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Leaked Document Shows Europe Would Fight UK Plans To Block Porn
Mark Wilson writes: Before the UK elections earlier in the month, David Cameron spoke about his desire to clean up the internet. Pulling — as he is wont to do — on parental heartstrings, he suggested that access to porn on computers and mobiles should be blocked by default unless users specifically requested access to it. This opt-in system was mentioned again in the run-up to the election as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sajid Javid assured peopled that the party "will age restrict online porn". But it's not quite that simple. There is the small problem of Europe. A leaked EU Council document shows that plans are afoot to stop Cameron's plans in its tracks — and with the UK on the verge of trying to debate a better deal for itself within Europe, the Prime Minister is not in a particularly strong position for negotiating on the issue. Cameron has a fight on his hands, it seems, if he wants to deliver on his promise that "we need to protect our children from hardcore pornography". Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal that the EU could make it illegal for ISPs and mobile companies to automatically block access to obscene material. Rather than implementing a default block on pornography, the Council of the European Union believes that users should opt in to web filtering and be able to opt out again at any time; this is precisely the opposite to the way Cameron would like things to work.
Sure. Let the Brits only see their own porn!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
And how exactly do you block access? Politics and policy aside, from the technical viewpoint, what he proposes is not possible. One country cannot get worldwide cooperation of every single adult website to honor this opt-in policy. Keyword based filters cannot work with encrypted traffic. Whitelisting or blacklisting would be such a massive undertaking as to never be effective. There's just no way to even do what he's advocating.
Better known as 318230.
I would suggest that this might be an issue that David Cameron used for the elections and for politics and that it isn't a core issue that he'll defend against such pushback.
Or we could just stop raising a country of sexually reclusive prudes who are ashamed of their own body and freak out at the through of seeing nipple.
Funny side anecdote: I was in Bad Hofgastein in Austria skiing and after a long day on the slopes I went down to the wellness centre for an evening of sauna. There was a British woman shouting at the receptionist that it is absolutely unacceptable that she was kicked out for wearing swimmers in the sauna area. There were a lot of naked men and women standing around quite bemused.
Cameron is staunchly anti-freedom. What's tragic is a majority of British liked this and voted for the man and those that didn't are forced at gunpoint to come along for the ride.
... wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
... breaks up the foundations of society.” —Thomas Jefferson
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." - Winston Churchill
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” —Ben Franklin
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” —Thomas Jefferson
“Democracy
“Democracy is the most vile form of government... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention... incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” —James Madison
“The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and
http://democracyisnotfreedom.c... https://encyclopediadramatica....
the EU could make it illegal for ISPs and mobile companies to automatically block access to obscene material. Rather than implementing a default block on pornography, the Council of the European Union believes that users should opt in to web filtering and be able to opt out again at any time
O.K., this is better than the opposite (i.e., "blocked by default unless users specifically requested access to it"), but does this means that "the EU could make it illegal for ISPs and mobile companies to NOT automatically block access to obscene material if users OPT IN to web filtering"? (for the record: i believe that ISP's should -try to- block access to such materials if users ask for it)
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
UK & Greece: no porn and no money.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No, the sensible thing is for the ISP to be a dumb pipe and nothing more.
The world should not be set up safe as a default for you and your fucking whiny children.
The moral upbringing of your children in a sealed bubble which keeps the world at bay is your damned problem.
Every parent who insists the world be made sanitized for you and your precious little snowflake can piss off.
You want a nanny internet, you take the time to sign up for it and request it. But if you think the rest of the world should have to opt-in ... you can fuck off and leave the rest of us out of it.
I'm s sick of idiotic parents who think the world should change to protect their children. We don't give a crap, they're not our kids ... on behalf of parent-less couples everywhere, this is your fucking problem not ours.
I won't moderate my behavior for my mother. If you think I'll do it for you and your brood of annoying children ... well, ask me. I dare you. Because they'll learn every possible bad word as well as hearing them used in complete sentences.
If you think the world should tiptoe around you and your kids ... you're too stupid to have kids.
Shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker and tits. Fuck you, fuck off, go the fuck away, and don't make me tell you again.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
David Cameron needs to watch this video.
Just a minute ago I was reading about trannie mosquitos, now I read the EU wants to protect the average brit's right to fap to trannie mosquito porn.
// it's Fark!
/// Oh, wait
/ it's not news
I can't speak for other countries, but here in the US, making porn is in no way illegal so the actresses are free to peruse legal help if that were the case. And also, due to regulation, regular STD checks are mandatory and if a positive test comes up, the entire industry is halted until the breadth of the problem is determined. So at least in the US, all the points you made are nothing but FUD. And I believe the US is one of the largest porn producers in the world.
I am split. On one hand I support freedom of speech and I think it would be nice to enforce it. On the other hand I support Democracy and if the Brits want to restrict freedom of speech, an outer undemocratic body like EU should not be able to bar them.
But after some though, I think that there should be no natural laws. People sovereignty should be the source of any law and therefore Democracy should trump freedom of speech. After all in a democratic regime, freedom of speech restriction wan be overturned later by another sovereign decisionn therefore it is no big deal.
As is typical for politicians of his breed, he only needs to be seen to be trying to implement an Internet filter. He doesn't need to pass it to be seen to be doing something by those people he's trying to win votes from, and if he doesn't succeed he'll be able to rally them again next election and win their votes. Failing to create a workable solution and being able to blame the European Union is probably highly beneficial to him, politicially.
"we need to protect our children from hardcore pornography"
Typical conservative "save the children" bullshit. What we actually need to do is educate children that "hard-core" pornography is not real. That it's the equivalent of a sexual cartoon for not very grown up grown ups, and that for the vast majority of people sex doesn't work that way.
There is so much free stuff available (so I've heard ;) ), how does anyone make any money with it at all?
Who pays for porn with so much free stuff available?
Is porn just advertising for the actors who engage in for-hire sex with anyone with adequate funds?
Are us poor slobs just enjoying the commercials while the rich guys get the real stuff?
The porn filter and protect the children thing is a straight up lie. It is all about censorship about blocking any ideas that compete with the false ideology of the rich and greedy, that ideology being they want more, more, more. It is all about accidental block sites, union sites, opposition (real opposition) political sites, real news sites, blogs basically anything at all. All so very accidental, then it takes months to unblock and costs thousands of dollars and then it gets accidentally blocked again.
Reality is, if they are serious about porn, they should simply strip sic it of copyright protection, cripple the ability of corporations to generate a profit from it and with out the profit there is no money to make more. Done and finished.
Of course it all has nothing what so ever to do with porn, that is a lie. All about blocking the majority from publishing anything and putting the power of publishing content back in the hand of a psychopathically greedy minority.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I thought Top Gear had ended, after Jeremy Clarkson had a (literal) fight with the producer.
Someone should gently remind the prime minister that the Victorian era is over.
is just not British!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Some things are worth dying for.
Whatever you think of the various sides of this argument, it's interesting to me to look at how different the sides are.
The US is, on average, far more concerned about pornography and other sexual issues than the UK, but there is not and never will be any significant discussion of government-mandated filters, outside of specific situations like government-run schools. The reason is our belief in the importance of free speech. Although there are plenty of Americans who would like to ban porn, no one at a national level says it out loud. No one seriously talks about it even at local, highly homogeneous levels, because everyone knows it won't fly.
The UK is somewhat less prudish than the US, but is perfectly willing to carve out large exceptions to free speech wherever it's convenient. Therefore, British pols do talk seriously about trying to ban porn, except for adults who opt out.
Europe (as a whole; there are exceptions) is even less concerned about free speech than the UK, but apparently considers porn to be something worth fighting for, to the degree that they're willing to invest at least a little effort in fighting to keep porn available to kids in the UK.
FWIW, I think porn is bad. Conceptually, there's nothing wrong with human sexuality, but porn presents an extremely distorted view of human sexuality. I think regular consumption of hardcore pornography, particularly by adolescents, skews expectations and perceptions in ways that have negative consequences. That said, I have no interest in trying to ban it. I do filter it on my home network, but that's a half measure which mostly serves as an early warning system (I get notified of attempts to get to porn sites) which offers a chance to talk the issues over if I find my kids looking for it.
All of which mostly says that I'm a fairly typical American parent: concerned about porn but unwilling to take the strong anti-freedom steps needed to effectively ban it :-)
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+1, Bravo.
it's a few big spenders. In the game industry they call them "Whales". That and spyware/viruses selling scams that folks fall for.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So prescient.
This is beyond futile, but at least it will greatly advance image recognition. Maybe they could also differentiate the ban by actual scene properties and try to vary them every week (like having a BBC week, ATM week, etc.) - that would be really useful.
UK ISPs already block certain traffic. Not necessarily bittorrent either. I've had more than a few blogs blocked not because of morally questionable content, but because of politically questionable content.
The message here from Europe, is that you can watch a video of a woman getting fucked up the arse but you can't watch a Youtube of someone with a beef against the British Government. It's starting to sound more like the West's vision of North Korea every day, but there it is.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
there's no such thing as "child porn". It's "CHILD ABUSE".
Pornography is the graphical depiction of consenting adults engaged in sexual activity. Don't take my word for it, go grab your dictionary and look it up yourself.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Is there any evidence - I mean serious, well-studied, scientific evidence - that access to pornography is that harmful?
I've seen a lot of scaremongering. I've seen a lot of anecdotal accounts too, plenty of people sharing their personal stories of how porn ruined their mind and their life. But what I've not seen is serious data - the few bits of real research I've found are rather dubious in methodology, and tend to be carried out by the type of organisation with 'family' in the name that can hardly be called unbiased.
If pornography was one-tenth as harmful as anti-pornography campaigners claim, western civilisation would have collapsed by now - just about everyone has access to it and yet, somehow, the incidence of rape is actually going down. Yet the assumption remains unchallenged, because it's just too socially and politically awkward: Anyone who dares so much as suggest that maybe pornography isn't a terrible threat to children risks being branded as supporting child molestation. Society has reached the witch-hunt level: Anyone who questions the validity of the witch-hunt risks being accused of supporting the witches.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We need to define a "cameron" as a particularly distasteful (to prudes) sex act so that it gets blocked by the porn filter. I suggest something scatalogical. He is a little shit, after all...
Would be nice to get May in on the action too. Some porn star should use her name. The chaos caused if we could get "may" into the filter would be hilarious.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
FYI..."husbandry" is "the cultivation and production of edible crops or of animals for food; agriculture; farming." (Dictionary.com).
I predict that one of the "great concessions" that David Cameron will gain from Europe will be permission to block porn. They will probably come up with a whole load more things that they won't sweat about dropping so that David can go back with a long list and gleefully declare that his negotiations have been very successful, whereas in reality he won't have gained many of his important targets
> We need to define a "cameron" as a particularly distasteful (to prudes) sex act so that it gets blocked by the porn filter. I suggest something scatalogical. He is a little shit, after all...
Look up the old Scientology filter software, described at http://www.xenu.net/archive/ev.... The CensorWare software was embedded in the "creat a website" kit they were giving their own members, trying to flood Google searches and prevent access to the cult's inner secrets about the galactic emperor, Xenu. Hysterically, they had my name in their filter list, mis-spelled.
No, it doesn't exist. But maybe it ought to...
The problem: lots of nasty porn where men do nasty things to ladies, and no-one seems to be smiling or enjoying themselves. Lots of poking things where they simply don't belong. LIttle information or education on how to have more fun and possibly do less harm.
The non-solution: try and filter it out. We know this does not work, and it is unrealistic to believe it may work in the future. It is also a restriction of liberty. The only thing it might do is generate a billion pound a year industry for banning people from the internet, and then charging them to get their case heard for reconnection. That's a winner for our overlords, but not for us.
The solution: create a better alternative. Have some independent but public body such as the BBC curate a body of knowledge and images about people doing the sexy that is representative of best practice. It should not completely exclude the more iffy stuff, but it should not dominate the regular stuff either. While ladies may prefer to read rather than look at images, such as images as there are should reflect their interests too, rather than having two models servicing some dumpy man. This would not restrict anyone's liberties because the other stuff is still there.
It won't happen because, you know, politics and democracy and stuff. But maybe it ought to.
Oh, I'm not claiming there are no problems. Clearly the US does have some big issues at present with some particular forms of restriction of free speech. I'm fairly confident that will get sorted out over the course of the next couple of decades, though. The pendulum is swinging that direction. Not that perfection will ever be achieved, but there really is a strong bias towards protecting freedom of expression.
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One more point: I find your choice of example to be odd, because the US charges against Hamsa have nothing to do with speech; they're about kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder. The UK's charges against Hamsa are largely speech-related.
Manning or Snowden would have been better examples.
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I have kids and I agree with you. Teach your kids to adapt to the world, not try to force the rest of the world to adapt to brats who have an unrealistic perspective.
:-)
Also, earmuffs!
Harsh but fair
Did prohibition of alcohol work well?
I propose this as the name of the SI unit for the minimum distance between two blunders.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not. There has never been, and will never be, a way to keep a hormone driving teenager away from sex. You're trying to fight nature's most powerful instinct. Are you nuts? Or do you just enjoy running your head in on windmills?
Well, to each their own, but some people really have weird kinks...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What I really would love to know is why it's always, without fail, the conservatives who want more censorship while at the same time it is, again without fail, the conservatives who end up in weird revelations concerning nasty sexual perversions that even a long term internet user would consider ... at the very least a reason to back away slowly from them?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This seems like a ready-made tool for blackmail and extortion. It creates a list of everyone in the country that wants access to online porn of any sort. What are the odds that no one with access to such a list would ever have any inclination to misuse it? For example, threatening to leak a relevant portion of the list to a local church group or to your employers?
Society doesn't need to construct more barriers to use to separate people.
Virgin Media in the UK just turned their safe filter ON and I had to click the no box on the page they were displaying to disable the filtering...
who knows what the heck they're really filtering behind the scenes... all IS related sites? anything anti-government?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
....and tits shouldn't even be on the list......
sounds like a snack.....yeah yeah I know it is...
tater tits
i miss George.....
two girls one cup....now see the movie
starring Cameron May and Cheney Bush
Unless you can demonstrate that pornography does indeed cause sex slavery, yes, people are supposed to assume that. You're proposing violating freedom of speech and expression, so it's up to you to show that pornography does indeed have the consequences you list.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You expect somebody to sit through a ninety-minute presentation before disagreeing with you? I don't agree that that is reasonable.
As far as the State Department goes, those are fairly long reports. Could you indicate where they mention pornography, to facilitate the conversation?
Look, everybody here thinks human trafficking is bad, and nonconsensual sex is bad. We just aren't convinced that porn causes that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What you have completely failed to show is that pornography encourages despicable behavior. Perhaps it serves as something of a relief, bleeding off internal pressures that would otherwise induce sex crimes. If porn caused sex crimes, I'd expect to see some correlation between sex crimes and porn. Recently, porn has become more and more accessible, and sex crime rates have fallen. This is hardly proof, but it is evidence that porn doesn't cause sex crimes.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes