarketing.vn/

Personally

[bluegutang]

I'm happy this is being discussed publicly rather than being implemented unilaterally. Hopefully the same will occur if there is a push to block other controversial sites. If I want a certain form of entertainment (like porn) I can pay a little and get it elsewhere. But there is no good excuse for a public network to block, say, sites of unpopular political movements.

Hot old men at http://www.gov.uk/

[Anonymous Coward]

Who decides what is porn?
Block it all !!!!

Re:Hot old men at http://www.gov.uk/

[azalin]

Who decides what is porn? Block it all !!!!

That should work pretty well, after all if you'd remove all content that is offensive to someone, we're down to a few technical documentations and even more boring stuff.
The whole world is offensive, learn to deal with it.

What about violence?

[Xeno-Genesis.com]

Violence is horrible, why not first forbidding violence and gruesome images of people being killed or suffering at the hands of aggressors?. Later we may discuss about the merits of forbidding images of pretty nude people engaging in a pleasurable harmless activity like sex.

For the record, I don't support any kind of censoring. The coment above is just sarcasm.

/facepalm

[Krneki]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_tunneling#SSH_tunneling

Re:/facepalm

[SuricouRaven]

So they'll block SSH too. Actually, I imagine quite a few public hotspots already block everything but http, SSL and perhaps pop3 - easiest way to make sure no-one runs a bittorrent client.

Re:/facepalm

[Krneki]

Unless they want to block the whole encrypted traffic you can't control SSH tunnelling (I can host it on any port I want).

Re:/facepalm

[SuricouRaven]

Sure you can. Easy:
1. Block everything except port 80.
2. Redirect port 80 to local HTTP proxy.
3. Disable CONNECT command on proxy.

You can still fight your way through that with hacky encapsulating packets inside HTTP requests, but performance will suck.

I'm reminded of something...

[Anonymous Coward]

...go search for "PORN ON A PLANE" by TheAmazingAtheist on YouTube.

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[Anonymous Coward]

... couldn't get on any sites ...

For a brief period, the council library computers had a child-safe filter. It meant one couldn't use the word sextant. Then there are also those terms with the word sex: sexual assault, sexually transmitted disease, etc.

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[Rufty]

Penistone, Scunthorpe and Clitheroe. But Milton Keynes was OK???!?

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

As every TCP header has a PR0N flag it's a matter of setting up an iptables rule:
iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags PR0N PR0N -j DROP

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your "TCP-packets with pr0n flag" blocking and raise with a "pr0n-over-UDP"...

Excellent

[lightknight]

I can see that he's this generation's Marie Antoinette. "Derp, derp, no pr0n from wifi hotspot, do it because I'm a political bigwig!" "My lord, it's impossible to censor anything without whitelisting..." "Just do it, DERP!" 10 weeks later. "OMG, I can't get anywhere on these hotpots, WTF did you guys do?" "Only what you asked us to." "I didn't ask you to do this! Fix it!" "I shall have the elves get to work on it right away sire, but it may require one of the Crown Jewels..." "Umm...what?" "Nothing" 10 weeks later. "OMG, people can get to pr0n sites!" "Umm, h@x0ors?" "Ah."

Re:Excellent

[JasterBobaMereel]

Marie Antoinette was uneducated spoilt and not expected to show any intelligence

David Cameron has a first class honours degree from Oxford, is an ex company Director, and has many highly paid advisers .... so should know better

Think of the children!

[Thetundraterror]

Won't somebody please think of the children!?

A million voices call out predictably...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, really get over your "but DNS fiddling will get around this!"/"encryption!/vpn!" every time something like this pops up.

The legislation is an attempt to limit or restrict this type of content in public and not make it absolutely impossible to access by any devious means. In the UK Vodafone (presumably others) do this for mobile dongles by trying to block dodgy content (which is opt-in). Presumably this is a best attempt approach to do similar for public wi-fi. Not make it impossible.

Yes, any attempt to add a limitation (filtering, drm, etc.) is avoidable but that's not the point. You can - if so minded - use a public wi-fi hotspot if/when this become law to get at whatever you want. This stops access for the 99.9% of people who might otherwise not be bothered.

Just because it's never going to be 100% doesn't mean there's no benefit in applying simple mechanisms that will work for most people most of the time.

Re:A million voices call out predictably...

[cheekyjohnson]

But in this case, I believe there are absolutely zero benefits. Why would anyone think such a proposal is anything other than moronic?

Re:A million voices call out predictably...

[mattventura]

The issue isn't so much that blocking is ineffective, but that fact that they would even think of mandating the blocking of porn in the first place.

The Vatican disagrees

[Anonymous Coward]

http://torrentfreak.com/priests-watch-dvd-screeners-while-pirates-download-filth-in-the-vatican-130407/

In *public* they claim to be anti porn, in private, the opposite is true. Politicians might pretend to be shocked by porn, but all of the men and quite a few of the women are porn users.

Porn is public? Where kids can access it? Not so much support agreed. But a government mandated porn filter at the time when they're trying to snoop on the internet just in case you commit a future crime? No way will that get support.

It comes across as a wedge issue, something they can insert a wedge and keep driving it in.

I'm sure if the UK Police get their snoopers charter, any politician who disagrees with them, will find their porn surfing history handed to Mr Murdochs papers and I'm damn sure every single one of them has visited a porn site of their own free will.

Re:The Vatican disagrees

[Pax681]

I'm sure if the UK Police get their snoopers charter, any politician who disagrees with them, will find their porn surfing history handed to Mr Murdochs papers and I'm damn sure every single one of them has visited a porn site of their own free will.

No such thing as "The UK Police" you have the various regional police in England and Wales, you have the recently unified Scottish police service now known as Police Scotland and you have the PSNI(Police Service Northern Ireland. England and Wales are under a single legal system, Scotland and NI have separate and distinct legal systems.
There has never and will never be a unified "UK" Police service

Re:The Vatican disagrees

[Hognoxious]

There has never and will never be a unified "UK" Police service

True. And if such a thing came into being, even informally or unofficially, this wouldn't be their headquarters at all. No no no.

Re:The Vatican disagrees

[Pax681]

LOL.. you do realise that Scottish and English Freemasonry are also separate and distinct?. Both have their own Grand Grand Lodge.
Scottish Lodges have a humorously and healthy laugh at English lodges as ALL the regalia is the same everywhere as is the ritual. whereas in Scotland each lodge has it's own regalia design and version of the ritual. In Scotland the 4th(Mark) Degree is done in the blue Lodge, in England it's a separate appendant lodge organisation. In Scotland there is no Oath to The Queen/King.. in England there most certainly is.
Then we get to the varius orders and such other than the blue lodge such as the royal arch and so on.. In Scotland the degrees are worked differently and fully. Not so much in England when they do Scottish Rite rituals(as opposed to York Rite) whereby the English are, in many cases, conferred degrees instead of actually going through the ritual... this due to the "jacobite flavour" of them.. this was not to Hanoverian tastes way back when and thus it was changed there.
It always makes me laugh my balls off when some tin foil hat merchant comes up with more nonsense about Freemasonry and this is one such occasion..... You see in Scotland we didn't have the big bad problems that the Grand Lodge of England had with the police in Freemasonry and the allegation and actual corruption for which London flying squad became very famous in the 70's and 80's.
Thus in answer to your silliness... there NEVER will be a single UK police force, not EVER and this is mostly due to the guarantees set up in the acxt of the union which guarantees the continuation of the Scottish legal system and with that Scottish police only within Scotland, albeit recently for the likes of the G8 of a few years ago, reinforcements were drafted in from England for that. Those guys who came up left a bad taste and earned a terrible reputation due to the way they treated people and spoke to people which is what actually kicked off the trouble(it was specifically the Manchester police verbally and in a couple of cases physically being abusive to locals and attempting to "kettle" people. In Scotland there is a very and i mean VERY different approach to policing even when i comes to protests etc. As was made abundantly clear when i was helping to blockade Faslane naval base, the home of the UK trident missiles), the police were calm, polite, humorous and it all went off in gentile fashion. I got arrested along with 44 others and we were all treated very respectfully by the police, unlike how that generally goes in England as i know from experience.
Also with the referendum on Scottish independence next year and there only needing to be a 5% swing in the vote to attain an Yes vote then this further reinforces the no chance factor of a UK police force.
to sum up.. you talk pants and know bugger all about Freemasonry and the major...MAJOR differences between the Scottish and English Fraternities..... yeah.. plural.. are they are different organisations.
:) |o|

Re:The Vatican disagrees

[Hognoxious]

LOL.. you do realise that Scottish and English Freemasonry are also separate and distinct?

Well they try to make it look that way.

Both have their own Grand Grand Lodge.
Scottish Lodges have a humorously and healthy laugh at English lodges as ALL the regalia is the same everywhere as is the ritual. whereas in Scotland each lodge has it's own regalia design and version of the ritual. BLA BLA BLA

If that was true you wouldn't be allowed to reveal it. If you end up dangling from a bridge don't come crying to me.

P.S. You might want to work on your use of conjunctions, apostrophes and capitalization, brother. Oh, and paragraphs.

Re:The Vatican disagrees

[Pax681]

isn't it hilarious how NON MASONS like to think they know more about Freemasonry than people to actually ARE masons? it's fucking brilliantly amusing!
the only secrets in Freemasonry are the "means of recognition", which are.. handshakes, passwords, certain stances and certain signs along with certain parts of the ritual.. and that's it.
ALL UGLE blue lodges have the same regalia and all Grand lodge of Scotland Blue lodges... have their own design and there is absolutely NOTHING secret about that. In Scotland we find it hilarious as it's all the same and thus once you have visited one English lodge you have pretty much seem them ALL as it's all the same ,same same. In Scotland there is something quite funky about seeing the little differences in the ritual in each lodge.
It's patently obvious you think you are an expert but let me tell you, you are far from it..... all i can smell is conspiracy theory craptastica. EVERY Grand lodge , such as Scotland and England is a separate and distinct authority. there is no world governing body, to be quite frank i could NEVER see any Grand lodge giving up it's "Sovereignty" as it were to any other body.
Much like in america, each state has it's own Grand Lodge and i guarantee you that there would be no Grand lodge there that would cede it's authority to another states lodge or come under another lodge.... there are exception and oddities such as those lodges set up there under the auspices of the Grand lodge of Scotland or the UGLE. those however i would say with certainty are a minuscule exception.
But hey... you MUST know better than me, i've only been a mason for 22 years and been to lodges all over Scotland,England, Colorado,NJ,NY,Malta,Portugal,Germany and Sweden and I patently know nothing eh?
You make me laugh a lot to be quite frank... there is a vast difference between what you think you know and what actually IS.
P.S. you might want to work on what reality actually is,and facts and truth. Oh and paranoia . Also note for someone with dyslexia i do quite well thanks very much ;)

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[AmiMoJo]

Maybe instead of blocking the whole of Sussex we should be educating children to be sensible online and deal with the real world that is full of borderline pornographic images on TV and in advertising anyway.

Re:Marie Antoinette

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can see that he's this generation's Marie Antoinette..."

Let them eat ____

I'll leave you to Insert your own ending (Oo'er missus!)

Re:No it is not

[miknix]

I've been wWatching p0rn si8nce my 13 yewars old and Im perfwectly fine!

OPlease don5t minnd my spwelling mistakes, my otyher hand is busy...

And ?

[Stu101]

From my point of view (and it is only that!) I don't see what is so wrong with banning it from public wifi spots. Two things occur to me:

Firstly, it means less issues with people who don't know better browsing for it in Starbucks for example.

Secondly, if you want it, go home and download or if you are really stuck, just buy a personal hotspot thingy from your provider.

Lastly (ok that makes 3) it probably reduces your susceptibility to lawsuits (Oh my little johnny say a nipple and is now traumatised, show me the money) as the providers have made a reasonable effort to keep it clean.

Re:And ?

[10101001 10101001]

From my point of view (and it is only that!) I don't see what is so wrong with banning it from public wifi spots.

How about, "It's none of the government's business what I do when it comes to my wifi spot, public or private, unless *I* am doing something illegal; and just making anything I do illegal doesn't count."

Two things occur to me:

Firstly, it means less issues with people who don't know better browsing for it in Starbucks for example.

So, we need to protect children and adults from a lack of their own common sense? How about, if you browse porn in Starbucks and it disturbs other customers, you get kicked out? Because there's a lot more than porn that'll disturb other customers--loud music, racist websites, you name it. Second, you don't need wifi to watch a porno--they have these magical things called "DVDs" which have been known to play video (oh, but who pays for porn?). Finally, there's already laws for corrupting the youth which are either generally applicable or not based on the intent of the people involved; if the issue is children being left unsupervised using the internet, regardless of whether it's at home or in Starbucks, that's an issue of child neglect and should be dealt with at that level, not by turning every public wifi owner into a nanny.

Secondly, if you want it, go home and download or if you are really stuck, just buy a personal hotspot thingy from your provider.

Great. So because there's alternatives, we should allow for absurd or capricious laws. I guess if the Prime Minster wants to ban hopscotch on the sidewalk, he can, because there's always parks. And if he wants to ban crossing the street on foot (but skateboards are okay) on even numbered roads, that's okay too. Sure, he and Parliament might have the power, but that doesn't make it any more correct or tolerable.

Lastly (ok that makes 3) it probably reduces your susceptibility to lawsuits (Oh my little johnny say a nipple and is now traumatised, show me the money) as the providers have made a reasonable effort to keep it clean.

It's the internet; there's really no end to where any person could make a "reasonable effort" to stop the flood of information. Beyond that, what's a "reasonable effort"? Paying some 3rd party corporation with a filtering list to take the responsibility--in name only--by making some vague appeal to authority? How is it that if little johnny sees a nipple, the public wifi hotspot has to make a "reasonable effort" to have prevent it, yet somehow little johnny's parents aren't on the hook? And if little johnny's parents took the "reasonable effort", then wouldn't that inherently clear the public wifi hotspot owner?

If anything, a general disclaimer that "the internet is provided uncensored and you're on your own" would seem to put public wifi hotspots off the hook more than a, "well, we tried to keep the porn out, so please don't sue us if we failed" which they most certainly will.

Re:And ?

[cheekyjohnson]

From my point of view (and it is only that!) I don't see what is so wrong with banning it from public wifi spots.

So you don't see a problem with government censorship, then.

All of this can be handled by the individual businesses, and if they don't want to, that's their choice.

Re:And ?

[Anonymous Coward]

if it is banned, then there is no argument that you should have filtered it.

Re:And ?

[SuricouRaven]

I see two:
1. It raises the cost of running a wifi hotspot. You can't just grab a copy of Net Nanny for this: You need a multi-user-licensed network filter. Those things come on subscription. For a small, independant retailer that price can be unacceptable. So this one again tilts the field in favor of large businesses over small ones.
2. The filters are not really reliable. Even the best-configured filter is going to let some porn through, and block some legitimate content. For example, I tried to read this article at work earlier today, and our filter did the content-analysis thing and classified the article itsself as porn.

Re:And ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zerothly, there's someone deciding what exactly is porn and what isn't and that dude or organization has plenty of unchecked power. But hey, nevermind that.

Define: Porn

[RobertLTux]

The biggest problem is how do you actually define "Porn"?? (and no punting with "i know it when i see it")

as long as "reasonable efforts" are good enough (don't try to get every bit just the most obvious 95%)

Ban religion and military recruiting!

[Anonymous Coward]

If one ban is good then more bans is clearly better!

Porn is only first step

[plaukas pyragely]

Next will be "questionable" sites like erowid.org.

For all that mention

[Anonymous Coward]

For all that mention "people watching porn in starbucks", isn't this a starbucks issue, if they believe its such a problem and want to block it, shouldn't they implement the block? Its their wifi after all.

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[azalin]

In my opinion there is nothing wrong in blocking the whole of Sussex.

How to do it?

[poofmeisterp]

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.

Just ask China.

Re:How to do it?

[JasterBobaMereel]

China's works mainly on the principle not that it is hard to get around, but because of the consequences of getting caught doing so ...

Re:How to do it?

[poofmeisterp]

China's works mainly on the principle not that it is hard to get around, but because of the consequences of getting caught doing so ...

There's a start ;)

Shouldn't it be up to the providers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't it be up to the people providing the public wifi to decide what should be allowable on thier networks that they are paying for and allowing in thier establishments? If you don't like the idea that porn would be allowed to be surfed in a certian establishment don't go there.

Now that the UK economy is roaring under Cameron

[MSBob]

the prime minister can tend to more urgent issues like porn at Starbucks. Got it.

Retarded government

[Anonymous Coward]

The principle here might appear sound at first. A child has a wireless device, connects to unfiltered net. However, why not simple make it criminal to sell/give children wireless enabled devices? Or at least ones without filtering installed.

Re:Retarded government

[Entropius]

Why not realize that a child seeing porn is not a problem?

search results having porn

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a physicist, and was really amazed the first time ( not the second time ) I did a search for
"gravitational black hole theory".... silly me.

Thank goodness ...

[PPH]

... I can still whip out a copy of 'Jugs' magazine in my local coffee shop. Kids peering over my shoulder or not.

Just keep them off my lawn!

The way they want it to work

[badzilla]

They already have phase 1 of this in place, when you use 3G/mobile data. There is an automatic block on adult sites but this doesn't necessarily mean porn - half the internet is filtered out and it gets very annoying very quickly. Sites with no obvious "adult" nature are inaccessible until you agree to opt-in by allowing the cellphone company to bill a token sum to your credit card to prove you are over 18. Then all your problems go away.

And that is what they really want i.e. to be able to identify the user. Without that I would be just another anonymous prepaid. I'm sure the same will be along eventually for public wi-fi.

one again

[BeCre8iv]

our idiot leader wants to censor the internet with magic and kittens

First, evil bit, now

[TeknoHog]

Naughty bit.

Re:First, evil bit, now

[Entropius]

[insert crack about "toggling the naughty bits" here]

Re:No it is not

[ArcadeMan]

OPlease don5t minnd my spwelling mistakes, my otyher hand is busy...

Dude, seriously?

You can let go of the mouse when you type, the cursor won't go anywhere!

Re:No it is not

[omnichad]

Clearly you haven't learned in all this time how to put your hand in the center of the keyboard and type accurately one-handed.

Sure, the idea is fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

No porn from public WiFi hotspots, thats great when you think about coffee shops, etc., where you want to protect kids from potentially seeing this stuff.

However aren't there already public indecency laws that can be applied to people watching it in public? Why is there a need for a new law? Who is going to pay for the filtering software? Is this just some attempt to implement a filter "for the children!" that will eventually be applied to anything else, such as "We don't want kids to read about X Y or Z, that would be bad taste!"

It seems that once governments get these filters in place under the idea that they will protect children, they start using them to enforce other laws and/or censor anything that might not align with their 'good morals.'

UK government implements ISP porn ban... Oh, we can block The Pirate Bay now without too much overhead because these systems are already in place!

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[omnichad]

Wow...so no grammar sites (homophones), no dairy sites (homogenized milk is common)...of all the braindead filters.

All hail stenvar

[mypalmike]

It's about time someone recognized that stenvar, slashdot user number 2789879, is the aggregation of all American thought. Thanks for noticing.

Re:All hail stenvar

[StoneyMahoney]

I would say "My pleasure", but I'd be lying on many levels.

I saw porn when I was very young

[kawabago]

That's why I'm gay.

No porn on AMTRAK either!!!!!!

[tcheleao]

After online work on my Pacific surfliner trip
I decide to relax surfing some porn sites.....
On Amtrakconnect is a NO,NO,NO.........
It feels like Saudi Arabia......

I have to wonder if it's really necessary

[Alioth]

I have to wonder why it's really necessary to even consider mandating filtering on public WiFi connections. The vast majority of them are in public places, and I have *never ever* seen anyone browsing porn in a public space. The amount of people who would browse porn when random strangers can see what you're doing has to be pretty damn small. It seems like a lot of political hot air to try and solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Does this mean????

[Anonymous Coward]

No looking at pictures of the statue David in internet cafes? What about post modern cubist Rubenesque nudes?

No reading of illustrated medical texts?

No planning a vacation at a naturist reserve? Or even the Riviera?

Not watching The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo movie? The Swedish one of course...The USA one has that idiot pervasive unnecessarily loud sound track that completely drowns out the quieter dialog. STUPID!

& keep those old issues of National Geographic under brown paper! :-)

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[Cro Magnon]

I remember trying to research into prehistoric music at college and I couldn't get on any sites that had the word homo in, ie Homo-sapiens, homo-erectus etc. Truly sad.

Yeah, homo-erectus would trigger gay AND porn filters.

Re:No it is not

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been wWatching p0rn si8nce my 13 yewars old and Im perfwectly fine!

OPlease don5t minnd my spwelling mistakes, my otyher hand is busy...

You noticed this isn't Fapdot.org, right?

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"so that they are not going to see things they shouldn’t."

Maybe they shouldn't see the comments of the opposition party or random ads. Who knows what else little wanna be dictators like Cameron will consider 'things that you shouldn't see"?

Bus hotspots are good

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live, if I try to get to thepiratebay.com it comes up with a page explaining it's blocked by court order. I get straight in on open hotspot on a bus though.

Aha!

[DuranDuran]

Headline by Yoda written it is.

Re:Cue all the problems that AOL had when they tri

[Spottywot]

You'll be pleased to hear I didn't have any trouble researching Cro-Magnon sites.

Do as apk would do...

[Anonymous Coward]

... compulsory hosts file.

I'm big on anti-censorship...

[flayzernax]

But since its a public utility, I support their administration of it however they see fit. Hopefully communities have input and not just special interests over there in the UK...

No porn

[Anonymous Coward]

The headline reads as if the rumor went that they had proposed porn from public wifi hotspots but that the rumor turned out not to be true.

Public only?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why just public WiFi? Porn should be banned on all WiFi, do you want those naked pics going through the child's body as dirty encrypted radiation?
(ducks for cover)