UK's Tories Promise To Enact Age Limits For Viewing Online Porn

An anonymous reader writes with this news from the UK: The Conservatives say they will force hardcore pornography websites to put in place age-restriction controls or face being shut down if they win the election. The culture secretary, Sajid Javid, said the party would act to ensure under-18s were locked out of adult content after a recent Childline poll found nearly one in 10 12-13 year olds were worried they were addicted and 18% had seen shocking or upsetting images. Experts welcomed the move – targeted at both UK-based and overseas websites – but warned it would take hard work to implement in practice.

Comments

Good Luck with That

[germansausage]

Do any of your politicians have even the smallest clue how the internet works? Trying to age restrict porn will be as effective as a law banning the sun from rising tomorrow,

Re:Good Luck with That

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that the answer is depressing close to "no"; but it's important to remember the context: election season is ramping up in the UK and all the parties are currently making assorted promises of dubious truth and plausibility in an attempt to curry favor with their constituencies. In this case, won't-someone-please-think-of-the-children!!! nonsense plays pretty well across the board, is a logical extension of the existing Tory Great-Firewall-of-Cameron efforts, and may be an attempt to burnish their reactionary credentials to try to counter UKIP without having to say anything excessively embarrassing.

They may or may not think that it's possible; and may not even much care; but as a piece of political theater it is logical enough. Remember, you only need to be an expert on getting elected in order to make it into office. Never underestimate a politician's skill in this area; but never let one pretend that it implies skill in other areas.

Re:Good Luck with That

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Parenting 101: Stuff is going to happen with your kid. Your goal isn't to magically prevent it, because you can't. Your goal is to keep it to a level where you can support your kid until they can cope with it independently, and stop anything disastrous from happening along the way.

"Experts" have a hidden agenda

[foreverdisillusioned]

nearly one in 10 12-13 year olds were worried they were addicted

I would say this is more likely to be a problem with their social / religious upbringing making them think that it's messed up to want to look at porn more than a couple times per week.

Also, feel free to make as many kid-friendly whitelists as you want but proposals to rate/blacklist the entire thing are horribly insidious. Why are we still falling for this old scam? In addition to being insanely hard to do effectively, this sort of censorship is ALWAYS stealthily aimed at adults, not children. Case in point: NC-17 ratings for movies and AO ratings for videogames. Both are on their face completely redundant (R rating and M+ rating), but their real use is to prevent certain content from being produced through self-censorship pressure by retailers/theaters refusing to carry the highest rating. The analogue here is going to be ISPs first offering opt-out for censored internet, then opt-in for uncensored internet, and then "hey, why should the government being subsidizing the with-porn ISP plans?" and boycotts and cheap political grandstanding and endless tedious arguments about what constitutes porn vs. art vs. education.

A genuine and forthright proposal would be "Here, if you're worried use whitelist XYZ and keep your kids off of the real the internet. " If we don't want kids driving cars then the solution is to stop them from doing so, not to pass legislation to install giant Nerf bumpers on everything and enact a new nationwide speed limit of 20 mph. Proposals to examine and decide whether to blacklist every goddamn page on the internet should be instantly recognized as a very clumsy attempt to control adults.

I think there's more to it than that

[Zocalo]

Given the previous clueless comments on tech matters that have been made by the UK government I'm inclined to discount this being a case of "yes, we know it's stupid, but it'll win us some votes (from those equally clueless) and we'll forget about it after the election". Nope, the real motivation here seems to be in the bit Slashdot skipped over, despite it being right there on the byline of TFA: "ensure under-18s were locked out of adult content via an independent regulator with power to compel ISPs to block sites". Oh yes, it's the old "let's censor the Internet" meme again, only this time it appears they've at least learnt from their previous mistakes and placed all the financial burden of doing the impossible and somehow blocking the vast number of sites that won't comply with this legislation firmly on the ISPs with fines if they don't co-operate.

Re:And where are the parents?

[DigitAl56K]

Supervision isn't even really the "problem" here.

Parents don't like the idea of their still young and in need of heavy-handed protection children having naughty thoughts or being around other children who might have naughty thoughts. Puberty disagrees with these parents, but the politicians are offering a feeling of control over something that is biologically ingrained in us. Parents will buy into it in most cases because they tend to be irrational about this stuff.

Pro-tip: You can't control everything a teenager does, and if you try you will ultimately promote outrageous behavior. Teenagers will watch porn. Teenagers will have sex. To the parents out there: don't make it taboo, make it safe. Those are two different things.

Re:And where are the parents?

[SuricouRaven]

Most of those images were probably send by peers. Children have a fascination with the morbid and forbidden.