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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.
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.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
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.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
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.
no, I don't have a sig
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'.