In UK, Search Engines Urged To Block More Online Porn Sites

An anonymous reader writes "Search engines such as Google should do more to restrict access to online pornography, a government adviser on child internet safety has said. John Carr said increasing the number of sites automatically blocked by search engines would make it more difficult for paedophiles to get images of abuse. It comes after Mark Bridger was found guilty of the abduction and murder of five-year-old April Jones in Powys." It sounds like a continuation of the blocked-by-default porn white-listing plan that's been going around in the UK for a few years now.

Comments

Think of the children blah blah

[sl4shd0rk]

How about parents doing more to restrict their kids from getting into age-inappropriate things on the internet.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[alendit]

How about parents doing more to restrict their kids from getting into age-inappropriate things on the internet.

How do you imagine it? Sitting next to the kid and watching over her/his shoulder?

How about we grow up as a society and rely on education instead of prohibition? How about explaining to a child what porn is and how it relates to sex and leave her/him make decisions.

But no, it could be awkward, stressful and demand something like actual parenting. Forget it, censor this shit off my internets!

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[kasperd]

How about parents doing more to restrict their kids from getting into age-inappropriate things on the internet.

Yes, but there should be tools helping the parents in doing so.

The suggestion in the summary is mixing up two completely unrelated issues. Those issues must be addressed separately, otherwise we are going to end up with the wrong solution.

There may be people who do not want to see porn online and wish to be protected from that. That is fine, but it should be a voluntary decision. Unless the person is a minor, in which case it is the parents' decision. But in order to do this, you need to have the content classified. Now it boils down to who has to pay for maintaining this classification. You cannot just require the sites themselves to do that, because some of them will be outside your jurisdiction, and some of them may not have an interest in being correctly classified. Once you have the classification, getting it applied to the right set of people is not all that hard. But don't force it upon grown ups, who do not want it.

The other issue, which is completely unrelated, and should be treated as such, is the issue of child pornography. Many people are acting as if the main problem to be solved is that of people looking at such pictures. And as long as we can prevent anybody from looking at those pictures, then the problem has been solved. That is not true. All which has been achieved by that is hiding the real problem. The real problem is, that what is depicted took place in the first place. That pictures were taken of it and that somebody saw them did not make the abuse itself any worse for the kid, but in some cases it does help reveal that the abuse is taking place, which can help stopping it.

Current laws may actually do more to destroy evidence of crimes rather than stopping the crimes themselves. How would things change if possession and distribution of child pornography was legalized, but manufacturing and trading it remained illegal? Instead of interest organizations building up censorship, which is ultimately going to hurt more, when it is used for other purposes, those interest organizations could collect child pornography and perform data mining on it, and as soon as they have identified individuals in the images, they can hand that over to authorities. I believe that would do more to stop abuse of children, than the current laws.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but there should be tools helping the parents in doing so.

Why?

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[aj50]

Just for a change, the article isn't about that at all. It's about paedophiles advertising through easily searched for codewords on porn sites.

Seems to miss the point that such adverts could easily made to look innocuous and placed elsewhere.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[MysteriousPreacher]

How do you imagine it? Sitting next to the kid and watching over her/his shoulder?

How about we grow up as a society and rely on education instead of prohibition? How about explaining to a child what porn is and how it relates to sex and leave her/him make decisions.

But no, it could be awkward, stressful and demand something like actual parenting. Forget it, censor this shit off my internets!

The child can learn about sex on their wedding night. Prior to that no-one really has much of an interest anyway and certainly won't be finding ways to slake that curiosity.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[alendit]

Subtle trolling from an AC hinting that being gay is somehow abnormal? How original...

And I would be the first one to show my kid how to circumvent such software.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[arkhan_jg]

It's nothing to do with kids getting age-appropriate material (this time). Their contention is that adult pedophiles first see pictures of children being abused (or anime versions, which are no different according to them) which then encourages them to go out, abduct, rape and murder children.

The obvious solution for the censor brigade is the same setup that mobile phone networks have largely switched to - heavy filtering by default (in this particular example, they want maximum google safe search as default on for everyone) so adult men can't find pictures or anime of naked children, and thus, will never go on to rape and murder real children. Tada! In order to see any sites that are otherwise filtered - such as legal porn, medical sites, art sites, any site to do with the town of scunthorpe - you have to register yourself as a dirty porn watching perv, which list presumably the police will be watching closely in case you start desiring to go on a child abduction and murdering rampage, and will explicitly discourage people from doing, thus keeping their minds clear of unpure thoughts in good Christian fashion.

That it achieves one of their other goals, the appearance of a kiddy-friendly internet with no adult-only activity ever, is just a happy co-incidence.

In a separate but parallel move, the Home Secretary is trying to revive the Snooper's charter - i.e. ISPs, webhosts, service providers such as google and facebook would have to keep extensive logs of what emails and websites UK users visit, which the police and security services can troll through at their leisure, looking for Islamic terrorists planning on chopping down passersby in the street with machetes. And probably now porn-viewing adults, in case they turn out to be child murdering pedo's.

It is the usual 'ban this filth, won't someone think of the children' attempts to whitelist the internet, but this time it's to protect the children from the men who murder them because they saw porn on the internet and decided to get the real thing. That child porn is ALREADY blacklisted by the list run by the IWF, and subscribed to by most ISPs, and he was getting stuff that wasn't on the blacklist, and thus filtering wasn't actually even doing the job they wanted it to when running as intended is being conveniently ignored.

That they and the home secretary don't have a damn clue about how the tech, ISPs or the internet work is a given. They see it as one giant branch of WH Smiths, and it's just like banning the sale of dirty magazines, and will obviously solve the problem once and for all, and anyone that tries to point out the flaws is in league with the terrorists and the pedo child murderers, and heaven forbid anyone express concerns about the Big Brother or Free Speech aspects.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

The *actual* problem is that becauso religious fundamentalist social conditioning, you think a kid watching porn would be something bad or even "harmful". ... while *insane* psychopathic bood-baths and religious schizophrenic brainwashing on public TV is somehow completely OK.

Either the kid is too young, and by himself goes to another site because he doesn't like it, or he's curious because he didn't know it existed... or heâ(TM)s in or past puberty, and liking porn is something utterly normal and natural.

In any case, the only ill people here, are the so-called grown-ups and their religious schizophrenic delusions with which they terrorize their children and their society.

I wonder what you would think about that tribe where every social event includes sex just as it would include alcohol here, and children run around the outside of the orgy, playfully imitating the grown-ups with each other.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the more serious concern with cp is that the events depicted took place at all. However, there is another serious (thought not AS serious) concern. If you stealthily filmed adult couples having sex and published those videos, all without getting consent for the filming, then clearly that's not legal. The child in cp has that same right not to have videos circulated as any adult would have. I suppose you could wait until the child becomes an adult and then buy the rights to the videos from the now adult person. That's all academic, though, since most voters are never going to think so calmly about cp that they could calm down long enough to comprehend such a line of reasoning.

Another topic is, does looking at cp make pedophiles more likely to molest children? Does it make them less likely to do so? I don't know. I suspect you don't either. If people believe the former, even animated cp whose production involved no children at all is not going to be legal.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[sl4shd0rk]

How do you imagine it? Sitting next to the kid and watching over her/his shoulder?

That's the whole point. That task of monitoring what your kid surfs around on is left to the people complaining about the porn in the first place.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suspect its neithet. The issue is more about impulse control and whether or not the paedophile understands that molesting is bad no matter how horny it makes him. It is the same as people who get off raping women. The victim is just a bit more horrifying to sensibilities

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[budgenator]

Why would kids look at online porn with a computer, at their parents home with parental controls, when their smartphones have an unlimited data plan and they can watch anywhere? Kid have an inherent ability to join cliques of like minded peers, adults too for that matter, and it only takes one to say "hey check this out", and the search engine becomes irrelavent.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[kasperd]

However, there is another serious (thought not AS serious) concern. If you stealthily filmed adult couples having sex and published those videos, all without getting consent for the filming, then clearly that's not legal. The child in cp has that same right not to have videos circulated as any adult would have.

You are right. I should have expressed myself more clearly. I of course did not want the distribution to be legal under circumstances, where it would have been illegal even if the depicted persons were adults. But in those cases I think violations should be treated the same regardless of the age of the person depicted.

I suppose you could wait until the child becomes an adult and then buy the rights to the videos from the now adult person. That's all academic, though, since most voters are never going to think so calmly about cp that they could calm down long enough to comprehend such a line of reasoning.

That lack of rational thinking on the matter is so widespread that overall it might actually cause more harm than the abuse itself, which isn't widespread (or at least so we have been lead to believe).

Another topic is, does looking at cp make pedophiles more likely to molest children? Does it make them less likely to do so? I don't know. I suspect you don't either.

Claims have been made both ways. And probably there both exist cases where looking at child pornography stopped somebody from doing itself as well as cases, where looking at it made somebody do it. I think nobody knows if one or the other is true. The rational response to this, would be to do a scientific study to find out if the net effect is positive or negative. But I don't see this happening before a large majority of people start thinking rational about the issue. Currently we are doing things, which for all we know, might make the problem worse.

If people believe the former, even animated cp whose production involved no children at all is not going to be legal.

You could apply the same reasoning to movies where consenting adults are acting out a rape scene. Or movies with no sexual content, but violent scenes played by stuntmen. Those have not been outlawed in spite of some people believing they are making out society more violent.

I am not even convinced the people who want such animated child pornography to be outlawed even have considered whether it has any influence on how many children are actually abused. Many want it outlawed, just because they think it is distasteful. One has to stop and think about why people want child pornography to be illegal. Some do because they believe children are being helped by child pornography being illegal. Others want it to be illegal simply because they despise people of different sexual orientation from themselves.

Despising people because of their sexual orientation is no longer politically correct in large parts of the world. In what we usually think of as the civilised world, it is not illegal to be homosexual, and it is not considered socially acceptable to go and beat up a person for being homosexual. But if you despise people being sexually attracted to children, you can hide between a think-of-the-children defence. And justify whatever you want to do to such people, with "I'm just protecting the children".

There are differences in what means you would want to apply depending on which of the two reasons you have for wanting child pornography to be illegal. Whether you want people to be punished for looking at animated child pornography involving no real children, is one difference. If you despise the people simply for their sexual orientation, you want them to be punished in that case, even if no child is being harmed by it.

Consider the following two scenarios:

First a man who is sexually attracted to a woman of his own age. But the woman does not want to have sex

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[kasperd]

Yes, but there should be tools helping the parents in doing so.

Why?

Because nobody has time to go over every webpage themselves to find out which of them has porn, that they don't want their kids to watch.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[kasperd]

Why would kids look at online porn with a computer, at their parents home with parental controls, when their smartphones have an unlimited data plan and they can watch anywhere?

This is an opportunity for the telecompanies. They need to introduce phone subscriptions intended for kids, where the parents can apply limitations. I guess they sort of exists already with limitations on phone calls. For example the kid may be allowed to make an unlimited number of calls to certain numbers white listed by the parent, for other numbers they could be limited to for example 1$ of usage per week. It would be very natural to extend that kind of subscriptions with limitations on internet traffic. The parent should be able to login on a webpage where they can both configure limitations on phone calls as well as which filters are applied to the internet traffic.

A similar product might also be interesting for some business, who want to limit what their employees can do on a phone paid by the employer.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

You dumb AC, your sexual preference is not a choice or cultural thing, it's the way your brain and body function.

Of course there is a great cultural influence in how freely you express your sexual orientation and that's something we need to break down, stop the suffering about something you had from birth.

--
Teun

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[nospam007]

"Another topic is, does looking at cp make pedophiles more likely to molest children? Does it make them less likely to do so?"

That's what I think too. If they can't get videos of the stuff, they have to do it themselves.

Just as when there's no dealer where you can easily get it, you have to grow your pot yourself.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[nospam007]

"Why would kids look at online porn with a computer, at their parents home with parental controls, when their smartphones have an unlimited data plan and they can watch anywhere?"

Watching Monstercocks on tiny screens is awful.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

I think all men should have their penises been cut off. That would have solved the problem altogether. It possibly would solve the problem of global wOrming too....

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[gmack]

Well you know the old saying "Anything is easy if you don't know what you are talking about".

I have yet to see any filter that does more than block a bunch of known sites and both kids and adults have a knack for finding sites that should have been on the block list but are not.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[tomxor]

There may be people who do not want to see porn online and wish to be protected from that. That is fine, but it should be a voluntary decision. Unless the person is a minor, in which case it is the parents' decision.

Precisely, every corner of the world, a country, even a neighbourhood, is not necessarily safe or appropriate for children, the internet is an extension of that world in terms of information. It is however a lot more accessible than the real world.

But in order to do this, you need to have the content classified. Now it boils down to who has to pay for maintaining this classification. You cannot just require the sites themselves to do that, because some of them will be outside your jurisdiction, and some of them may not have an interest in being correctly classified. Once you have the classification, getting it applied to the right set of people is not all that hard. But don't force it upon grown ups, who do not want it.

Im' sure many different forms of this concept exist already and i'm pretty sure i've seen it advertised on various "internet security" packages, I think OS X has some kind of built in parental mode, whether or not that extends to the web i don't know.

Anyway, the solution: A white list is maintained.... The web is too vast to make a blacklist practical, so a white list upholds the restriction of undesirable content at the sacrifice of lagging additions to the list and vast omissions. However so long as the white list has a specific target audience (i.e. kids) then the list should be easier to satisfy with desirable content.

How that list is maintained is the hard part, but the most sensible would be collaboratively by the end users (i.e. parents), that way the list can grow according to demand (yes kids have to ask permission if they find something that's not on the list). Implementation doesn't really matter... make a White list first, make a way to collaboratively maintain the list, secondary (and subjectively) is the placement of that list... if you want it for your whole house then stick it on the router, if your kid has their own devices that move to various access points then put it on their devices and disallow them root access (if your kid knows enough to circumvent this then they are probably old enough for porn not to irreversibly rot their brain anyway, not that such a thing ever happened). Even putting it at the ISP as an opt in is plausible.... what is not ok is subjecting the whole world to it by forcing search engines to implement it, it's also futile because it would just create dammand for less restricted search engines that would inevitably spawn in places that *your country* government does not have jurisdiction over.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[tomxor]

No one in their right mind would attempt to create a black list, you create a white list... read my post above.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Kjella]

They probably already seem innocuous in context, because it seems to me all legally operating porn sites are extremely paranoid of being associated in any way with underage content. The suggestions are quite frankly bizarre and counterproductive, a registration requirement for being allowed to search for porn? With the implication that this'll be a huge red flag on you since the border between legal and illegal sexual images is nothing but a thin red line rather than the difference between a healthy, fun and common recreational activity between consenting adults and child abuse. What it in practice will do is make more people use the unofficial and anonymous channels, drowning out any signal to noise ratio of the really illegal material.

One of the greatest challenges of any system is the stigma of running it, sure downloading Justin Bieber and Game of Thrones via torrents isn't exactly legal but nobody really bats an eye at that anymore than admitting you were speeding on the interstate. And every male teen will understand why you'd want to torrent Asa Akira or Jenna Haze too, if you can't find them on Google. But if you start talking about things like BitCoin and TOR more will start wondering if you're involved with drugs, money laundering, terrorism, kiddie porn or you're a tinfoil hat nutter. Like, what does any "normal" person need it for and by that I don't mean law abiding. Drive porn underground and being underground will become socially accepted.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Educating your child is the parent's responsibility.
Exactly...

Teaching your child the difference between right and wrong.
Teaching your child what is acceptable behavior and what isn't.
Teaching your child to listen and obey your instructions.
Monitoring your child's behavior to be sure the first 3 stick, and distribute appropriate punishment (including corporal) accordingly when they fail to do so.

Those are all 100% the parent's responsibility.

If you want the community to educate your child, then you give up the right to complain when someone else beats your child's ass (or worse) when they threaten an old lady with a baseball bat.

Do your fucking job as a parent - quit being a lazy fucktard that should have had their reproductive organs removed at birth.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[thegarbz]

You're right. While you're at it tell your 5 year old that there's no such thing as Santa, the Easter bunny, or the Tooth Fairy and watch how well that goes down.

Education does not imply all information is appropriate for people of all ages. Sure my kid will learn about sex before his wedding night, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sit him down at age 8 in front of 4chan and let him go his hardest, (poor choice of words really in this case).

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[kasperd]

No one in their right mind would attempt to create a black list, you create a white list.

Things that has already been tried include:

• Blacklist
• Whitelist
• Heuristic
• Voluntary marking of content
• Reputation based systems.

And because of that people keep coming up with new ideas, which are mostly mixtures of the above ideas. You can get pretty decent results by such a mix. But it is not efficient to have everybody do it on their own, which means there is a legitimate need for somebody to collect the necessary data to do the filtering and make it available.

What is important is, that the parents get to choose which provider the filtering algorithm and data from. Forcing one particular source on them is no good.

We can also discuss who should pay for it. But I find that part of the discussion less important than ensuring that filters are not forced upon adults, who should be allowed to make their own decisions.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[kasperd]

I have yet to see any filter that does more than block a bunch of known sites and both kids and adults have a knack for finding sites that should have been on the block list but are not.

Finding out exactly what content to block is the hard part. Actually blocking it once it is identified is the easier part. The telecompany could contract with one of those many companies, who already specialized in the first part. Then they can install that software on a bunch of servers, and sell it as a service to parents wishing to prevent their kids from watching porn on their cellphone.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Being exclusively homosexual is absolutely abnormal. It is not wrong but if it was normal to be exclusively homosexual then you and I would not be here having this conversation.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[alendit]

Wait, are you saying we should censor all sources where kids can find out that there is no Santa? (kidding, of course)

But seriously, you know not every kid believes in this bull, don't you? And they don't grow up depressed because of it or anything. And you don't have to believe the stories to enjoy them, or else there wouldn't be any fantasy fans.Give children some credit, they are young, not retarded.

And nobody is suggesting sitting anyone before anything. But if my kid, by chance, would find 4chan, I would try my best to explain what it is and sure as hell not forbid him to visit it ever again (image how that would work out).

tl;dr: censorship is not the solution.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[digitig]

Mark Bridger is 47. I doubt he would have taken much notice of his parents telling him not to surf porn.

This isn't about preventing children watching porn, this is about preventing everyone watching (certain) porn. If we could be confident that it would only be child porn that would be blocked then I'd be content with that (I don't want to stumble on that stuff by accident), But I don't think we can be confident.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[mrmeval]

How about their parents giving their kids a long assed info dump on human sexuality ala Monty Python with examples, charts diagrams and pictures. Suck all the life out of it. Make it ordinary and they'll go play "Pretty Pink Ponytail Pony Princess" with their frands.

At least till the hormones hit. Unfortunately Britainians can't have dad cleaning a quantity of guns on the kitchen table while a young cock monger visits his daughter.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[gmack]

Every one of those companies has an extremely flawed list for exactly the reasons I just mentioned.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

And you would be the first parent who had their child removed from their house when the child shows no common sense, no sense of self-respect, no sense of other-respect, no sense of the difference between right and wrong. Enjoy visiting your child in prison fucktard.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of dumb AC's - your sexual preference is set within the first two years of life. That goes for gay and straight, yes your biology plays a role, but so does environment. Most homosexuals are not genetically homosexual. Still doesn't make us worth any less that we are influenced by our environment.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they are retarded, kids brains are not done developing, this means that they are missing some of the faculties that an adult enjoys. This is why treating a child as a miniature and inexperienced adult is a recipe for failure.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Fairly sure sex stops after marriage.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[firex726]

Also how many pedphiles do a general search via Google for CP?
I assume they would have their own set of sites that would try and NOT be easily found by a random person or law enforcement. The Abuse team at an old company of mine would get reports of CP, and often times the server Admins would not know, as the server was compromised.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Anime porn is illegal in the UK because of that.

That and the fact the British are retarded, and can't tell a drawing from an actual, living, breathing child.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[kasperd]

Every one of those companies has an extremely flawed list for exactly the reasons I just mentioned.

Using the lists should be voluntary. I don't want anybody to force any of those lists upon you. But if somebody finds the lists to be useful, they should be allowed to use them for their own needs. Those needs may include filtering on a phone, which a person is paying for someone else.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[tqk]

Because nobody has time to go over every webpage themselves to find out which of them has porn, that they don't want their kids to watch.

If you can't spare the time to supervise your kid's on-line activities, they shouldn't be on-line, or you shouldn't be a parent.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[gmack]

The problem is that those lists end up providing a false sense of security for the people paying for them. In reality they block most of the famous sites and only block a fraction of the other sites out there while accidentally blocking innocent sites(pretty much all of them, have a high false positive rate). The other problem is that the contents of those lists are secret and once sensors get going they simply cannot stop. Several of filters have been known to block any sites that post anything critical of their practices and even Time Magazine was once blocked in retaliation by one of the most used filters.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[kasperd]

The other problem is that the contents of those lists are secret and once sensors get going they simply cannot stop.

You can't really keep it secret, if you put it on the user's computer. And consumers are free to avoid any vendor, who try to keep their list secret. I haven't done market research because I have never needed such a product myself, and I have no intention of going into that business either. But I believe there is a market, and I have heard of multiple competing products in that field.

Several of filters have been known to block any sites that post anything critical of their practices

That sort of practice is easy to document. And those you primarily want to keep the critical information away from is those potential customers, who have not yet bought your product.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Stan92057]

Spoken like a true kid less person...

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[RedHackTea]

Yes, I agree. This has worked very well with Catholic Priests. They never watch porn or have sex, and I never hear about any molestation or rape of any kind from Catholic Priests.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[JWSmythe]

Nah, you have the honeymoon period right after marriage, which can last anywhere from minutes to years. For most, it's just a few days. After that, sex is strictly solo or with mistresses and prostitutes.

Oh for fucks sake, won't anyone consider the poor married blokes who need a wank once in a while.. Online smut is lot cheaper than a fine strumpet.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[RedHackTea]

Hmmm, I replied to the wrong comment. See what pron does to you kids! I'm cross-eyed!

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[pitchpipe]

The child can learn about sex on their wedding night.

In muslim countries the child certainly can learn about sex on their wedding night.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

Why bother? I don't think it's "inappropriate" at all. That said, I do agree that it's the parents' problem.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Teaching your child the difference between right and wrong.
Teaching your child what is acceptable behavior and what isn't.
Teaching your child to listen and obey your instructions.

Sounds more like indoctrination to me. There is no objective "difference" between right and wrong; it's subjective.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

kids brains are not done developing

Not done developing != retarded. Now vanish, censorship troll.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

Another topic is, does looking at cp make pedophiles more likely to molest children?

No until proven otherwise. Even if it did, though, censorship is never the answer.

If people believe the former, even animated cp whose production involved no children at all is not going to be legal.

That's because so many people despise freedom.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

That's what I think too. If they can't get videos of the stuff, they have to do it themselves.

Because the only thing stopping normal people from being rapists is the fact that they can find porn and/or can get into a relationship with another normal person; both absent, we'd all be rapists. I seriously doubt it's true that a pedophile would magically become a child molester just because they can't find porn.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[ultranova]

While you're at it tell your 5 year old that there's no such thing as Santa, the Easter bunny, or the Tooth Fairy and watch how well that goes down.

Jack Chick, is that you?

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[SuricouRaven]

Mobile phone internet access in the UK is already filtered by default - to get an unfiltered connection you need to explicitly request it, and provide proof of age.

Students get around this by just taking naked pictures of themselves and emailing/mmsing/facebooking them around.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

Right, because No True Parent would believe such a thing.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Mashiki]

Most young girls learn about sex by the time they're 9 in said muslim countries, even in places where child brides are illegal.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Mashiki]

If you can't spare the time to supervise your kid's on-line activities, they shouldn't be on-line, or you shouldn't be a parent.

Considering the quality of kids these days? Most people shouldn't be a parent, after all many people for the last 20 years have been using TV as the parent, and now more are using the interwebs. Quality upbringing right there.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Mashiki]

The *actual* problem is that becauso religious fundamentalist social conditioning, you think a kid watching porn would be something bad or even "harmful". ... while *insane* psychopathic bood-baths and religious schizophrenic brainwashing on public TV is somehow completely OK.

Yeah you might want to go explore the world a bit, I'd run out of fingers, and toes three times over with the number of left-leaning parents who have this view point. This mindset is exceptionally prevalent in the GTA, and other left-leaning strongholds here in Canada.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[tqk]

Twenty? Try fifty.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[tyrus568]

This is wrong. It's a pretty well-established fact that sexual inclination is at least partly caused by exposure to hormones while in the womb. There have been studies that show second and third sons are more likely to be homosexual because the mother's womb and body administer different levels of hormones than in their first birth. It's considered an evolutionary advantage because first sons can go out and sow their wild oats and start a new family while second or third-born sons can stay with the parents and assist in running the household and caring for them or other siblings.

Saying that most homosexuals are not genetically homosexual but are instead caused by the environment makes it sound like parents have some sort of control over their children's orientation, when they absolutely do not. Children develop unique orientations despite of, not because of, their parent's actions and/or meddling.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[thegarbz]

I respectfully disagree. We censor until the mind is ready to consume such information. There is documented evidence that certain stimulus has an incredibly strong effect on a person, such as viewing pictures of people brutally killed, extremely violent pornography etc. This while it may not have much of an effect on the developed mind is incredibly damaging to the young and developing.

How about ensuring your kid can't actually stumble upon 4chan et al until they are ready and mentally capable of understanding that something like brutally murdering or raping people is not acceptable.

Sure you could do it your way and tell him/her that it's wrong. But what are they likely to believe? Daddy's word, or potentially thousands of such pictures + posts discussing how cool it is. I can see straight away where the kid is going to end up and I hope it never happens.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

... tell your 5 year old ...

As the "Hogfather" (novel and movie) reveals, those lies tell children the world will be nice to them. It is a lie we tell to little girls much more than little boys.

In an episode of "Quincy, MD", he demands drug education start in 1st grade of school. Australia did drug education in 3rd grade during the 1990s for a while.

Similarly there are sex-ed books for 1st grade children. The real problem isn't about hiding what sex is (penis and vagina), but failing to teach what sex involves: contraception, emotional attachment, societal needs and expectations, stresses of relationships, and of course, contraception.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Stan92057]

Parents are trying, but some kid less dumb ass says why dont the parents do this. Get some kids of your own and experience the web as a parent. Then you have a right to say what he did.And truly know what parents are going through.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

I've noticed that many parents seem to be elitist, arrogant, and illogical. For instance, some resort to ad hominem attacks rather than attacking someone's arguments, and others feel that if anyone disagrees with the way they choose to raise their children, that that is evidence that the person is not a parent. It's as if idiotic parents feel insecure about themselves so they try to feel better by bringing every other parent down to their level in their own minds.

And truly know what parents are going through.

Which parents? No True Parent would fail to realize that every child is different. What works for some parents may not work for other parents, so do not conclude that someone is not a parent just because they disagree with you, and try attacking someone's arguments if you believe them to be wrong.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

We censor until the mind is ready to consume such information.

Of course.

There is documented evidence that certain stimulus has an incredibly strong effect on a person, such as viewing pictures of people brutally killed, extremely violent pornography etc.

Right. One look at that, and their lives are ruined. It's 100% common for pictures and other such nonsense to have an "incredibly strong effect" (presumably a negative one) on a person, and because of that, it's censorship time. Who needs knowledge when you have ignorance?

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[sydbarrett74]

Sadly enough, that was my hardcore Catholic father's answer when I asked him about sex at 10 or 11 years of age. 'I'll tell you about sex on your wedding night. You have no reason to know anything about it until then.' He passed away when I was 18, and I of course immediately started having sex.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[thegarbz]

Who needs knowledge when you have ignorance?

Good quote, you've just displayed plenty of it.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Stan92057]

I've noticed that many parents seem to be elitist, arrogant, and illogical. Judged by a non parent? lol Which parents? No True Parent would fail to realize that every child is different. Again judged by a non parent? Every parent sees there children grow into what they will finally become. That has ZERO to do with what parents want they want something to make their surfing as safe as possible. We knew there are assholes out there, we know there are abusers ou t there. And we know that no matter how much you try to protect our children there are people who will abuse our children And i dare you to tell any mother or even father to there face your right to jerk off is far more important the trying to keep there children safe. I dare you.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

Oh, I'm sure.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

Judged by a non parent? lol Which parents?

Many that I've seen. Are you blind?

Again judged by a non parent?

You love your ad hominems, don't you? This is what I meant by some parents being elitists; they just can't stand it when someone dares to question their judgement, so they grasp at straws and try to find some way to avoid answering the other person's arguments. I dare say everyone knows at least a few children, and everyone knows each child has different personality traits. That combined with the fact that everyone was a child once makes your reply rather puzzling.

That has ZERO to do with what parents want they want something to make their surfing as safe as possible.

And many of the 'threats' they perceive are probably not actually threats anyway.

And i dare you to tell any mother or even father to there face your right to jerk off is far more important the trying to keep there children safe. I dare you.

I don't know where I said anything about jerking off or what that has to do with anything, but if you're telling me that freedom is less important than your "think of the children" nonsense, then you might want to go start your own non-free country, rather than make existing ones worse.

Besides, what if I did tell them that? Are you saying they'd beat me up? Were you trying to imply that might makes right? Your reply is truly a mystery.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[hammyhew]

And i dare you to tell any mother or even father to there face your right to jerk off is far more important the trying to keep there children safe. I dare you.

I dare you to tell me right to my face that your supposed right to try to keep your children "safe" is more important than my right to jerk off. I dare you.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Stan92057]

Telling a parent to there face makes it real. Your an armchair parent.Plenty to say not a stitch of experience or a clue to back anything up.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

"Real" how? What sort of nonsense are you playing at? Again, how would saying it to a random parent make it any more correct or incorrect? That makes zero logical sense.

Plenty to say not a stitch of experience or a clue to back anything up.

And what makes you think that? I never revealed anything about myself. Are you a parent? If you are, you're every bit as elitist as the ones I was talking about. You can't handle when someone disagrees with you about anything relating to children, so you grasp at straws and revel in irrelevancies in an effort to 'debunk' the other person.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Stan92057]

I Have raised my 2 children and am the Proud owner of 4 Grandchildren none of which i let sit next to me when im on the computer. And only allow then age appropriate shows which is declining daily. But they come to see me not the computer. My Daughter did a great Job..My Son is Single. Disagree? you mean cry about your freedoms to masturbate and view any content with no thought or care about anyone but yourself. Dude society doesn't work that way. Thats why Pornography is not protected. And this article IS about pornography and 1 country trying to make it safer for those who dont want to see pornography.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

you mean cry about your freedoms to masturbate and view any content with no thought or care about anyone but yourself.

What the hell are you talking about, censorship lover?

Dude society doesn't work that way.

But it does. That's why this "save the children" nonsense hasn't quite won yet, and that's why pornography is protected by the first amendment in the US. What sort of moron advocates for censorship?

And this article IS about pornography and 1 country trying to make it safer for those who dont want to see pornography.

I wish they'd try to make the country safer by kicking out people who want to throw freedom in the trash in a misguided effort to 'save' the children. People like you. Why don't you just go get molested by the TSA, and see where your safety nonsense takes you?

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[hammyhew]

And this article IS about pornography and 1 country trying to make it safer for those who dont want to see pornography.

You're saying the country should ban pornography because you don't like seeing it? How about we ban your comments because I don't like seeing your worthless opinions? Your comments are an eyesore. Begone!

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

You will not infringe upon my inalienable right to beat off all over your grandchildren!

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Stan92057]

Just where did i say pornography should be banned??? Do you know how to even read??

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Stan92057]

Pornography is NOT protected by the First Amendment. Go back to school and learn something. I expected everything else ya said no surprise there. No real argument then anger sets in lol.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

Pornography is NOT protected by the First Amendment.

Except that it is. Nothing in the first amendment says that pornography is an exception, and since we recognize other types of communication and expression, pornography is no exception.

If you're talking about court cases (which are different from the first amendment), then there's always that "I know it when I see it" obscenity nonsense, but I guarantee you there would be problems if someone tried to ban all porn on the US (and indeed, there have been objections to such nonsense).

No real argument then anger sets in lol.

You've had no real argument since the very beginning, instead choosing to attack people's characters or situations.

Now stop trying to bring intelligent parents down to your level by giving the impression that all parents are as ignorant as you.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Jockle]

Supposedly you're not talking about banning pornography, yet you've been going on and on about keeping kids safe from an imaginary threat and other such nonsense. What are you talking about, then, and why do you keep talking about people's "right to jerk off" if you're not advocating for a ban on pornography? Regardless, you have no right to not be offended, so the fact that you don't want to see something is 100% irrelevant.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[hammyhew]

If that is not your argument, then what is?

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

reading through all this, I can only conclude that you're a wimpy little bitch incapable of accepting that things you don't like exist so you turn to draconian restrictions.

Re:Think of the children blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of people like you. I'm fuckin' sick of it! You mother fuckers should just commit suicide! You're just trying to rationalize child abuse, you piece of garbage!

If I ever see you, you're going to disappear into a garbage can!

www.bring-back-the-porn.co.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

The only British website left!

Slippery slope

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of the children!

Only God knows what they would demand to block once infrastructure would be on place. Many things, facts and lies that annoy or disturb powers-that-be come to my mind, though.

porn or violence

[Ubi_NL]

it never ceases to amaze me that legislators are paranoid over even the slightest form of nudity while it took a massive public outcry to get a facebook movie removed in which a woman was decapitated with a kitchen knife.

I rather have my kids accidentally stumble upon some extreme acts of intercourse than extreme acts of violence.

Re:porn or violence

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well, the US does get its perverse puritan sexual values from England, not continental Europe, where women don't even own bikini tops.

Re:porn or violence

[rduke15]

I agree. And I also noticed that children tend to go sites for children because that is where they find what they want.
The "pornography" they might stumble upon accidentally is soft, and they don't even notice it because it's not intersting
Once they start finding pornography interesting, you cannot prevent them from finding it, and why would you anyway.
As teenagers, before the Internet, we had some pornographic magazines which someone would have found and which we would look at in a far away corner of the school yard. It hasn't traumatized me.

In short, my children who are now almost adult always had access to the Internet, and I have never noticed a problem with pornography.

Re:porn or violence

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't actually care. Well, not more or less than any other normal person cares about child porn or people being decapitated. They just want to secure means of control, since that's "their job" so to speak. That means that they need to convince people using arguments they think will work. In this case, "think of the children".
  It's like all those hilariously bad commercials and advertising out there - they're annoying, but they work as intended. And that's all that matters.

Re:porn or violence

[__Paul__]

That'll be an England of several hundred years ago. Anyone who has been to England in the last thirty years will know that the general population is far from puritan.

Re:porn or violence

[Anonymous Coward]

only if under influence. Other than that they are as puritan as they used to be.

Re:porn or violence

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. And I also noticed that children tend to go sites for children because that is where they find what they want.
The "pornography" they might stumble upon accidentally is soft, and they don't even notice it because it's not intersting
Once they start finding pornography interesting, you cannot prevent them from finding it, and why would you anyway.
As teenagers, before the Internet, we had some pornographic magazines which someone would have found and which we would look at in a far away corner of the school yard. It hasn't traumatized me.

In short, my children who are now almost adult always had access to the Internet, and I have never noticed a problem with pornography.

I dunno, maybe because it gets boys thinking that girls are just sex objects and not people. By the way, the "magazines" you got your hands on when you were a kid is NOTHING like the horrific crap on the Internet. And I am CONSTANTLY reading in the news about boys gang-raping girls, and drugging and raping them, and I am pretty sure they don't get these ideas from PBS or NickKids web sites.

It was one thing looking at Playboy, and yet a whole other thing with the Internet, where double and triple penetration is considered lightweight.

If you can't SEE the problem, you ARE the problem.

Re:porn or violence

[Kielistic]

And I am CONSTANTLY reading in the news about boys gang-raping girls, and drugging and raping them

That definitely never happened in the past. The days before pornography were rape-free utopias where women were considered completely equal to men.

maybe because it gets boys thinking that girls are just sex objects and not people

And the show Will and Grace makes boys gay too, right?

Re:porn or violence

[Anonymous Coward]

You act like guys being treated like objects in porn isn't a thing. If you really, honestly think that, then you live a very sheltered life.

Re:porn or violence

[Anonymous Coward]

>Anyone who has been to England in the last thirty years will know that the general population is far from puritan.

Wishful thinking.

Re:porn or violence

[Jockle]

I dunno, maybe because it gets boys thinking that girls are just sex objects and not people.

Nonsense.

And I am CONSTANTLY reading in the news about boys gang-raping girls, and drugging and raping them, and I am pretty sure they don't get these ideas from PBS or NickKids web sites.

And yet the chances of it happening are still absolutely, positively minuscule. You think that something happens often just because the news reports on it whenever they get the opportunity? Nonsense.

If you can't SEE the problem, you ARE the problem.

Fearmongering imbeciles such as yourself are indeed part of the problem.

Re:porn or violence

[Anonymous Coward]

That'll be an England of several hundred years ago. Anyone who has been to England in the last thirty years will know that the general population is far from puritan.

I've been. It's a mixed bag like most places, however, I'm still mad about you driving some to them out and the influence the puritans still have in the America's is horrible.

Re:porn or violence

[rduke15]

It was one thing looking at Playboy

The seventies magazines I was referring to were not Playboy. If you consider Playboy to be pornography, then you really have a problem.

Re:porn or violence

[Anonymous Coward]

And I am CONSTANTLY reading in the news about boys gang-raping girls, and drugging and raping them...

You might be falling into the trap of forgetting that news comes from a population of hundreds of millions and that whilst the overall instances of rape happening have decreased (as a percentage of population), hearing news about it has become far easier and you have a much larger population to easily draw news from. The United States has had a 60% drop in rape since 1993, despite it becoming easier to report and much easier to hear about.

If you can't SEE the problem, you ARE the problem.

Ironic.

Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff like this is just an artifact of a system where politicans and advisors just view any way to persuade the public as means to an end. Just a strategic move in order to secure more control of the internet by any means possible. But of course, we can't tell people that can we? No trust or transparency. It's not *quite* as bad in my native Sweden as it seems to be in the UK/US - but maybe it's just the fact that I can interpret the codes of my native culture better.

Pedo Panic

[Anonymous Coward]

Your kids *definitely* will be kidnapped and murdered by pedos. Jimmy Saville *definitely* molested kids, and his ghost is probably in their room right now diddling! Do *not* attempt to get a grip on the real world, because the real world outside your door is scary which is why we installed CCTV everywhere and watch you online. Be afraid, if not for yourself, for your kids. And give the police whatever sweeping powers they demand.

For the children.

Re:Pedo Panic

[Anonymous Coward]

But the police is children, too! Why does nobody think of the children in uniform?

Re:Pedo Panic

[lxs]

Come to think of it, it's a small miracle that bbc.co.uk hasn't been blocked yet. Judging by the news the BBC appears to be the largest pedo ring in the world.

Re:Nudity is sinful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, you haven't read Song of Solomon.

Play spot the fallacy/error

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure exactly what it is Carr wants blocked? He seems to be calling for all sexual imagery to be blocked, and to justify this he cites behaviour related to pretty fucking horrendous child porn. It's like banning all metals because sodium reacts pretty explosively on contact with water.

Mr Carr said there was "no question" that some men who look at child sex abuse images go on to carry out abuse.

Earlier, speaking to BBC Radio 5 live he said: "There is enough evidence to suggest that if we can put more barriers towards guys getting to child abuse images, fewer of them will do it and more children will be safe."

He said between 15 and 50 per cent of men who previously had no involvement with child abuse images would go on to physically harm children once they accessed them.

This rate seems very high. I'm assuming he's referring to the kinds of images that most people wouldn't really want to be seeing, in which case these are deviants who have self-selected themselves. The impression he's giving is that up to 50% of normal otherwise sexually healthy people will driven quite mad by porn.
To put it another way, 40% of people who enjoy lettuce in some part of their diet are obese, therefore we should restrict lettuce if we wish to reduce obesity.

His comment on increasing barriers to porn being an effective way to reduce child abuse is pretty fucking telling. The same logic can be used to ban or restrict pretty much anything. Let's say that 10% of people who steal cars will use them in bank robberies, therefore introducing a levy on car purchases will decrease purchases, reducing car availability, thus decreasing bank robberies. Whether its the journalist or him, I don't know, but the tack keeps shifting. I agree that restricting access to images of child abuse is sensible, but is that all he wants? Earlier he seems to be going after legal porn sites as well. I get the impression he's happy to drive a bulldozer through a house in order to crack a walnut.

It has been suggested that some internet companies are reluctant to change their search settings as it would drive users to sites unwilling to change their policy and put them at a competitive disadvantage.

And the same would be true if Carr was asking Google to censor all search results depicting black people. They'd have no good reason to do so, and it would indeed gimp their service and drive customers away.

But he said one of the "key routes" paedophiles used to find content was through adverts containing "code words" that are placed on legal hardcore pornography sites.

So paedos have their secret code words anyway for locating their child porn - what's the fucking point in using Google then? Also, what he's getting at here is that legal porn sites are providing super secret access to child porn, so the solution is to remove all porn sites (legal or not) from search results? Website operators found complicit in the distribution of illegal images should be dealt with by the law - not everyone blocked because Carr claims there are some bad apples. Certainly people caught browsing such sites should be hearing from Plod.

Re:Play spot the fallacy/error

[Anonymous Coward]

He knows that. You couldn't possibly be such an idiot and wind up in a position like that. I'm not a lawyer or LEO but I assume that truly dealing with the child abuse problem would involve spending money and resources on intelligence gathering and investigation combined with cooperation across national boundaries. This can't be interpreted as anything other than a power grab, making himself useful to his friends. Or perhaps more nuanced, a way of dealing with the problem and making a power grab at the same time. There are previous examples of whitelisting and control being used to, for example, silence political opponents even in western countries.

Do forgive me for sounding like a pirate party conspiracy nut, but I think the thing to keep in mind is that the internet is still not integrated into society. An island appears off the coast? Great, we send in troops to control it, make it part of the country. It's contested? Why, there are ages-old ways to resolve that.
 
Not so for the internet, which is why politicians and our other "dear leaders" need to improvise to gain control in this sphere. And the resulting confusion breeds stupidity.

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[Cenan]

Why yes, yes it is - run kitten, run.

Terrible summary

[aj50]

Though it would have a similar result, this is entirely unrelated to the calls to block porn by default in order to protect children using the internet.

The stated goal here is to make it harder for paedophiles find child-porn by searching for codewords in adverts on legal porn websites.

This still seems pretty short-sighted to me, if we're aware of these secret code-words, shouldn't we be attacking the source of the problem? If porn sites were blocked from search engines, wouldn't these disguised adverts just be placed elsewhere?

Re:Terrible summary

[SuricouRaven]

How do the pedophiles manage to agree on these codewords? If they have a secure communications channel already to agree on codewords, they don't need to sneakily post on porn forums.

I suspect this claim about secret pedophile codes is made up. But as such words would be far too dangerous to reveal to the public for investigation, we shall just have to take it on faith that our politician overlords wouldn't lie to us.

The Internet isn't a nanny

[SpaghettiPattern]

The Internet isn't a nanny. You should prepare your kids to use it instead of sticking them behind a screen so that you can sod off to do secondary and pathetic things. Raising kids can't be automated. It takes a great deal of effort. Expecting search engines to filter all bad and thinking your kids will never watch questionable content is very naive and bloody daft. I don't expect everyone to be perfect and I understand "cheating" by, for instance, putting the screen in the living room.

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh yes the 5% of the population who are Muslim are tooootally dominating English culture and online pron is a concern exclusive to Islam. They have imams in the House of Lords, oh wait, no they Bishops from an Established Church (WTF) the Church of England in the House of Lords and the head of state is also the head of that church.

Ridiculous

[X10]

Both John Carr and I have been involved in the foundation of Inhope.org. But ever since hotlines and online child protection came into fashion, there's been differences in policies in various countries in Europe. In the Netherlands, policy makers, service providers and volunteers have always had their focus on preventing and fighting (pictures of) online child abuse (aka "child pornography"). In the UK, the focus has been on protecting childrens poor souls from seeing things that policy makers think children should not see. Hence, they block the obvious porn sites, leaving only the more hidden and nasty sites for children to visit. Even the EU in the early 90's quickly switched from preventing online child abuse to blocking porn. There was plenty of subsidy from the EU to local hotlines (of which Meldpunt was the first and the Internet Watch Foundation second), but as the focus shifted, Meldpunt was party left out from the subsidies, because it kept its focus where it should be: preventing and fighting child sexual abuse.

Sex is part of life. Educating children about sex makes them better prepared for life as an adult. You can easily see that by comparing stats for porn intolerance and teen pregnancies. Holland has a very low teen pregnancy number. And if parents don't want their kids to see online sex, why can't we just leave that to parents?

Governments should spend tons of money catching the guys who sexually abuse children. They should not interfere with sexual education, let alone censor the internet.

Re:Ridiculous

[X10]

Oh, and as for blocking child porn sites: blocking those sites makes them unavailable to the general public. They will remain available for pedophiles, one way or another. But if they're not visible for most people, no one will urge their members of parliament to spend more money on catching pedophiles. As a founder of Meldpunt.org, I know for a fact that if the stuff is visible, papers and blogs write about it, and the government (parliament and police) take action. If child porn had been blocked from the start, it would have still been there, the same number of kids would have been sexually molested, but there would have been no Internet Watch Foundation or Meldpunt, or Missingkids for that matter.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

More power to you for actually trying to improve the world. But do you know this man? What's his character? If you don't want to stick your head out, that's fine, but it'd add to the story if one'd have a better insight in the mans worldview.

Re:Ridiculous

[X10]

I know the man, although when I last saw him was in the '90's. He's actually a nice man. But I don't think he knows a lot about the internet, like, the bigger picture of it. The founders of Meldpunt all ran (and still run) their own linux servers, while in most of the other hotlines, let alone in the advisory councils, there were suits and police officers whith entirely different backgrounds.

confused meddler

[Cederic]

His statements seem to be very confused. He wants Google and others to do more to block material depicting child abuse. Well that's already blocked in the UK, and it's done at the ISP level with no need for Google to be involved.

He wants Google to use 'safe search' as their default search setting. I thought they already did?

He seems to think people will have to register to be able to search for porn. Register where? Search how? And register for what? This is where I'm utterly confused by what he's assuming, what he's proposing and how he thinks it will work.

The only certainty is that it wont.

Mark Bridger viewed non-pornographic images of April Jones from Facebook. So does Carr want Facebook banned? Does he want images of five year olds banned from Facebook? Does he want it to be impossible to search for images on Facebook?

Mark Bridger had a collection of images of child abuse. Those images are already illegal. Access to them is blocked when possible already within the UK. There's not a whole lot Google can do about that, not least because anybody finding any material via Google can already notify the Internet Watch Foundation and let them know about it.

The good news is that in another ten years or so the politicians will start to be replaced by people that grew up with the Internet, that understand it better and that will at least have a grasp of the pragmatic realities involved.

Re:confused meddler

[Dan1701]

What is going on is politicians trying to sound as though they are "getting tough" on paedophiles whilst not actually understanding how the internet works. For instance, some years ago I read an article by a self-confessed paedophile on how internet access to this illegal material is actually managed. As I am sure nobody here will be surprised, the serving system is via encrypted filesystem virtual servers, hosted off-shore, working entirely over https, where the web address is usually a plain IP address or dynamic address changed frequently. The payment gateways into these systems are publicly visible; the actual systems need a username and password to get in and even see anything other than a login screen.

Actually tracking one of these vhost servers down is difficult, and as the illegal pornographers will, on being discovered, simply delete the machine and its encrypted filesystem and start afresh elsewhere, it is mostly a futile exercise. Similarly the internet Watch Foundation is mostly a waste of time, save for performing back-door censorship of web sites. It catches some paedophillic sites, but the vast majority are not detected or filtered.

The way to actually hurt paedophile websites is to follow the money, and attack the revenue stream. Hosting illegal material is only worth it if the hoster is getting paid, and paid extremely well for the risk. Going after the punters paying for the material is mostly just an exercise in identifying and recording potential paedophiles (all of whom then need to be carefully screened and assessed); it provides nice headlines for tabloid papers and pleases police chiefs, but it doesn't actually hurt the suppliers. Locating the payment systems and heavily fining them for being complicit in the supply of illegal materials is the way to go (or at least until everything switches to Bitcoins).

Re:confused meddler

[misexistentialist]

The good news is that in another ten years or so the politicians will start to be replaced by people that grew up with the Internet, that understand it better and that will at least have a grasp of the pragmatic realities involved.

I wouldn't rely on internet dwellers to have a sense of perspective. Soon we'll probably be able to call 911 to have police dispatched when we read a mean facebook comment.

Re:confused meddler

[Cederic]

Ah. Erm: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/08/april-jones-teenager-jailed-facebook

Re:confused meddler

[Anonymous Coward]

come to think of it banning FB would not be such a bad idea after all. It would be probably for the wrong reasons but still better for the wrong reasons than never.

Re:confused meddler

[FireFury03]

His statements seem to be very confused. He wants Google and others to do more to block material depicting child abuse. Well that's already blocked in the UK, and it's done at the ISP level

No its not. *Some* ISPs have signed up to censor content the IWF(*) tells them to (notably Virgin and BT). The majority of ISPs haven't.

(* The IWF mandates blocks on whatever content they feel like with no kind of oversight to prevent abuses - they have a history of being a tad overzealous, so sensible people don't use an ISP that signs up to the IWF. The IWF also requires a relatively large mandatory "voluntary donation" from the ISPs, which is another reason why the smaller ISPs aren't interested).

He wants Google to use 'safe search' as their default search setting. I thought they already did?

The default is moderate - it sounds like he wants it to default to strict, which would piss people off by being overzealous. I suppose its also one step away from automatically incriminating people who have opted to turn safesearch off...

He seems to think people will have to register to be able to search for porn. Register where?

Previous plans have suggested that ISPs should block all porn unless the customer has explicitly requested for it to be unblocked. This, of course, is a terrible idea for various reasons, not least the fact that this means the ISPs are going to have an (arguably) rather sensitive list of people who watch porn that would be embarrassing if it leaked.

This is where I'm utterly confused by what he's assuming, what he's proposing and how he thinks it will work.

As with most kneejerk reactions, its not been thought through at all and appears to just be a brain-dump from someone who wants to fix a perceived problem with the internet, but doesn't actually understand anything about the internet and hasn't even formalated his goals.

The good news is that in another ten years or so the politicians will start to be replaced by people that grew up with the Internet, that understand it better and that will at least have a grasp of the pragmatic realities involved.

Have you actually talked to someone nontechnical who grew up with the internet? Most seem to treat it like magic (and therefore anything is trivially possible) as much as the current politicians.

Re:confused meddler

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually talked to someone nontechnical who grew up with the internet? Most seem to treat it like magic (and therefore anything is trivially possible) as much as the current politicians.

Today's teenagers will be easy to fool, then.

Re:confused meddler

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast amount of CP is free and easily available if you actually were really, really needing it and looking for it. Those who really need it can find it. I've collected it and used it as a vent for 20 years and have never, ever paid a cent for it, and I think the majority of pedophiles are the same. I've also never offended against a child, in word or in deed, never groomed a child or anything, never even attempted to... because I know it's wrong. I know it would be an unforgivable sin, something I couldn't take back, something that would damn me... so even though I would never do it, are you surprised I think about death and suicide every day? or that I'm an addict who uses to escape and numb myself in order to avoid having to face what I am, even if I've done nothing wrong?

Anyway, I'm just saying... take it from someone who knows. 90% of the pedophiles get free material and do not pay. Saying that "hosting illegal material is only worth it if the hoster is getting paid," is wrong... it's like saying the top warez sites are charging for access because of the risk. No. They do it for the lulz, and pedophiles trade and give away material because they know what it's like not having it and not having the valve there to vent internal pressure.

I don't think you're a pedophile, so you don't need to know where it's so easy to find... anyone can reply to this and say it anyway, so it's not like I'm hiding the info. I'd just rather not raise undue attention to usenet, freenet and tor. I believe you when you say you talked to someone "in the business," who was selling pr0n... and while what he says is probably true, it is a rarity and buyers are way too vulnerable - it's way too risky (even if I would ever spend money for it, which I won't and never have). It's just the stupid ones that pay for it and reveal a paper trail back to themselves.

Regardless, thank you for talking about it. TBH, I feel guilt about some of the pr0n I look at.... but the majority of it is actually very innocent and not abusive at all. Like kids of their own volition using web cams to show themselves masturbating... there's nothing wrong with me looking at something like that, when it wasn't me who talked to the kid or who recorded it... I'm taking advantage of it by looking at it, but there's no harm being done to anyone.

Re:confused meddler

[Cederic]

*Some* ISPs have signed up to censor content the IWF(*) tells them to (notably Virgin and BT). The majority of ISPs haven't.

According to the list at https://www.iwf.org.uk/members/member-policies/url-list/iwf-list-recipients the ISPs servicing 98.6% of UK households are signed up.

Along with Google, as it happens. I didn't know that.

So whether the majority of ISPs use filter on that list or not, the majority of internet users in the UK definitely do.

Re:Nudity is sinful.

[budgenator]

I'm intreged by this pagan concept call HELL.

There's some material that should be blocked.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is how do you do that without restricting everyone elses freedom to look at ordinary bare naked women/men, as their fancy takes them?

In the main, the fuss is being generated by "Think of the Children" agitatiors and their allies, the "family" tabloid press. Its a typical knee-jerk response to a tragic incident, similar to those calls for all dogs with teeth to be put down because their owners are feckless layabouts who allow them to chew up small children and pensioners.

No doubt, an "Aprils Law" will rear its ugly head to pacify the swivel-eyed loons demanding it. In the end, it won't have any more effect than a Badger cull.

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[xelah]

This seems to be being pushed by rather conservative types, not by the UK population or government coalition as a whole. Bear in mind that the Conservative party here is feeling under pressure from the even more conservative anti-EU UKIP, and have a lot of unhappy backbenchers currently busy being revolting over gay marriage. Also bear in mind that there's quite a big generational attitude difference to things like this, with younger people being a lot more liberal but not well represented politically. There's been a lot of conflation of child abuse, child porn and adult porn in debate and reporting, which only makes me think even more that this is as much about older generations dislike of younger generations sexual attitudes as it is about child porn or online 'safety'.

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Usually, politicians play the anti-child-porn card when they want to distract the general public from some other failing, scandal or downright incompetence that the government has recently shown.

Has anything happened recently in the UK that fits this mold . . . ?

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[mrbester]

You ask like this is a relatively rare occurrence that needs an occasional distraction. You'd be wrong. It's every day.

HOWTO argue against Internet censorship

[rysiek]

That's censorship, plain and simple. How about we all read the HOWTO: Effectively argue against Internet censorship ideas (tested already in Poland and Iceland; pure text version available) and use it to beat politicians into submission on this issue? Carr's motivation is purely political (yes, thank you Capt. Obvious), and he should be called out on it.

Re:HOWTO argue against Internet censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

indeed - interesting read. I think reading the howto makes some at least aware that the censorship is not such a good idea. Then again - you cannot really win that war - you can only continue fighting.

The logical path

[drolli]

Would not to block all porn sites but to demand that all porn-sites are paywalled, with an bank account in the country of the customer, and make a law that the transaton data (i.e. the customers) will remain anonymous and may only be asked for in the "give me infromation for name x" in case of a legal trial.

A paywalled porn-site has no interest at all to get that account seized, since it would do direct economic damage. The customers would be happy not to get trojans or have 100 windows popping up.

At the same time this eliminates the problem of age verification, will get taxes, and, may give some handles to set minimum standards of production (i.e. safer sex only), which may be of interests for the porn industry in the country itself.

What we have seen from other things which were considered illegal some time ago (software downloads, music downloads, movie downloads), if you gove the legal and stigma-free option to do it, the market will immediatly segment into a very legal and profitable part and the rest. The rest will still exist, but under much bigger financial pressure and the legal part will have the bests interests not be associated with the illegal part.

Re:The logical path

[Jockle]

How is that logical? It's garbage.

Re:The logical path

[drolli]

Arranging a situation in which the involved parties can gain somthing by acting correct goes over trying to force them to act correct.

Re:The logical path

[Jockle]

That 'solution' just punishes everyone and is completely unnecessary.

Re:The logical path

[drolli]

Who is punished by using a service for paying money? Who is punished by geeting money for providing a service?

Re:The logical path

[Jockle]

Because you're forcing (at least it looked that way) all porn sites to use a certain business model (a paywall). Unless that's somehow not what you meant, it seems like a ridiculous idea. I still maintain that it's unnecessary regardless.

Re:The logical path

[drolli]

i never stated that it is neccesary. I just stated that iff advertisements on porn site are a problem, then the solution is to forbid the ads, not the site.

Re:The logical path

[Jockle]

But that's not the solution, either. Just because some people might abuse something doesn't mean it (in this case, ads on porn sites) should be forbidden.

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammn that Jimmy Saville and the neoliberal politicians who protected him because of is faith for five decades.

Conflation

[Admiral Burrito]

It's amazing how quickly they leap from "porn" to "paedophiles". Just two paragraphs in, and both of them very short.

It used to be "gays == paedophiles" but they can no longer get away with that.

i could save many more lives

[Anonymous Coward]

by putting speed limiters in cars, and banning what are effectivly 'race' cars/bikes from the road. there is no legitimate reason to have a vehical that will do 0-60 in under 12 seconds. you want to piss about in a one 1.5 death machine? take it to a track. over 2000 people a year die on the roads here in the uk.

then i'd save even more lives by putting doctors on a rota system so weekends are properly covered, or dare i say, the hospitals work 7 days a week. as it stands, you really don't want to have an operation at the end of the week if you get complications.

'More than 3,000 people could be saved every year if weekend hospital cover and access to key medical facilities was as good as during the working week, a major analysis indicates.'

neither of these things will happen because they will be massively unpopular. but they are the right thing to do.

mind you, effectively banning porn could cause *more* deaths, considering medical advice seems to suggest that us blokes need to ejaculate (via sex or masturbation) every other day to help protect against prostate cancer...

Re:i could save many more lives

[Anonymous Coward]

*1.5 tonne death machine

sorry. i',m brutally hung over lol

Re:i could save many more lives

[rossdee]

"by putting speed limiters in cars, and banning what are effectivly 'race' cars/bikes from the road. there is no legitimate reason to have a vehical that will do 0-60 in under 12 seconds. "

I agree there should be limits on speed - but not on acceleration. If your speed limit is 70 (I presume we are talking miles per hour here) then it doesn't matter how quick your vehicle gets up to that speed.

Re:i could save many more lives

[gnasher719]

I agree there should be limits on speed - but not on acceleration. If your speed limit is 70 (I presume we are talking miles per hour here) then it doesn't matter how quick your vehicle gets up to that speed.

Here's my rule: People make mistakes (including myself). Accidents happen when people make mistakes, and other people don't or cannot compensate for the mistakes. Extreme acceleration reduces the possible reaction time when people make mistakes, makes it harder for everyone to compensate for mistakes, and therefore causes more accidents.

Re:i could save many more lives

[Lazarian]

"by putting speed limiters in cars, and banning what are effectivly 'race' cars/bikes from the road. there is no legitimate reason to have a vehical that will do 0-60 in under 12 seconds. you want to piss about in a one 1.5 death machine? take it to a track. over 2000 people a year die on the roads here in the uk." Absolute, utter nonsense. I drove a lot for a living, and I couldn't begin to count how many times that having decent acceleration has been able to keep me and my co-workers alive. What hurts and kills people on the road are simply bad, unskilled drivers. Period. If you've ever looked in your rear view mirror and seen a speeding fifth-wheel flying up your ass, you're going to wish that you had some power under the hood.

Re:i could save many more lives

[GuB-42]

A sports car driven responsibly is safer than an ordinary car. The features that makes up a race car such as acceleration can be used to better escape danger.

No joined up thinking here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets say that this works, just for the sake of argument.

Will this stop child porn being made?

Nope.

But now you can't just google to find those indulging in viewing it, you can't find them any more to prosecute.

OK, this may be one way to reduce the crime figures, but surely if that were all that was required, they could just ignore the problem and get the same result with no effort.

0-60 in under 12 seconds is a 'race' car?

[Anonymous Coward]

What planet do you live on?

My perfectly bloody ordinary Skoda Yeti is capable (evidently) of doing 0-60 in 8 seconds or so. Have I ever thrashed it to that extent? Nope. Acceleration isn't the problem, nor is maximum speed. The skill and attitude of the driver is a more important consideration. Rather than hobble cars to slower than 12 seconds 0-60, you could save a lot more lives by chucking hoodies in jail to stop 'em stealing cars and killing themselves and innocent bystanders while escaping from the police. Texting, using a mobile phone and watching movies while driving are also bigger death inducing problems. Cut down on these and a knock on effect would be that we wouldn't need any more coverage in A&E due to the reduction in RT fatalities.

Soooo the right thing to do would really be to deprive morons of their right to steal and drive vehicles. :-)

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally concur with the "It's the Parent's responsibility to monitor their child's internet usage!" x 5000.

If you are a parent, put down the XBox controller, and watch what your child is doing.

If the Islams don't want to look at porn, then they shouldn't look at it.

That's between them and their whatever - they don't get to force it on the rest of the world.

You can install a guardian whitelist yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than have it all done by Google, Bing, Yahoo, BangBangDuck or whatever, you can install your guardian software on your PC where you can control which ones it lets through and which ones it bans, and use the list available to ensure you don't have to visit them all yourself.

Or does nobody have the time to install software on their kiddies' PC?

Re:You can install a guardian whitelist yourself.

[kasperd]

Rather than have it all done by Google, Bing, Yahoo, BangBangDuck or whatever, you can install your guardian software on your PC where you can control which ones it lets through and which ones it bans, and use the list available to ensure you don't have to visit them all yourself.

Or does nobody have the time to install software on their kiddies' PC?

I did not say anything about where it should be done, because my comment was focusing more on the policy aspect than the actual technical implementation. Having it done by search engines is obviously not the best place to do it. But on the kids own device is not the best solution either, as even a kid can learn how to bypass that. Putting the filter on a middlebox between the device the kid is using and the internet is a good start. A bit of cooperation from the device the kid is using would help, for example that would allow a mitm on all https connections. A bit of cooperation from search engines would also help, that way you can avoid allowing access to the content through Google cache or Google Images. You could even avoid having the blocked pages show up in search results in the first place.

Got it....

[TheCarp]

> a government adviser on child internet safety

A what? Sounds like that's their problem right there.

politicians need educating

[Anonymous Coward]

They should all be forced to watch the Brass Eye "Paedogeddon" episode, and write a report on what it has taught them. Chris Morris should of course Mark the papers.

Seriously..

[Anonymous Coward]

I do like some porn.. put mildly. But did any of you witness the late tendencies and extent of porn on the internet. And that it has reached worrying levels, an almost critical mass? Did any of you witness the degenerateness of recent porn and the frequency it shows on the net? It must be clear that the mind/brain uses a filter on a everyday basis...... and that some kind of filter must be applied to porn occurrence on the net too. There should be an accessible archive for porn on the net, some kind of database. That can be accessed via sftp/ssh or whatever.. something with logins/passwords. So that minors etc, are spared for the time being. Since it is unarguable that an all too early exposure of porn to minors and to the developing minds of young adults will most certainly cause irreversible damages to the later development of perhaps sexual or social life. I mean, exposing true "minors" to the kind of filth you see on the net today? Can anyone who is in his senses would advocate for this kind of exposure we have today? I'm all for an open net, but if we're honest, there are always filters, on multiple layers. Everywhere and also on the net. Period. Cheers.

Re:Seriously..

[Anonymous Coward]

-would

How about..

[GigaBurglar]

An opt-in clause from the ISP?

But whatever.. Then you couldn't obfuscate your secret Web blocking plans..

Foot in the door - everyone's at it. Once the proverbial salesman's foot is in he can pitch his sale. This planet is fucking full of slimeballs.

Conditional probability

[Anonymous Coward]

This story made me think of Bayes' theorem

P( pedo rapist | likes porn) = P( likes porn | pedo rapist ) * P( pedo rapist ) / P( likes porn )

These people are conflating P(A|B) with P(B|A) -- the probability that a pedo rapist likes porn is quite high, with the possible exception of certain religious pedos. The problem is that even if P( likes porn | pedo rapist ) ~ 1, the left hand side is minuscule. The law will affect many many "porn heads", but few pedos, because P( pedo rapist ) ~ 0.

There is also another probability factorisation thing which I find interesting, but I'm not sure if it's right -- what is the probability that a person will become a rapist? is it higher or lower if there is access to porn, even violent porn? just to introduce some symbols,
P( rapist | porn ) = alpha * P ( rapist )
Now if people have determined alpha, this will probably apply to pedophiles too,
P( pedo rapist | child porn ) = alpha * P( pedo rapist )

Based on this, we either want to allow all porn if alpha 1. There is of course one complication in this factorisation, that there is no consentual sex for pedos (that sentence alone made me "post anonymously", just seems wrong to discuss these things). So maybe the argument doesn't hold. "Normal" people can always pay prostitutes if the problem is that they want real sex, if they can't get it for free, pedos can't .

Re:Conditional probability

[Anonymous Coward]

first sentence of last paragraph should read "Based on this, we either want to allow all porn if alpha < 1 or forbid all porn if alpha > 1"

Propaganda if I ever seen it.

[davydagger]

"It comes after Mark Bridger was found guilty of the abduction and murder of five-year-old April Jones in Powys."

Tell me what this has to do with pornography?

This sort of cherry picked anecdotal evidence is nothing more than fear mongering, and it is NEVER uniformly enforced either, and always has to do with some form of confirmation bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[LifesABeach]

Then again, I have not been blessed with an extreamest's literacy; and for that I am truely thankful to my make believe best friend.

Google for kiddie porn?

[PPH]

I doubt it. The speed with which Google will deliver CP to some pedo is matched by the speed with which law enforcement will find it.

Most CP is hidden from easy access by the general public as a matter of self preservation. Sites are passed around by word of mouth in forums where one has to establish some level of trust before being admitted to the 'good stuff'. Like post some before we show you ours.

Re:Google for kiddie porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much. For the newest and most exclusive stuff. But there's a vast amount available to anyone who wants it, without having to trade or gain credit or get well known to anyone else... just completely private, anonymous leeching. I've been collecting for 20 years and never have I had to work my way into inner circles (although they, of course, do exist).. never have I paid a cent. It's been leeching all the way, and I always got as much as I wanted.

Sure, freenet and tor have made huge inroads into allowing more pedophiles access to more of what they seek, but usenet and irc, then emule etc paved the way for almost two decades.

I am thankful every day for having access to my pr0n - it's a valuable vent to let me continue to exist. I've never offended against any child, or groomed them or hung around them... and I know sex with them is wrong. My pr0n helps with controlling my sex drive, though... and lots of opiates, of course. They kill your sex drive pretty good as a side effect, the main effect of course being to completely numb the self so I don't have to face myself in the mirror being a pedophile, even if I've done nothing wrong.

Sure, there's quite a bit "bad" child pr0n, but the majority is very innocent and natural - usually just watching two kids play with each other, or one kid masturbating... there's nothing wrong with that, especially when there is no one else with them and they're doing it completely of their own volition, including running the webcam and etc. Webcams are so ubiquitous now that it's no surprise kids constantly realize what they can be used for, and there are networks they can get access to spread their work around the world... there's tons of stuff like that available that does not contribute to any harm to anyone, and much more of it is made every day as kids continue to grow up with the internet and the free flow of information.

It's about child porn not children viewing porn

[D1G1T]

Slashdotters aren't even reading the summary any more let alone the linked article?

Problem number 1 define:porn,Child

[RobertLTux]

the biggest problem of this (not counting the actual problem of kids being abused) is how do you define Child Porn??

the line between artistic and Porn images is very fuzzy short of images of actual sexual acts or abuse.

what needs to happen is Father Uncles and Older Brothers need to be able to take pictures of their siblings (or friends siblings) without being glared at (assuming no crime is being commited).

and yes any block list has a Zero Chance of working correctly (false positives and negatives will be massive and involve an N by N grid of WhackAMole where N is a large and undefined number)

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[Mister Liberty]

This seems to be being pushed by rather conservative types, not by the UK population or government coalition as a whole.

So who put them in power, the people of Lower Slobbovia?

Thin end of the wedge...

[Anonymous Coward]

First they blocked torrent index sites...then they block porn sites...what next, news against the government, criticism of politicians?

Block child porn by all means...some things are just inexcusable...but we *are* seeing more and more "control" being sought over what we can browse.

Re: Is England turning Islamic ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like an MP from the main ruling party thinking he's being paid to advance the business interests of Fiji, but actually being set up by the BBC?

Of course not.

Something like this would be too much like the "Cash for questions" affair which helped keep the Conservatives out of power for 13 years.

Personally what I find amazing is...

[tlambert]

it never ceases to amaze me that legislators are paranoid over even the slightest form of nudity while it took a massive public outcry to get a facebook movie removed in which a woman was decapitated with a kitchen knife.

I rather have my kids accidentally stumble upon some extreme acts of intercourse than extreme acts of violence.

Personally what I find amazing is that we don't have rampant comedy on the streets because of the sitcoms on TV, rampant reality on the streets because of reality TV, and humorous cats everywhere like some pre-warp civilization equivalent of tribbles.

RTFA! RTFA! Also, learn the definition of porn!

[WarOfTheNerd4850]

TFA refers to "child pornography", namely child abuse images - NOT sex tapes of consenting adults.

What are they on ??

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we educate the 'masses' on what the internet really is before they start making laws on what they think the internet is?

whattttt

[fazey]

But Vaginas are the best part of the internet.

Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

... should do more to restrict access to online pornography ...

So governments are now demanding that the USA control the internet, well, American corporations, anyway. On the one hand I'm glad these bureaucrats aren't appointing themselves the thought police of the country. OTOH, Holland and the USA have strict definitions of child porn. Daisy duck and and Minnie mouse don't have breasts, so that would make them little girls dating obviously grown adults. Japanese anime has all females characters dressed like schoolgirls and nearly flat-chested, doing very adult things so obviously child-porn. And thirty years ago, and all of history before that, no-one worried about naked children, so that's a shitload of paintings, photographs, films with child nudity. A few years ago, some group in Australia demanded that babies be banned from all TV/film productions so that pedophiles would be properly repressed.

The people interested in this white-list admit it's a form of 'name and shame' for those who opt in. The BBC also did a news segment revealing that 1% of people who access child porn actually commit a crime. Now it's easy to argue any crime by pedophiles is unacceptable. But the recent revelations by the BBC and Catholic church show that government has been protecting known pedophiles from punishment, for years. And we spent our time worrying about the 'war' on terror/drugs/pirates instead, with children left to the business of growing up. The children have survived and it's proof there is no need for rhetoric and knee-jerk politicking.

The argument offered is akin to saying 90% of people who've seen a cow have eaten beef, with the conclusion of this argument being 'out of sight, out of mind'. I am sure that my city-dwelling parents put beef on my plate long before I saw a cow. And I ate it because I liked having beef. These 'think of the children' fanatics are putting the consequence before the cause, which will save nobody.

Re:Is England turning Islamic ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one actually put them in power particularly - this is a coalition government of two seperate parties after no single party achieved a majority at the last election on their own merits. Their mandate is debatable at best, particularly when you consider the low turnout at that election, but someone has to form a government. The only other alternative to a coalition would have been one party attempting to run a minority government, which would have been worse than useless at getting anything done at all and probably collapsed within months, leading to fresh elections.

WHY

[Anonymous Coward]

So all they have to do is say something like "protecting the children" or "Child porn" and it gives them a blanket excuse to do what they want.

How about we take away every child from every parent to protect the children from parents who might be predators.

How about something on overcoming lust...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lust is one of the main botherations that many face. Lust grips the mind and tires the body, and dulls the intellect. Lust, when indulged, brings inertia, and when suppressed brings anger. Lust is nothing but primordial un-harnessed energy. The same when harnessed manifests as enthusiasm, sparkle, sharpness of intellect and love.

    What are the factors which can sublimate or transform lust into love?

        Playfulness: People who are in the grip of lust cannot be genuinely playful. When you are genuinely playful, then there is no lust there

        Generosity: When you realize that you are here only to give and give, and you feel that you are very generous, lust is sublimated. Lust makes one possessive and not generous

        Moderate to less intake of food

        Remembrance of death

        Divine Romance

        Cold water baths

        Undertaking creative challenges