Slashdot Mirror
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.
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,
...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...
In other news, around 10% of parents apparently have no idea how to supervise their 12-13 year old children when they go on-line. Maybe we should treat the problem, not one particular symptom? Age-checks on porn sites aren't going to stop those same inadequately supervised children from being groomed for other things, or subject to hate attacks by classmates at school, or any number of other threats that come with an open communication system like the Internet.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Good luck with that. It's a well known fact that underage individuals will answer truthfully to questions about their age and that they would never consider swiping an adult's credit card for age verification. Never mind the large number of sites based outside of the UK that could give bog-all about some idiotic local laws, or even those sites that have a mix of adult and non-adult content.
Parliament should really stop thinking of the kids.
Mostly because of the pedophilia scandals, but also in general as well.
Asking all websites in different countries on the planet to implement legal age verification is completely unrealistic. It takes too much work and duplicates that work on all the websites.
What's easy to do is ask websites to add metas about the content. A standard about the metas and their keywords could be established but we already have something used by media companies when publishing movies on DVD, etc.
The "locking down" side should come from the browsers themselves. It's easy to ask international companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft to add "child locks" to their browsers, in fact I think some of them already have something similar.
And while the idea of asking all websites to put locks in place is dumb for the reasons mentioned above, I'm glad they're thinking about locking down adult content instead of trying to block it all for everyone.
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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.
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.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
but idiots do.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
This is the country that has age control on alcohol-related websites. It's worse than useless. Go to any alcohol-related site in the UK, for example the Highland Park website, and you have to enter your birth date. Wow, I'll bet no 13-year-old ever thought about adding 10 years to his/her age.
All this does is annoy the actual customers; it's not actually useful. Anyway, come to think of it, isn't the government's job at all. I kind of thought (speaking as a parent) that it was the parents' job to know what the kids are doing.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
This is going to be amusing.
Tories wrote:
FTFY
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
... the run-up to elections is called, "the silly season."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
would be more successful.
British culture has always seemed the most paranoid in the world about children and sex. I once found a website claiming that the world's most innocent cartoons that have young girls in them (for instance "Kiki's delivery service" - and no I'm not joking) should be banned because a pedophile could gain enjoyment from watching the girl in it.. It was a British blog, but I could tell that before checking because of the insane paranoia.
But, here's the odd part, they're also the country least successful in preventing the sexual exploitation of children. Look up "grooming gangs" in a google news search. They're paranoid about this stuff, but not willing to confront Pakistani or Somali or whatever immigrants over actual abuse.
That doesn't work. A kid can easily get hold of a credit card (some carry one all the time) and sign up.
As long as they don't make a purchase, they can see the free stuff. For some, that's enough and, anyway, it doesn't "block access."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
They should use the "obscure trivia questions from the 70's" method like the old Leisure Suit Larry games. Although I suppose in the days of Google that wouldn't work nearly as well.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Oh, I've seen it with plenty of people who otherwise exhibit much greater than average intelligence and capacity for critical thinking too. Becoming a parent seems to create a reality distortion field around a surprising number of people.
However, this failing certainly isn't universal among parents, nor does it mean that people with more rational and reasoned positions should not challenge this kind of foolishness. It is, after all, likely to be better for all children if their parents act responsibly, supervise them properly when they are younger, and support them as they do grow up and become young adults.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore So basically, the Tories believe 12 year olds are too stupid to find directions on the 'net for finding and using a proxy in another country so that they can access porn without age restrictions? Of do they believe they are going to force every server in every country to implement age restrictions?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
A porn site wanting my credit card number? Yeah, that sounds absolutely legit, uhhuh...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There should definitely be systems in place to protect developing minds from porn. We could even give them a snappy name like "Pornographic Age-Restriction Enforcing Network Tool." Really a shame that nothing like this exists in the 21st century.
Rob
That's contemporary politics for you. As long as voters have as little clue about technology as politicians have, politicians who know zero about the things they decide about are allowed to stay in office. In an enlightened society, such a suggestion would alone be enough to ensure political suicide of whoever came up with the idea. Because voters would know that it's not only impossible but simply idiotic to even try something like that. At the very least the ONLY way to do this would be to impose massive restrictions on the internet altogether.
But as long as their voters are dumber than they are, they should be ok.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't worry, that's basically what this law will ensure. Anyone past 55 will be not only know too little about computers to get around the (certainly mandatory) block, but would also be ashamed to ask for aid to get porn, while the average child, if necessary with the aid of his school peers (for whom it is a huge gain of "street cred" if they know how to fight not only "da man" but of course parental restrictions), will have no problem getting around anything our esteemed polidorks can come up with.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...is because not every website is subject to UK law. They can pass whatever laws they want but it will not affect any website where UK law does not apply. I'd not be so fast to ascribe this to ignorant politicians though. The cynical side of me sees this as a way that the politicians can claim that they are strong on family values without actually doing anything meaningful that might alienate some voters.
I recomend the government makes a list of all the porn sites worldwide (rated by quality), and make a browser plugin that blocks those sites (based on age). The parents can download the blocker onto their kids computers in those countries that care about this. This will achieve two major (and very worth while) porn goals at the same time, with the first being to effectively block most porn from the computers of kids who's parents actually care.
A kid can easily get hold of a credit card
Or they can have one of their own. My daughter is 16, and has had her own credit card for several years.
I'm subscribed to a service that lets me take on-line surveys for small amounts of cash. One of the things that they do to weed out bots, or people who aren't being honest might work here. On the first page, have you enter your age in years. Then, there's a "read and agree" page. After you've gone through that, you have to enter your date of birth. If that doesn't match your age, you're denied access. Most kids aren't going to remember what age they gave simply because they don't know that it's going to matter, especially if they just get what looks like a 404 response instead of being told they're not old enough.
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Anyone past 55 will be not only know too little about computers to get around the (certainly mandatory) block...
Back when I was 55, I was doing senior tech support for an ISP. That was about a decade ago. If/when I want some pr0n, I don't need any help in finding it, TYVM. You might want to rethink some of your stereotypes.
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Way back when I was in my teens, I would always add 10 to my real age and so subtract 10 from my real birth year.
Makes it real easy to remember the lie and be able to make match even years later.
Of course when I was 15 the web wasn't yet a year old and we still got our 8-bit gif porn from FTP that didn't/couldn't age check, but for BBS profiles it worked great.
Never came up against such a validation myself however, at least not that I ever noticed. But I'm just a bit surprised this is my first time hearing of such validation in practice.
At least the site/service you use doesn't require a credit card to "prove" age.
The funny thing is that with the old Leisure Suit Larry games that you could simply "brute force" it, and learn something.
Motivation is a strong desire, education be damned. :-)
Remember, this isn't intended to validate my age, it's intended to test my honesty and make sure that I'm not an autobot. Another way they use is having "don't know" as a possible answer to a question where it's not (or shouldn't be) a reasonable response. As an example, you might be given a drop-down list of professions, where the last two are "none of the above" and "don't know." The first one is quite plausible, especially if you're retired, as I am, but how likely is it that you're not going to know what your profession is? Basically, any time I see the same question in two different forms on different pages I presume it's an honesty check.
And, your method of always adding exactly ten years to your age will work, but only if you remember to do it each time, and how many years you added. Not all minors are going to realize that there might be a second age test, making this both an age and an IQ test.
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To filter 18+, questions from the end of the 90s is enough. That's how you know you got old.
Dear UK politicians,
Please stop screwing our internet. If you don't like it, just make your own, it's easy and the infrastructure exist.
Thanks, the real world.
In all seriousness, if they want to create a "curated" internet, sanctioned by the state, they can. No need to bother the sane people around with their craziness.
I guess I'm flogging a dead horse, but where was all the outcry about violence? Hunger games was predicated on "lets have teenager kill other teenagers for sport". Yet the rating on that movie (and I'm sure the books, etc) were such that teenagers were encouraged to see it.
Either that, or they'll learn to remember what age they gave and adjust the year accordingly. It's not a particularly effective filter, but it will slow down beginners and stop those who can't figure it out.
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You remember the Usenet, it was the Internet before WWW.
Before Gore gave public access to the masses it was frequented by bright people and the place you went for answers. It's still around; p0rn for those who don't wish to subscribe to a site or wish to pay for it, and rivals thepiratebay in the files available.
I've never frequented a sex site, there's been no need, and when someone has a disagreement with a sex site they normally post everything they purchased to the Usenet (many times I've seen this).
It's not as active as it used to be and the sites are being used for items not meant for it. Alt.binaries.astronomy has not one pix of a star, planet, or even the sky, it's become a movie repository.
Just saying there is no age check for the Usenet, no passwords and for me I can't access it with SSL so nothing that says it's me accessing it other than an IP address (with an open WiFi channel it could be anybody), and there are still some very active areas.
I do try to steer people to the Usenet as they just don't have a clue what's available, if not for files be it pix, videos, or utilities, for the support available in many established groups for just about any subject. I've spent years in a Usenet group just helping people out, while no subject was off limits almost all queries were computer related.
Yes, Google Groups has pretty well taken over (and archived) the Usenet text groups, yet most of the messages to those groups via Google Groups doesn't make it to the Usenet (greatly reduces the spam and the stupid) - and not a one of the binary groups do they have a hand in.
It is forbidden to sell pornographic magazine to people under 18. Easy accessible porn to 12-13 year old was only in the case they found the porn stash of older persons. It was very very rare to get real porn magazine and I never seen any bondage or harder stuff until I was much older, the 2 one I remember seeing were "memorable" events and it was vanilla sex. That is the problem the net offer : easy accessibility to hard stuff (note I did not say hard core, I meant here the genre, like bondage etc... Normal vanilla sex should not really shock a 12-13 that much. SM play or gagging or fake rape, or way underage looking model or bestiality etc... That is a definitively different story).
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...it's intended to [...] make sure that I'm not an autobot...
Seems to me that it would be easier to just ask you if you pledge allegiance to Optimus Prime, and if you answer in the affirmative, block your access?
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
Having read TFA (yeah, I know... ), there are a number of questions that arise:
1) What the heck are they smoking in Tory HQ?
2) Did any of them consider running this by someone from even the party's own tech-support, let alone anyone form the Met or (for bonus points) GCHQ?
3) TFA states that this will apply to "Hardcore" porn. Who will be the arbiter of what constitutes hardcore?
4) Is their handling of websites selling POMs (Prescription-Only Meds) without a prescription to be considered a suitable yardstick against which to gauge their handling of this "new threat" (i.e. you can expect it to take between 2 and 5 years for them to have access to the site blocked or the site shut down (even where the domains are uk-registered, where the servers are UK-based, where the domain owners have already been convicted numerous times for the same activity, and where a substantial portion of the legwork in identifying the hosts has already been done by the person reporting it to the MHRA))?
5) Are they going to declare VPNs to be illegal, as they can be used to trivially circumvent geo-blocking (or are they really suggesting that the websites be forced to comply with this scheme even for connections originating outside the UK?)?
6) How will they classify sites where porn is not their core business, but where there is porn-like content?
7) Why can't we just encourage parents to actually parent? People keep on moaning about the "nanny state", but then expect the state to act like a surrogate parent to their kids (whilst at the same time, creating rules that make it increasingly difficult for schools to enforce anything remotely resembling discipline).
8) How about we propose an alternative solution that it took me all of two minutes to think of (and I haven't had a full dose of caffeine yet, so there's probably a few holes in it!)? This suggestion will take some changes to commonly deployed technology to make it work, but the changes aren't anything that hasn't been achievable with existing technology for years (just not in most home environments). Mandate that residential internet equipment be configured either with dual WAN ports, or with the single WAN port capable of carrying up to two subscriptions, and with at least two WiFi network interfaces. The idea is that a residential subscription provide two "streams", one open to the 'net as normal, the other carrying a filtered internet feed (much like the internet access commonly used in schools). One subscription goes to each WiFi network (and, optionally, segregation of the LAN Ethernet ports). This could be achieved using technology already trivial to obtain (although would require reconfiguration at both the ISP end, and either a substantial rewrite of the firmware or deployment of more "capable" kit to customers).
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
To answer your questions: No, politicians are not stupid; I'll explain below. Yes, voters are often stupid; they could make the effort to understand what is going on, but they choose not to - that, in my view, is the very essence of being stupid.
If somebody want to watch porn, he will say "yes I have 18" to any question. This is a stupid waste of everyone time. Don't vote this retarded people even if you agree with their ideas.
The point is not to stop those who actually want to see porn, but to protect those who don't want to, but feel pressurised or otherwise intimidated into it, or who stumble across it. It may be difficult for a hard-core wanker to understand, but to many, not least children, porn is genuinely off-putting, and to 11 year old, it may be something they find it very hard to talk to adults about. After all, they were not supposed to look at it, on one hand, and on the other hand, they now speculate that most adults, including their parents, engage in the sort of alien activities illustrated, however poorly, in pornography. It is easy to feel alone with those thoughts in those circumstances.
The point of this kind of legislation is to force a deliberate choice: if you proceed, it is because you have chosen to; and by requiring the ISPs or whoever to take responsibility, they make it illegal to just sit by passively and make money out of it; you now have to do something to ensure that your audience is old enough to legally make that decision. It won't stop young people from lying about their age, but it will now be possible to go after those that exploit this particular vulnerability, if and when it is deemed necessary.
Politicians are not necessarily stupid; certainly not as stupid as people who have nothing to have their opinions in tend to make out. I would argue that politicians are also quite often genuinely motivated by what they believe in, rather than simply being greedy bullies. I don't agree with much of what David Cameron stands for, and I certainly don't agree with his party's ideologically motivated privatisation at all costs, but I do respect him for being competent and for genuinely seeking to do what is good for UK; the same goes for Labour, the LibDems, SNP etc. They are principled and they have certainly made more of an effort to understand thing than you seem to.
You forget how fast time passes: You'd need obscure trivia questions from the 80s now.
Find me anyone under 18 who can answer 'What food does Badger like?' - it's hard one to look up even with google, but almost any child of the early nineties in the UK will know.
For non UK readers.... there's an election coming up.
This time there's a chance it will go beyond a two horse race (whether or not that's a good thing given the parties involved is down to personal opinion).
The major parties want to look for something to differentiate themselves and will jump on any bandwagon going to appease the more rabid elements of the press. Manufacturing a major scare and then swooping in like a superhero to fix it is just custom & practice.
I fully expect this to evaporate like most politicians' promises do within 48 hours of the results being posted. It will go from a mandate to a target then a goal then an aspiration just as fast as any other promise.
Bigger issues (like rewarding friends and slagging off the opposition) will rule the day.
I can make this prediction whichever party/parties come into power
Don't worry about how this would work in practice, technical [in]feasibilities, government/parent roles & responsibilities... they'll become irrelevant sideshows soon enough.
Cynical? me ?
Yeah, but that also affects those of us who are older. I have no idea who that is. I'm over 40, no good asking me questions that assume I was a child in the 90s.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
well.. we would look them up from encyclopedias etc.. after first looking on a dictionary to translate.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Damn, of course the one person who doesn't fit the profile has to speak up...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The point is not to stop those who actually want to see porn, but to protect those who don't want to, but feel pressurised or otherwise intimidated into it, or who stumble across it. It may be difficult for a hard-core wanker to understand, but to many, not least children, porn is genuinely off-putting, and to 11 year old, it may be something they find it very hard to talk to adults about. After all, they were not supposed to look at it, on one hand, and on the other hand, they now speculate that most adults, including their parents, engage in the sort of alien activities illustrated, however poorly, in pornography. It is easy to feel alone with those thoughts in those circumstances.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Sure it's made to "protect" people.
You say the children get internally conflicted because "they were not supposed to look at it". May I suggest that attempting to shield them from sex is part of the problem, and exact type of mindset that you are creating with this "protection". The mere thought of sex in people where biology is pushing them to seek it causing this sort of guilt is what results in messed-up adults that can't handle relationships.
The goal is to turn porn into on-demand only, such that people have to sign up and give their personal information to get it. In other words, ISPs will have lists of people who very specifically request porn. This of course will make a lot of them to be shamed into not doing it, and will force porn into much darker corners of the internet. Which by the way, your children are very adept at finding.
the Daily mails website is infamous for soft porn pics of celebs
Doubt it is a credit card, more of a debit card or cash card.
Not everyone has a credit card in the UK either, I do not.
Well they don't have the balls to make them use the XXX domain. And that is not censorship its regulation, To me the XXX domain is no different then magazines stands putting brown wrappers over playboy or hardcore pornography magazines.
Jack of all trades,master of none
The question is always what sort of age-restriction controls.
Enter age vs expensive prove you are who you say you are.
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Tories clearly worried about losing what they see as their rightful place - being the biggest wankers in the UK.