Slashdot Mirror
British Prime Minister Promises Default On Porn Blocking
judgecorp writes "David Cameron, the British Prime Minister has promised that the UK's ISPs will be required to provide connections with 'porn blocking' filters switched on by default.. The public promise comes despite opposition from ISPs, and the near-universal acknowledgment that the system wouldn't work. Last week also saw the leak of a letter from the Department for Education which effectively told ISPs to lie — to implement their preferred 'active choice' system, and simply call it 'default-on'."
Just wait until someone hacks the list of people with "show porn" checked and joins it to the table of politician names.
This site is sure to get blocked, there are pictures of cocks all over the place.
The crucial point is that if no porn is available, the boys will just wank off the photos of clothed models and celebrities as they did before the Internet was widely available, and it's hard to find any valid argument why wanking off the photos of clothed people is inherently better than wanking off the photos of nude ones. It certainly didn't do me any good not to have porn available when I most needed it back in the 80ies.
The not unreasonable assumption is that if a child can find porn, then an ISP can automate the process of finding it and blocking it. To the layperson, the idea that all these clever people can come up with a way to search the internet and classify content and even rate the quality of that content but are suddenly flummoxed by coming up with a way of reliably blocking porn that kids can find sounds more like "well, we don't want to block porn, so we'll tell you it's impossible and tell you that you don't understand the internet".
Still, three cheers for the first enterprising foreign VPN company to offer free VPN services (ad-supported?). I anticipate approximately every single teen male in the UK becoming aware of it within a week of its launch.
Also, the earlier Firehose articles were more complete (but that's Slashdot editors for ya): BBC News giving a good amount of political commentary, and technological implementation of the blocking by Twitter.
This sounds like a fun conversation to have for people that live with their parents. "Hey mom, can you tell me our ISP account info so I can call them and ask them to turn on the porn again?" That's completely absurd a law could get passed requiring that. (I'm not just talking about children, but even adults that live with their parents or other roommates.)
Also, what about sites that happen to contain erotic content but don't focus on it? Say reddit and imgur. Are those going to be blocked by default? That's going to cut off a lot of (UK) traffic from them arbitrarily. Are some websites going to change their style and start strictly enforcing safe-for-work policies purely so they don't fall on a list like that? This isn't good for web culture.
Cameron cracks down on 'corroding influence' of online pornography http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jul/22/david-cameron-crackdown-internet-pornography but mission creep http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2013/jul/21/david-cameron-internet-block-child-sex-searches could well happen. I feel an unease about who controls the blocking lists and the accountability of such office holders.
It's not just a comedy play and a movie anymore.
If you choose to have censored internet access you can't sign up and are told to choose another ISP.
I love those guys.
How about a little box that says don't read my traffic ISP / government?
AND What parents are letting their children use the internet unsupervised?
Now little Timmy won't be bothered by all those nasty websites he has no interest in.
Well, at least not until he comes across some of those sites that slip by the filters - as they inevitably do - or he learns how to turn the filter off (as children eventually will).
And it's not as if he will be missing anything important. Oh sure, filters have been shown to be over-zealous in their protection, often blocking non-porn sites as well but why would he be interested in reading Wikipedia or the National Geographic or any of these other disgusting websites anyway? Do they have any redeeming value at all? And even if they do, is it worth the risk that young Timmy might see a nipple?
Besides, sex is unnatural, and so is the human body. Nobody should see it naked. It's been that way since the beginning of time; children never witnessed nudity or sex until they were eighteen and in no way should we question this belief. Its not as if this sort of repression causes any problems. Anyway, the youth of today must be inculcated from the start with the idea that it is okay for the government to tell us what to read and what to do, for the good of the nation. A strong government should lead its people in thought and action!
I for one am glad the government of Great Britain is moving in this direction and can only hope the governments of the other nations of the world follow suit. Its just one step towards bringing our world back to a more civilized level of discourse, where things like sex, violence and alternate religions are removed from view. It's for the good of our children after all.
(By the way, just out of scientific curiousity, have instructions on how to disable this feature been issued yet? I only ask to make sure I don't accidentally turn it of, of course).
Another reason to start using Bitcoin
I find a lot of the debate around this very deceptive. That "near-universal acknowledgment that the system wouldn't work" means that it can't block every pornographic image out there. That's a lot like complaining that speed cameras "don't work" because people still speed on other lengths of road, or that aeroplanes "don't work" because occasionally they crash, or that firewalls "don't work" because sometimes attacks come through port 80. You'd be stupid to have a firewall installed, right? They don't work - some attacks still get through! And "effectively told ISPs to lie"? That's bullshit. You have a filter which will be turned on unless you take an action to turn it off. But by default, it will be on. Sounds like default-on to me. The ISPs want to label it some active choice plus garbage, but that's what it is. The letter suggested they call a spade a spade.
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He would be glad to know there is a country, where women wear the burka (and babies should: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/9848469/Saudi-Arabian-cleric-declares-babies-should-wear-burkas.html), not only, but the hideous crime of kissing in public is punishable with one 1 month in jail, it is called Saudi Arabia, he is most welcome to take his ultra conservative views with him, leaving those who are less up tight about sex in peace. All in the name of protecting Children (forgetting for a minute that possibly most teens gain their knowledge of Sex these days from the Internet).
It's hard to know what the 'next step' will be (beyond the invention of PageRank), but what happens if it turns out that it's possible to indeed effectively divine what people are searching for, and effectively block it?
People here seem to be thinking that keyword blocking is so ineffective, that the proposal will be laughed out of the room. Because when it becomes possible to build a model of somebody's search strategy (if it isn't already) and it can be admissible in court as intent of criminal intent, then all of a sudden, everyone will stop laughing.
The scary thing for me *isn't* that a bunch of powerful tech-illiterates are meddling; it's that they might be accidentally right; that effective blocking technology is indeed around the corner, it gets mandated by government -- and then the technology is misused to make certain kinds of thought and discussion effectively impossible in ways the Chinese Communist Party could barely dream of.
Getting hold of a firearm, even for criminals, isn't trivial. Against people who are too lazy/stupid to obey the law in any case, the law serves its purpose.
The interesting thing is that this filter will also end up blocking all articles and comments about the porn filter itself because of matching words in the article. Effectively, preventing the public from being aware of the history behind the feature in the future. There will also be a lot of false positives as there tend to be with this type of system, for example things like Michelangelo's artwork end up getting blocked due to some of it involving nudity. Another example is China's firewall sometimes blocks social and technological articles that they did not intend it to block because certain words or dates happen to appear in text, which leads to a knowledge and information drain in their society. For example because I've mentioned China's firewall this entire article might never appear to their people, so they may end up being unaware of it. It is a hit or miss sort of thing.
it is easier, cheaper, quicker and garners more positive publicity for the politicians involved to get the ISP to block something (anything, does not really matter what, as long as something is blocked) than it is to actually tackle the underlying problem and catch the child abusers.
However, as politicians we need censorship options to go alongside our surveillance capability... we use the surveillance ability to keep an eye on the people we are afraid of (in the UK, that apparently means the Government is afraid of about 65 million people... quite a way behind the US though, who have a list of 300 million or so people that scare the politicians). We then need the censorship mechanisms so that we can keep information about our surveillance system out of the public domain, and we then need the surveillance system again to watch the people who are trying to circumvent the censorship equipment (oh, good... we are already watching those people, because they are on our "people to be feared" list!).
On a more serious note, Claire Lilley at the NSPCC pointed out that "In every single child abuse image there is a victim, a child who has been abused". This is true, if you check the circumstances of the photograph. But I am 100% sure than a 5 minute search of Youtube would turn up a ton of clips from movies, from which you could grab stills that look like child abuse and that a third party viewer would categorize as child abuse, even though no children were abused in the production of said image.
I am all for stamping our Child Abuse, preferably in a process that involves stamping out the penis and testicles of any men involved in said abuse, but blocking sites that some unaccountable quango group deep in the bowels of the British government thinks should be blocked is not the way to go about it... unless of course, the porn blocking is simply a convenient excuse behind which the real purpose of the system is being hidden.
Damn, I am starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist. Somebody pass me my kool-aid, quick!
which list of perverts will we be on and will we be the first people in the work camps for looking at porn. i am all for a system where we can block content but we cannot start to allow the government to tell uswhat we can and cannot look at.
That's right. Gun laws in Britain make no difference whatsoever, in fact the gun murder rate there is ten times higher than in the USA.
Oh. Wait. No it's not. Actually the USA is number 11 on that list and the UK is number 60. But hey, never let facts get in the way of your preconceptions.
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Who can I sue when I delegate responsibility for keeping porn away from my children and myself before we are outraged and clearly damaged, mentally and emotionally injured when some porn does turn up on the computer ?????? I would prefer if the spam stopped coming into my mailbox.. why has that not been sorted yet??????????? Idiots.
Anyway, be sure to request "unfiltered internet access", don't ask for porn to be unblocked.
Whilst I have no problem with Cameron's intention to prevent undesirable material from falling into the hands of younger users, I have major issues with the fact that he seems to be pushing ahead with this despite advice from people who actually know how the Internet works. Fundamentally, he doesn't seem to understand that the Internet is merely a network - it transfers packets of data from A to B, much the same as the postal service. It does not (and should not) care what is in those packets.
Ultimately any proposal to deploy blocking technology is doomed to fail - blocking certain DNS queries will simply lead people to use an alternative DNS server, or to share IP addresses of questionable sites. If ISPs start to filter HTTP, then people will move to a different protocol. Where does this end up? The Great Firewall of (not-so-great) Britain? Martial law? Ultimately his proposals will end in failure - the Internet community will develop new methods to access material much faster than the government can block them.
If people really understood the full implications of what is being proposed here, they wouldn't want it. Packets on a network should be afforded the same protection as mail in transit - i.e. it requires a court order to open them. This process is transparent and well-understood - it is not left to shadowy, non-elected, non-accountable organisations to decide what gets through and what is dropped. We do not need a censored Internet - it is used for so much more than browsing the web, and these other applications will suffer with this sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach taken by Cameron.
Personally, I believe the best approach to managing access to this kind of material and staying safe online is through education - something which each and every parent should discuss with their child, in the same way that they teach them to cross the road.
In addition, the prime minister said possessing online pornography depicting rape would become illegal in England and Wales - in line with Scotland.
"Government registration required to view pornography"
It's fine to demand ISPs give the option to turn this on. In fact, there are good reasons to do so as there are so many internet connected devices that it has become difficult to manage filters on all of them.
But there is a gulf between that defensible scheme and this scheme, which by making the filter a default, puts adults in the absurd position of having to register with the government to view pornography. Because of the social stigma involved I would say there is an strong argument to be made that these defaults infringe on adults' rights to view pornography. Hopefully a brave soul will take up the case.
If the goal is to prevent children from viewing pornography then that fails on practical grounds, as it forces a policy intended for children on the adults of a house.
Also, how will the law treat adults with children who choose not to have the filter - if their children do end up viewing pornography could the adults be charged with creating an unsafe environment? On the face of it I don't see why not.
What is the liability for quality on this? As best I can tell, it would be ideal for ISPs to simply have minimal and really crappy filters that do next to nothing if there's no real penalty for lack of quality on the filters.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
In my opinion this move is both right and wrong. It is absolutely right because it gives, AT LAST, parents and people with real troubles caused by pornography (and, yes, pornography does cause really serious problems to a LOT of people) the ability to get rid of such a troublesome content. Think of alcohol and alcoholic people, or tobacco and smokers, just to mention legal substances, at least the addicts to them have the rightful choice of NOT having access to those substances imposed in their homes. Nobody delivers alcohol or tobacco daily, 24x7, and for FREE to them. Which is not the case with pornography. On the other hand, I think the move is wrong because it imposes censorship by default (which it would be right in public places, by the way). I do really think that granting the right for everybody to really OPT OUT of pornografy, if they so desire, should be compulsory. I mean, British Government should have left the access to porn as is (although I firmly disagree) BUT forcing the companies to grant the right to opt out of it, in a swift and easy manner. Regards.
Absolutely! http://goo.gl/MOIslT
Use the argument given in the post you're replying to. Tell her the filter is blocking "normal" sites like Reddit, Tumblr, anything else you can think of (DeviantArt, movie trailers?), etc just because they contain a small amount of adult content too.
"The criminals move in criminal circles and could get a gun [unlicenced] in a few hours, I expect."
CITATION NEEDED.
Provide some evidence of claims like this, because it sounds like something that would be convenient for your argument, but is totally unsupported by statistics (gun crimes in the UK are LOW) http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/gun-crime and have been declining since the middle of the last decade.
Typical uniformed idiot posting rubbish instead of checking the actual numbers - gun crimes has fallen over 40% in the last decade: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-winning-battle-against-inner-city-gun-crime-8463957.html
Blocking porn should be up to the consumer, if they want their porn blocked they should opt-in and use an ISP that is willing (not forced) to provide that service. Otherwise it's like buying a car that comes with children chairs attached but that you can pay to have them removed, and be forever listed for it. Those of us that take the time to teach children about sexuality, or even those who have no children, don't want to be listed on your adult opt-out lists waiting to be abused by the government, just because we watch porn once in a while. We can filter the internet our children see (there are plenty of software packages for it) but better yet we can educate them about it.
He should know.
It's just blonde, brunette, redhead...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"the prime minister said possessing online pornography depicting rape would become illegal in England and Wales - in line with Scotland."
Possessing a digital copy of "A Clockwork Orange" just became illegal.
It is considered a masterpiece as a book and as a film.
The whole point of the book is the danger of instituting "Thought Crime" punishments and aversion "therapy."
Regardless of the "appeal", "A Clockwork Orange" is widely regarded as a masterpiece and critical social commentary like Orwell's "1984". Who defines what's banned? How soon before criticism of UK foreign policy is banned?
And once they have the infrastructure in place, they'll start making it opt in for political sites, overseas news sites etc, all in the name of protecting you somehow until they have a nice list of what nasty stuff you like to get up to then wham, you're in jail for thinking stuff the government don't want you thinking.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
"Such as the gun laws in the UK. All they do is make it very hard for an innocent person to get a gun [licence]. The criminals move in criminal circles and could get a gun [unlicenced] in a few hours, I expect."
....
"Typical non-technical idiots making stupid decisions."
You, sir, are a typical know-nothing idiot making stupid comments. UK gun laws are quite effective at reducing gun violence. Keep in mind, however, that physical objects are much easier to regulate and control access to than data. A firearm is very easy to define; pornography is not. It's a fundamentally different problem.
The activity in question here is sex. Not just child abuse, rape, and other already-illegal acts. This legislation would – by default – block access to porn. All of it. Are you seriously suggesting that the solution to children accessing porn on the internet is to somehow stop all porn from being made?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
This is like the time they removed all the ninja weapons from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
UK and AUS. Even with the NSA shit the US can't hold a candle to those two.
I have a greater issue with 'almost' ( simulated ) sex on TV than I do with with full, hardcore sex. If you're going to start, then do it right. The fake humping is obviously fake and painful to watch.
Yeah, like that's ever going to happen.
In the mean-time, I'll just ask the little pre-teen wankers down the road to show me how to get to the good stuff. Wait a sec, wasn't all this to prevent them from getting to these sites?
Parents should be the ones to block content, not the government. Government's need to stop doing parents jobs.
Every time some government gets really stupid, they push more people into finding ways around it. IMO, it would be good to see more people using TOR - which at the moment seems to be filled with idiots, but could serve a much better purpose providing political safety.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
All hail our Glorious Leader Dave, saviour of the internet and all things just.
Forget that he left his own child at a pub whilst out drinking. Forget that he failed to introduce plain cigarette packets. Forget that he failed to introduce minimum alcohol pricing. Forget that he failed to fix unemployment.
All hail our Glorious Leader Dave.
Forget he was a member of the Bullingdon Club. Forget heâ€(TM)s a u-turning dishonest clueless toff. Forget that the UK population did not vote him into power.
All hail our Glorious Leader Dave.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
child porn is for the UK what al-quaida was for the US.....a blank check!
It would be more correct to say "They would like to see content which they see as harmful and offensive". To say that they just want to "Ban harmful and offensive content" conceedes to them that this content is harmful and offiensive, as if there is some sort of universally agreed upon standard by which this can be measured and determined, when the fact is, its entirely subjective.
Are people trying to get flouride removed from water trying to get something they believe is harmful removed from water? Yes, thats true. However, it is not correct to say they are actually trying to get something harmful removed; that statement would be untrue.
The thing is, its important not to use the characterization of the point of view you are arguing against. Its like, if you are against a bill thats being called "Tax Reform" you can't argue against it and call it "Tax Reform", you are already losing the battle by implicitly ceeding a point that you don't agree with - that it's reform.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Will it give me cancer or what? I must know, I'm exposed to it.
Hate speech next, not what you'd consider to be hate speech, but what the gov't drones or worse, some company the hired to do the list, considers to be hate speech.
Don't like the way the Israeli's are treating the Palestinians? There's a good chance that many websites discussing Palestine will be flagged as anti-Semite and blocked (never mind that Palestinians are also Semites).
Won't happen? It's already happening, GiffGaff, a mobile phone + data service blocked sites (www.gilad.co.uk and wikipedia psilocybin desktop site!!!) and said I have to prove I'm 18 to access them. They say they have a legal requirement to do this?!?!
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Am I the only one here who likes porn? I would hate to have to make the call of shame.... "uh...isp...can you....uhh.....un block my pr0n?"
Apart of the technical points, useless in /., that would hinder the hard work in UK banks which in turn would lead to worse crisis effects!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I love how they even bother to include suicides, anything to pump up the numbers I guess.
Still 3.6 in 100k vs .25 in 100k..... well thats around 14 times higher.... higher than....almost nothing. In 100k, thats not a big difference, almost, not a difference worth talking about. Especially since comparing the US and UK is a total apples vs oranges comparison.
You can't compare some little island nation with national healthcare, working social infrastructure, and no concept of individual liberty (don't even have free speech rights there), with a huge federation of states spanning 3,000 miles of land mass. We have gangs, we have crumbling social infrastructure with a massive poor underclass, and a notiong of individual liberty, including the right to bear arms.
And still.... the most significant cause of death is heart disease.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Liar liar, pants on fire.
Never understand you people who think that being murdered by a gun is worse than being murdered by other means, when it is obviously superior. Now if you want to quote the real statistic instead of your perverted masochistic one, the homicide rate is indeed still higher, but a large part of that difference is due to other factors.
UK residents can sign a petition against this for the government to dutifully ignore.
Even though stupid legislation like this will personally make me lots of money, and will not affect me since I am not in the UK, I still oppose it strongly.
Images of abuse are as bad as sharing movies and tunes.
I prefer not being murdered at all, thanks. It's much harder to murder someone with a knife or a baseball bat or whatever else you want to imagine than it is with a gun.
Speaking of apples-to-oranges comparisons, you've quoted the homicide rate for the USA and the overall gun death rate for the UK. Homicide rates are 3.6 per 100,000 in the USA vs 0.04 per 100,000 in the UK (90 times higher) and the overall gun death rate is 10.3 per 100,000 in the USA vs 0.25 per 100,000 in the UK (41.2 times higher).
10.3 people per 100,000 is not almost nothing. That means that over your 75-year life, you have a 1 in 129 chance of death by being shot. It's not likely as such, but not odds I'd be happy living with, either.
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Recent government actions against Britons for online 'libel' or online 'offensive' opinions (like burning the pro-war red poppy in a video) have been cited by repressive regimes in the Middle east, Africa and Asia as justification for their own programs of repression. They say "If the UK can take people to court for these kinds of things, so can we". The 'crackdown' on pro-democracy activists in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, for instance, is entirely modelled on modes of 'law enforcement' witnessed recently in Britain. Indeed, Britain even has senior members of its police force working as liaisons in these Middle East nations to assist with the repression of their own people.
Now the UK proposes the most comprehensive system of censorship and OVERT monitoring of the Internet on our planet. An essential part of this is a massive attack against multiple forms of consenting adult sexual behaviour. Sexual repression of ADULTS is a key factor of societal control in many nations- most commonly associated with countries suffering extremist Islamic rule- but actually found in many other forms of culture as well. You see, you are either free or you are not.
In the UK, people will fight these proposals to some degree. In the nations Tony Blair's stooge, Cameron, seeks to influence, companies from the West offering such Internet surveillance/censorship systems will be welcome with open arms. You see, what is happening is that Tony Blair is seeking to normalise 1984 style tactics in people's Internet experiences, no matter where they live on this planet.
People are to live in terror of others finding out what they do online, regardless of what they do online. For instance, say you explore EFFECTIVE opposition to female circumcision as an Egyptian citizen. Say you explore issues of REAL female liberation as a Saudi citizen. Say you explore your adult homosexual nature as a citizen of multiple nations allied with Tony Blair and his collection of Western thugs in America and the EU. Each of these online actions will mark you as a serious thought criminal to the regime under which you live.
Cameron's speech is a message to the monsters that rule in so many nations. The speech is designed to encourage such monsters to be PRO-ACTIVE in their pursuit of 'thought criminals'. It does no matter that thought crimes vary randomly from country to country. What matters is the fear that can be used to suppress the national population, making them much more compliant.
It is ironic that the USA is the only nation to accidentally own an iron-clad written constitution that holds back this one form of government abuse. However, I have to inform you Yanks that the Constitution is an illusion. You have people serving serious time in your prisons simply for giving New Yorkers access to Middle East TV stations that Israel does not like. So much for your free speech. Many States gut your Rights to bear arms, with serious prison time for those that demand their rights. Your Rights to a fair trial and the like vanished with indefinite detention under any excuse your masters care to use. Your Right to be treated equally is laughable when racial profiling is the rule for 'law' enforcement in the USA.
Even so, many Yanks recognise their Constitutional Rights are being abused even if no-one does anything about it, but increasingly YOUR masters, like Obama, are giving speeches stating that the idea of a rigid written constitution is out-of-date, and you must move to a British way of doing things.
There is a hidden factor. In the UK and USA, the population is increasingly elderly. Old people fear the young (ever see a new young cat enter the domain of a much older one?). Old people love it when politicians pitch their extremist policies against the young, claiming to wish to serve the 'morality' and concerns of the old. Societies with a significant elderly population tend to authoritarian forms very quickly indeed left to their own devices. Those that really rule the UK and USA appreciate this fact.
The 'Internet Generation' is anti-censorship, but their parents/grand-parents are very pro-censorship.
Other factors? Really? The overall homicide rate in the USA is 4.8 per 100,000, of which 3.6 per 100,000 are perpetrated with guns. In the UK, there are 1.2 homicides per 100,000, of which 0.25 per 100,000 are perpetrated with guns. The difference in gun homicide rate is 3.35, the difference in overall homicide rate is 3.6.
So, basically, take all the homicides committed with guns away, and the USA and the UK have pretty comparable homicide rates (1.2 vs 0.95 per 100,000). Coincidence?
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Sorry, wrong number for UK gun homicides - actually 0.04, not 0.25 per 100k. So the difference in gun homicide rate is 3.56 per 100k, while the difference in homicide rate is 3.6 per 100k. Excluding gun homicides, the homicide rates are 1.2 vs 1.16 per 100k - so nearly identical it makes no difference.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jul/22/cameron-no-ban-sun-page-3
"Pressed to explain the distinction between his proactive position on online pornographic images and his laissez-faire stance on topless images in newspapers, he said that it was up to consumers whether or not they wanted to buy the Sun.
The No More Page 3 campaign was launched last summer during the Olympics by Holmes, who was infuriated to find that the biggest image of a woman in the newspaper was not an athlete, but a young model wearing just her underpants, captioned "Emily from Warrington".
The Sun is a Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid that supports the Conservative Party led by David Cameron.
Is it possible to detect a little hypocrisy here?
This is blatantly a bit of political grandstanding that will probably backfire hilariously once a lot of "reposponsible fathers" find out that their wives have disabled access to their favourite hobby sites, Not to mention the public reaction once the first person demonstrates on television how easy it is to get round the filtering using proxies or VPNs. The only issue once that happens is whether more and more blocking then gets put in place in a futile bid to stop the incoming tide.
No, of course not. I mean, if such possibility existed, even remotely, they wouldn't do it, right? It is not like people have a history of exploiting this kind of dumb shit.
The only real question left is: how can people be this stupid?
morcego
That's right. Gun laws in Britain make no difference whatsoever, in fact the gun murder rate there is ten times higher than in the USA.
Oh. Wait. No it's not. Actually the USA is number 11 on that list and the UK is number 60. But hey, never let facts get in the way of your preconceptions.
Those numbers would be a lot more meaningful except that Britain's murder rate was much, much lower than the US's even before they passed restrictive gun laws. In fact, since the UK has clamped down and the US has been relaxing restrictions, the gap has actually closed considerably (note that I'm not claiming that the changes in gun laws caused the closure of the gap; there's evidence that they are correlated, but the evidence is somewhat equivocal). The murder rate in the UK has risen slightly* while that in the US has fallen dramatically, in fact in 2013 it's expected to reach the lowest rate in over a century -- though that will still be almost triple the UK's rate.
The fact is that murder isn't related to the availability of better tools to commit murder, because adequate tools are absolutely everywhere. It's culture that drives murder, and the US has a more violent culture than the UK.
* The UK murder rate rose consistently and gradually from 1960 through about 2000, when it spiked sharply, peaking in the early 2000s. Since then it's been declining fairly rapidly, and has dropped to early 80s levels. Note that a significant chunk of the 2002 peak was attributable to Dr. Harold Shipman, but even if you subtract the deaths he likely caused, there's still a fairly sharp spike in the murder rate following the 1997 handgun ban.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"That means that over your 75-year life, you have a 1 in 129 chance of death by being shot. It's not likely as such, but not odds I'd be happy living with, either."
Good counter argument, but the final bit is wrong. Probability doesn't compound like that. You can always assess a probability by considering what it fundamentally means: number of desirable options / total possible options. Thus, your assertion that 1 in 129 chance means that for every 129 people 75 years old, then one of them will have been shot dead. That is not a statement I can believe.
The true probability is what you originally stated. Start with your yeargroup (as some kind of filter) and work out how many people there are. Right, let's make up some numbers. We have 1,000,000 people aged 75. How many died in the past 12 months? Let's say 100,000. Now we can make some statements. The probability of a 75 year old dieing in the past year was 100,000 / 1,000,000 or (rounding) 1 in 10. If we assume, or have no reason to believe otherwise, that the death rate in the coming year was the same as last, then we can make the statement: your chances, as a 75 year old, of dieing in the coming year are 1 in 10.
You can do the same thing with gun deaths as opposed to total deaths that I used as an example in the above paragraph.
Those numbers are meaningless. Compare Vermont, Montana, New Jersey and Louisiana in the US and try to find a pattern. (there is none, the gun laws in this states vary from almost no regulation to quite strict)
So, you still have to prove that it is the gun laws that make the murder rate less in Britain and not "socialism" (i.e. much better social security net).
I love how they even bother to include suicides, anything to pump up the numbers I guess
Amazingly they offer "total", "homicide", "suicide", "accidental" as separate categories and you can sort on any of them! But why let facts get in the way of a good rant, eh?
And if you actually look at homicides, you get 3.6 versis 0.04 which is more like 90 times. And if you look at total, you get 10.4 versus 0.25 which is 40x.
So in fact, to make your point you picked the lower number from the US (homicides only) and the higher from the UK (total).
You can't compare some little island nation with
You know that the UK is a larger economic area than the two largest US states combined and is in fact 1/6 of the size? So while I'm sure you enjoy revelling in the fact that the USA is that big you can still make comparisons. What do the figures for Texas and California look like?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Since the gun death rate is relatively low the approximation is fairly good.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Yeah, pornography ain't good for your children. So we'll filter wikileaks for you too.
My ISP offers a "family filter". When a customer joins the ISP they have the option to enable the family filter or not. I was already a customer when the filter was introduced. I received an email letting me know about the filter and a link to the "My Account" page where I can toggle it on or off. If I had children or ran a community group or business I would enable it. None of that applies and I prefer to leave my service unfiltered.
I have lost nothing and my freedom has not been curtailed in any way whatsoever.
It is perfectly reasonable a democratic society to want the same legal standards to apply to content delivered electronically as to content delivered on physical media such as books, DVD etc. We have laws concerning images of rape, bestiality, child abuse and so on because as a society we believe these kinds of images are damaging and unwelcome. The laws are made in parliament in a broadly free society by people we elect and who we can and do periodically remove if we like.
This legislation does not curtail the freedom of even one responsible adult. If you want to continue to use *your* internet connection to enjoy pornography then nothing will stop you from doing so. The main change will be to filter *public* connections.
If a minor goes into a store and try to buy pornography or extremely violent movies they are refused because as a society we believe this is something we prefer to disallow. A concerned parent or guardian might filter their home connection but every young person now has a mobile computer of some kind and the legal brickwall has crumbled to dust. What this law does is restore our society's ability to enact its democratic choices, and tries to put important parenting choices back into the hands of parents instead of the hands of unknown third parties who have proven to be lazy, incompetent, uncaring, greedy or even malicious.
Again: this legislation does not curtail the freedom of even one responsible adult.
"I have a very clear message for Google, Bing, Yahoo! and the rest. You have a duty to act on this – and it is a moral duty. If there are technical obstacles to acting, don't just stand by and say nothing can be done; use your great brains to help overcome them."
Cameron also wants Google, Bing, Yahoo! and the rest to overcome the tyranny of the halting problem with their great brains as soon as possible.
Sexual guilt is, sadly, a massive factor in the lives of far too many people. When consenting adult sexual behaviour is targeted, as with Cameron's disgusting proposals in the UK, it is like that scene in a movie when the 'hero' (yeah, right) extracts information from a bad guy by putting his finger into his gun wound, torturing him thusly
This is why Blair's puppet, Cameron, chooses this method. Look at Blair's and Obama's main partner in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. This nation is as fake as its Siamese-twin, Israel- both having been created and sustained in the 20th Century by the UK and USA. The extreme sexual repression seen in Saudi is NOT a result of Islamic values, as the racists would have you believe. Indeed, the rulers of Saudi are not even Muslims (which is why daily you can find them in the West consorting with prostitutes, drinking alcohol, living like playboys, and co-operating with the Israeli government). Saudi Arabia is actually a perverted 'Disneyland' where the people live under laws and 'religious' enforcement like the occupants of a nightmare 'fairytale'. Why then is Saudi stable? Because, as terrifying as it is to contemplate, you can brainwash the sheeple to accept any form of regime as 'normal'.
In some nations, being OVERTLY homosexual (rather than being discrete) is a serious crime. It should be noted that contrary to what the usual racists tell you, such nations do NOT actively pursue people over their private homosexual activities, providing such activities are one on one, and do not involve people considered 'minors'.
In some nations adultery is a serious time, usually getting you a significant prison sentence- less often a flogging, and rarest to the point of almost never happening, a death sentence. Adultery may (reasonably) be defined as illicit sex against your marriage contract, or far less reasonably as any sexual contact EXCEPT with a marriage partner.
In nations like Egypt, societal pressure form older women forces the majority of females (Muslims, Jews and Christians) to undergo an extreme form of genital mutilation. Egypt is not some primitive sub-Saharan African state.
Young 'native' women in South Africa are pressured to undergo intimate monthly inspections of their naked bodies by 'elders' in the name of chastity, family reputation, and 'fighting' AIDS. Later, many of these young women describe how humiliating and demeaning they found the rituals.
You are either free to explore your sexuality, or you are not. Imposed rules, except those DIRECTLY designed to protect the under-aged, are disgusting abuses of Human Rights. Helping the under-aged to avoid 'porn' and preventing the under-aged from being targeted by sex criminals is something we can all agree on. Using the under-aged as an excuse to abuse the Rights and freedoms of adults is pure evil.
But Blair and Cameron find support from certain classes of morons- the same types of morons that cause the situations in the places I described above.
- the 'Sexual Guilt' moron. This moron is common on places like Slashdot. This moron spends a lot of time looking at porn, and then an equal amount of time feeling guilty about it. This moron thinks he has a problem, and someone else needs to do something about it.
-the 'Organised Religion' moron. No point 'belonging' to an organised religion unless you listen to the rules of your chosen 'fuhrer'. And what organised religion resists the effectiveness of playing to sexual guilt?
-the 'Politically Correct' moron. If it feels good, it MUST be because a person of the opposite sex is being exploited. No female has ever willingly participated in pornography. Most of the time sex is forced on females, because females have FAR less interest in sex than males.
-the 'I'm OK, but my neighbour Isn't' moron. This moron KNOWS (through personal experience) that fetish material is fine in the hands of the right person, but what happens when all those 'mouth-breathers' start to get access, and are given the 'wrong ideas' by what they see?
You know that the UK is a larger economic area than the two largest US states combined and is in fact 1/6 of the size? So while I'm sure you enjoy revelling in the fact that the USA is that big you can still make comparisons. What do the figures for Texas and California look like?
Congratulations, England is number one in GDP.
Followed very closely by California. Then Texas. Then New York. Florida's also in the top ten. Let's not even get into the top twenty.
Sure, I'll pour you a Newcastle in celebration for achieving number one, but you guys really aren't shit compared to the economic juggernaut that is the horrifying combined might of the United States.
I'd rather like to see they blocked violence in TV programs and games.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Which company will get a license to print money by being selected the provider of the mandatory hardware, software and/or filtering list?
What odds are the bookies giving on that company belonging to someone who is either a relative or a good friend of a high-ranking politician?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Followed very closely by California. Then Texas.
If by "followed very closely" you actually mean "marginally larger than California and Texas combined" then sure.
Sure, I'll pour you a Newcastle in celebration for achieving number one,
I generally perfer a real ale, but I won't turn down a Free as in Beer beer.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Maybe this will help popularize censorship-evading software before they block everything that's actually important.
UK may be a small island, but its population is 1/5th that of the US & I can assure you we have our fair share of drug gangs, crumbling social infrastructure and underclass. Our notion of individual liberty is inevitably different to yours given our history & the fact that there's 65 million of us in a place the size of Oregon (and most of those crammed in to England, which is smaller still).
The numbers you quote above are per year - so for a lifetime chance, you need to multiply by however long you hope to live for. 3.6 in 100k quickly becomes 1 in 300, which isn't as bad as, say, auto accidents, but still plenty high enough.
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They already made the XXX domain force the pornographer to use it and close down all others domains to pornography. Pornography the writing about, the taking of images or videotaping a male and female, male and male,female and female, any of the later with an animal having sexual intercourse not excluding oral sex ,anal sex sucking of any body part while nude to pleasure another person. There was that so hard? Only cowards "The US supreme Court" say well there no way to define Pornography they are just afraid they will be forced to click a box to see it. Those Judges have wife's so they are unable to make a decision that wouldn't affect there own relationships. The reason why i beleave the said we cant define it but know it when i see it LOL.
I love pornography its great but My vise shouldn't be forced on others. Viewing pornography must be a choice made by individuals and the pornographers dont care who see it. They load our email boxes with the stuff they hide there address and that is just flat out wrong that is forcing there business on people who they have no idea whose opening it. Every business on our planet has been forced to do the right thing by our governments.
Jack of all trades,master of none
See much pornography in the news papers? Why do you think there is none? And why is the internet any different then newspapers except you are being spied on in the internet.
Jack of all trades,master of none
give the government what it wants regardless of the legal requirement or face being shut-down over not blocking pornographic content.
I'm actually very happy about this bill. Well, obviously not the bill itself but rather, I'm happy about it's being proposed. My fear always was that were headed into a fascist regime were the corporation hold absolute power over the people in the absence of either a powerful public sector or a health middle class. Now it seems the system is balancing itself a little. Sure, individual people still get fucked, but this way there's at least a little competition up the ladder.
Sadly, all the automation we're facing will destroy the middle class so this awkward balance between governments and corporations fighting over public opinion is probably the best we can hope for.
Interestingly if you google for 'porn', all the top hits (and most of the first page) is about Cameron's Crackdown. Presumably if the filters were on, these results would have been blocked.
All your ghosts are just false positives.
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> And if you actually look at homicides, you get 3.6 versis 0.04 which is more like 90 times. And if
> you look at total, you get 10.4 versus 0.25 which is 40x.
Your right about me picking the wrong numbers, that was unintentional (whoops) I still don't find them compelling because this is again, 40x almost nothing.
However....homicide rate.... good thing to look at, you didn't, that is the gun related one...I find this more frightening and makes me glad to be here in the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Actual homicide rate, regardless of guns, is 4.8 in the US, vs 1.4 in the UK, a difference of only ~2.5 times....but with a 1/40th the gun homicide rate? Fuck, I would generally rather be shot than be stabbed up or bludgeoned, or whatnot.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
If I'm a parent I would really like to teach my kids some computer skills. I'll block it at home, forcing him to meet up with his friends for his porn needs or learn how to circumvent the block. Either way, I'll get him out of the house or he'll learn networking skills. Back in my days, we had stolen Playboys from older brothers (or dads), kids these days have it too easy.
If it was a default block, which I highly doubt would even work that well, the barrier to porn may be too high and force my kids into unproductive activities like sports.
Fuck off and die horribly.
Yours sincerely,
Everyone.
Sheesh... Just had to hit one of my hot buttons, didn't you?
Gun laws in Britain make no difference because you chaps are less violent than the USA PERIOD. Seriously, we still kill more of each other with non-firearms(4.8*32.3%=1.6) than you do total(1.2).
For that matter, if you go back in history, you'll find that we've actually closed much of the gap over the years since you guys effectively banned handguns. Heck, if we could end the spike in black male murder, we'd be a lot closer to you still.
I maintain that, if we really want to reduce the murder rate, we need to end the 'war on drugs', go in and provide effective education and job opportunities in the ghettos, and other systems to fight the current system of mostly-broken families in the ghettos.
I don't read AC A human right
Tony Blair's puppet has declared that ALL video streams received by UK Internet users must have a BBFC R18 rating at worse. This is equivalent to an almost complete ban on sexual fetish material.
The BBFC, for those who don't know, is the government's official 'unofficial' board of censorship. By law, ALL cinema films in the UK must get a BBFC certificate, and all video sold in physical form to end-users must be pre-censored by the BBFC. The BBC is outside the remit of the BBFC, and independent TV broadcasters are loosely connected to the BBFC judgements by the rules of the body that oversees non-BBC TV broadcasts. Local councils are the final arbitrators in the UK as to whether a cinema in their district can show a film, and to whom.
The BBFC has long wanted control over ALL Internet content, and today Cameron made a commitment to give them this control. UK based independent pornographers are now out-of-business. For a Brit to create fetish material for other Brits will mean a very long prison sentence. Britain's establishment pornographers, mostly gangsters that operated with extreme brutality at the end of the last century, are now part of the British elite. They will be howling with delight at the extermination of their competition. Their whole modus operandi is to work hand-in-glove with the BBFC and politicians, and produce sexual slop that fully meets whatever politically correct rules are in place at the time. Unfortunately, when their potential customers have a choice to 'shop' elsewhere, their profits decline somewhat.
All material tagged 'sexual' on Youtube will be BANNED by Google from reception in the UK, unless the stream is from a commercial company that has applied for and received the requisite R18 certificate from the BBFC. So, a total ban then on all 'free' streaming video services providing sexual material.
It is TALIBAN time in the UK. To be honest, the real Taliban are pikers when it comes to true exploitation of sexually repressive initiatives imposed top down on a population. The UK is going to show the world, and Tony Blair groupies in increasing numbers of nations are going to rush to copy. Tony Blair himself, using his self-created multi-faith organisation, has been travelling the globe telling anyone who would listen that such repressive censorship is essential in the modern age. Be you Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew- whatever, you can never have too much sexual repression.
Now sexual repression isn't the real point, but the means to an end. People in the West have become just too damned 'uppity', especially since WW2. hey think they have the right to be whoever they wish to be. They think that social conformity is the crap you find in third-world crap holes. They think they can do anything they like, so long as they do not directly harm another.
No, no, no, no, no. The sheeple must be free only to passively empower their masters. If they start to believe that empowering themselves is the goal, the log established system breaks down.
Blair wants people to live with fear all the time. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of giving their children the 'wrong' food in their school lunches. Fear of liking the 'wrong' thing sexually. Fear of being sacked unreasonably, and then getting no State benefits because they were fired. Fear of their 'different' neighbours. Fear about what their neighbours are thinking and saying about them behind their back. Essentially "fear of stepping on a crack and breaking their mother's back". A good psychologist would explain this to you in a trice.
Sexual issues are the best way to hurt people, allowing you to re-mould them in ways that suit the power structure. Oral sex illegal. Sex toys illegal. Sex between the (non-existant) races illegal. Does this ring any bells with you Yanks? Do you pay attention to how, even today, people suffer in those fundamental Christian towns in the USA?
Alphas do as they wish. By definition, they are above such coercion. Everyone else does as they are told. Except for those
Could you please source your numbers? Because I'm seeing very different ones.... USA: 4.8 vs UK: 1.2. I think you cited the firearm homicide rates, which is somewhat understandable, but if you don't specify that the rates are for firearms only you're distorting the presentation.
BTW, one trivia fact: The USA non-firearm homicide rate is STILL higher than the UK's total homicide rate. Of course, .04 out of 1.2 per 100k is 'insignificant'.
Another: Something like 3/4 of the difference in total homicides could be eliminated if we could get the 'black male' murder rate(killer AND victim) down to the average of the rest of the country.
Lastly: Your odds of being murdered go way, way down if you don't act like a criminal. Don't hang around in gangs, etc... There are spots in the USA where if you associate with certain gangs your life expectancy is under 30, and the primary cause of death is murder.
I don't read AC A human right
no concept of individual liberty
Of course we have a concept of individual liberty, you drooling moron. This is not Soviet Russia. On a day to day basis we have way more liberty than you guys do - it's hard to be free when there's a cop on every street, so don't pretend you are "more free" than countries that are civilized enough not to need cops on every street. You can't do *anything* out of the ordinary in the US without having some cop intervene, on the threat of serious gun violence. But, sure, not allowing people to libel each other is way worse than living in a police state. You just keep telling yourselves that.
The main thing we lack on personal liberty versus the USA is a national obsession with it arising from a paranoid conception of the government. But since your government is overrunning your cities with its agents anyway, that war was lost years ago, and your right to bear arms did nothing to stop it.
I still don't find them compelling because this is again, 40x almost nothing.
Don't find them compelling at what? Bear in mind that the OP claimed that the numbers indicated that the rate was higher in the UK. As a refutation of that claim, a factor of 90 in the opposite direction is about as compelling an argument that he was wrong as exists.
Fuck, I would generally rather be shot than be stabbed up or bludgeoned, or whatnot.
Then come to the UK, then. If the murder rate in the US is 4.8 and by guns, 3.6, then you're about as likely to be bludgeoned to death/murdered in the US as the UK plus you could be shot too.
I don't know what point you're trying to make. I'm not arguing in favour of gun control.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
politicians are making promises they can not keep.
Be seeing you...
Harold Shipman? 250+ verified murders? Non-censored words fail me...
Yeah, in a country with a murder rate as low as the UK's that might actually shift it a point...
By the way, have you heard of the leaded gasoline hypothesis for the violent crime rates?
I don't read AC A human right
See where this is going?
Welcome to China and Iran... TOR and VPN services definitely need to disguise themselves better.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Even if that's the case, I should still be allowed to own a firearm. It is a legitimate form of personal protection that could very well save my life in any variety of cases. Others' misuse are not my fault and there are other ways to bring down crime than, as said elsewhere here, "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut."
My first thought was...glad it wasn't us engaging in another ridiculous scandal on the internet...
I share an Internet connection with a woman who would be mightily offended if she found such a filter was turned on.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Use the argument given in the post you're replying to. Tell her the filter is blocking "normal" sites like Reddit, Tumblr, anything else you can think of (DeviantArt, movie trailers?), etc just because they contain a small amount of adult content too.
I know this sounds silly, but it would probably be wise not to include DeviantArt in the list, simply due to the fact that it has Deviant in the name.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Excellent change for the Pirate Party UK to get some votes: abolish the block, vote Pirate!
Will the filter also remove Scunthorpe for obscene language...and many other Anglo-Saxon placenames?
An influential Tory backbencher who has the ear of Prime Minister Stephen Harper when it comes to child protection issues says she will push for Ottawa to follow what she called the “bold” crackdown on child pornography in the U.K. that would force Internet providers to install automatic safety filters for anyone surfing the web.
Prime Minister David Cameron announced Monday that to fight the “horrendous crime” of child abuse images, he will ask U.K. Internet providers to install a “porn block” that would prevent web users from accessing all kinds of pornography, unless they specifically request not to have the filters set up on their computers.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/07/22/winnipeg_mp_joy_smith_wants_canada_to_copy_david_camerons_uk_porn_bock.html
I'm afraid you're wrong. The Prime Minister said that simulated rapes with explicit sex will be forbbiden (and I wholeheartedly agree with him), not simulated "artistic" rapes like in the movie you mention. BTW I do find "A Clockwork Orange" a little boring ;-)
Welcome to the future of bubble wrapping:
- Which never really works, BT blocks TPB, but, really hasn't.
- Where parenting is no longer required. No need to teach your kids anything. The government has created a safe/censored world for you to live in.
- Where new jobs (using tax payers money) are created for the sole purpose of making a decision for you.
People need their own right to make their own decisions in life, its what shapes it. Take that away, and their chance to make a mistake or learn from it.
We will just end up being anything but unique.
I live in the UK, when this comes to effect, i will be 1st to call my ISP and request they turn the filter off.
Not so i can use it (i might, you never know), but, for the whole concept that i like to control what i do with my life.
Whatever next, in the bubble wrap world..........
Oh, I agree it's not the only factor, but one of the things being noted was that the big cities turned into hotbeds of violent crime; now they've dropped back so that cities, large and small, have about the same amount of crime given other socio-economic factors.
In other words, it's for the big spike in crime centered on the '70s, not remaining amounts of crime. At least for the most part.
Then there's the issue that there are people calling for massive lead abatement efforts along the lines of asbestos removal, but I'm a little more cautious - inhalation is notorious for getting things into the body that wouldn't otherwise be able to penetrate, and solid elemental lead, even when in the body(bullet fragments, for example), biological uptake is limited. So I'm not sure that replacing lead window frames would do much. Lead paint, due to the consumption factor, is a bit bigger of a risk.
I don't read AC A human right
Default porn is wrong. You don't see it at newsstands, or anywhere else. I hope this catches on in the USA. Schools successfully do it and so should ISP's.
Or since I may be alone on this, allow a vote on it.
Help eliminate road rage