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Cameron Tells Pornography Websites To Block Access By Children Or Face Closure

An anonymous reader writes: Prime Minister David Cameron says that if online pornographers don't voluntarily install effective age-restricted controls on their websites he'll introduce legislation that will close them down altogether. A recent Childline poll found nearly 10% of 12-13-year-olds were worried they were addicted to pornography and 18% had seen shocking or upsetting images. The minister for internet safety and security, Joanna Shields, said: “As a result of our work with industry, more than 90% of UK consumers are offered the choice to easily configure their internet service through family-friendly filters – something we take great pride in having achieved. It’s a gold standard that surpasses those of other countries. “Whilst great progress has been made, we remain acutely aware of the risks and dangers that young people face online. This is why we are committed to taking action to protect children from harmful content. Companies delivering adult content in the UK must take steps to make sure these sites are behind age verification controls.”

381 comments

  1. How? by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, precisely how again do they suggest sites verify ages? It needs to at least be proof against a minor with an adult's "borrowed" credit card, and it can't require sites to violate the law. This isn't a technical problem here, it's completely independent of the technology. If these politicians want the problem solved, they need to spend some time thinking about how to solve the problem. And yes, "make someone else solve it" is a valid option but only if having the sites apply that solution by making the politicians the "someone else" is also a valid option.

    1. Re:How? by 91degrees · · Score: 0, Troll

      Yes. Use CC verification.

      It doesn't need to be perfect. A lot of adults do actually keep their credit cards safe. A lot of kids don't steal their parents' cards.

    2. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Wait, before saying it's not a technical problem, shouldn't we stop to think if it even is a problem?
      Because short of you having to authenticate with a national ID card to open the site, I don't think it can be done to any government's satisfaction and F that! (Though it would be funny to have 80% of porn site accesses in the UK done with Cameron's ID when that got hacked in 5 seconds)
      So, that aside, maybe this just isn't such a big deal. "Think of the children" is never but a scapegoat to get leverage on adults who do something other adults find yucky, so F that as well. I doubt that many kids spend their days browsing the non-paywalled sections of porn sites, and if they're pirating porn, blocking site accesses means nothing. Even so, this just doesn't sound like much of a problem to me. If your kid is so unsupervised for long enough to actually get a long, hard, steamy look at porn, you have other, more urgent problems to deal with. And once they're over 13/14, sex will happen and interest in it is natural/normal (many times, sooner).

    3. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kids are allowed to own credit card. Also who you give their credit card info to random porn site? What they essentially want is ban pornography because moralfag.

      As for kid reporting being addicted to porn and being upsetting about images in the survey, they are probably only trying to conform to the adult expectation. Because this is what separate kids from adults; Kids care about conforming to adult expectation, they want to appear mature, while actually adults don't give a fuck and do what they want/need.

    4. Re:How? by Kkloe · · Score: 1

      Can you type in your CC-info in reply so we can very that you are an adult and might be in slashdot

    5. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if they are already offering 'family-friendly filters' for connections, require (by law) that pornographic sites include HTTP headers in responses indicating the rating of the content in if a 'give me a rating' header is set in the request. Have the ability for parents to switch on and off the family-friendly filters at will.

      Sure, it doesn't help if the kid gets access to a VPN, but it is a first step. Furthermore, by requiring a header to be sent in the request in order for the rating to be sent in the response, you can avoid wholesale monitoring of the ratings of things being accessed by those not using the filter.

    6. Re:How? by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      Is he going to shut them down in just the UK or in the whole world?

      --
      No sig today...
    7. Re:How? by MrL0G1C · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, you're looking for porn, do you pick:

      Site A: In the UK which wants you credit card info.
      Site B: In Uruguay which is happy to show you lots of free porn, no questions asked.

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    8. Re:How? by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Sure. It's 4111 1111 1111 1111.

      If the problem is that porn sites are dodgy and disreputable then that is a valid criticism. It's a different criticism from the one GGP made.

    9. Re:How? by tomhath · · Score: 0

      I don't think they're trying to stop a 12 y/o who is determined to see porn. Rather, they're trying to stop someone from clicking on a link that brings them to adult content without a warning. It seems reasonable to me,

    10. Re:How? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Has anyone ever clicked on a random link and been taken to a commercial porn site? To shock sites and stuff hosted in random places, sure, but these are not the ones being threatened with shutdown.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    11. Re:How? by p0p0 · · Score: 3, Informative

      If that's the case then the standard "Are you 18 or over?" should be enough to stop people from accidentally browsing their site. Why need anything more than that? Why not educate kids and tell them that this warning means there is adult content within?

      Anything more than that means he wants to just outright prevent access (as they've already tried) and there's more to it than the typical "think of the children" bologna.

    12. Re:How? by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't think they're trying to stop a 12 y/o who is determined to see porn. Rather, they're trying to stop someone from clicking on a link that brings them to adult content without a warning. It seems reasonable to me,

      Wrong. They're trying to get some more votes from one of their demographics.

      Nothing he can legislate will reduce the amount of porn children have access to.

      --
      No sig today...
    13. Re:How? by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 1

      In this country it used to be that under-18 year olds could only get a Solo or card, which a lot of places used as a basic age check.

      But I read that our banks don't issue them any more because they weren't as widely accepted, because they didn't let you spend funds you didn't have access to.

    14. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, by all means--put in place a mechanism to deter something that you personally don't like and therefore feel justified in imposing your beliefs on everyone. I'm sure it will NEVER be applied to things like anti-government opinion sites, pro-citizen anti-corporate sites, anti-religion sites, or other things that might make people have thoughts you don't approve of.

    15. Re:How? by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      13-year-olds are quite capable of making their own porn these days.

      Using the cameras and networking hardware given to them by their own parents.

      --
      No sig today...
    16. Re:How? by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Option C: Get a subscription with a newsgroup service for a fraction of the money a porn site will cost you, download as much as you like over a securely encrypted connection, have plausible deniability as to what the content was.

      Option D: Get one of those P2P thingamajiganibobs

      There are so many ways to get porn on the internet other than the vanilla website-and-a-subscription method.

      And porn has the ultimate "Long Tail". There already exists enough digital porn for virtually anyone with a normal-ish kink spectrum to whack off to something new twice a day for the rest of their life. Even if you destroy the porn industry (which this won't, because not every jurisdiction is stupid), people will still trade and use porn, with impunity.

    17. Re:How? by peragrin · · Score: 1

      Option A just use google.

      all the porn you want, without paying money for it. Bonus it is already chopped up into clips of less than 5 minutes for you quickies

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    18. Re:How? by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 2

      You see it a lot more if you are searching for other types of content through less than legal means.

      If you want to torrent something, you'll get pop-ups of webcam girls, porn sites, etc, that you didn't ask for and weren't in the market for. I imagine for the youth crowd, that's probably the main way they get exposed to it - they want to torrent the latest Iron Man movie, and they get pop-ups for Iron Dick.

    19. Re:How? by jstuxx · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I don't understand why pornography is OK for adults but not for children. Why shouldn't he jus outright prevent access.

    20. Re:How? by NormalVisual · · Score: 2

      That number won't pass Luhn checking - try 4000 1000 4000 1000 instead.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    21. Re:How? by Kkloe · · Score: 1

      I would actually trust the major pornsites more than any politician to hold my cc-information, the thing is if someone links a good gallery of midget utensil porn to a smaller site where I would need to put my cc-information, should I trust it, if I never been there before?, I could either go with a loss of money or a loss of not seeing said porn.

    22. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Im moding so posting this anon

      Visa, Master card, and American Express Gift cards. They can also get the prepaid re-loadable CC's sold at all the 7-11's.

      All the porn sites accept them because people use them to protect their identity and to protect there bank accounts.

      I know a lot of parents that get them for the kids and load them with there allowance. That way the kids can save up and order the cool stuff online.

    23. Re: How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      As long as they muzzle anti-EU movements I'm all for it. Great people have worked long and hard to create a reality the man in the street cannot simply grasp, let alone appreciate. We cannot allow malcontents to derail a project that has been generations in the making. Freedom of speech may be nice to have, but some voices are better off silenced.

    24. Re: How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Obvious unintended consequence here: most image search engines can be made to serve up porn with trivial ease. The obvious way to restrict these (not necessarily effectively, but still) is to enforce login before searching - age can be used to restrict age inappropriate results. So to even use google you'll need to log in first.

      In other words, your every search will be monitored and recorded because won't somebody please think of the children.

      Wait, that sounds familiar.

    25. Re:How? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Some of Cameron's friends of pornographers of one sort of another. From soft-porn in "newspapers" to "lad's mags" to soft child porn (e.g. the Daily Mail).

      Age versification would seem to require entry of credit card data, unless they are going to accept a simple "I am 18 years old" tick box (Facebook uses that technique to "prevent" children under 13 from using it, LOL). Let's assume credit card, that means that free sites will die or be forced overseas. Pay sites won't be able to give much away as a preview either. So the competition for his friends in old media is reduced.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    26. Re: How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm assuming that was meant as ironic hyperbole? It's hard to tell sometimes. If not I despair for humankind.

    27. Re:How? by dcollins117 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes. Use CC verification.

      Do you really think giving your credit card information to a pornography website operator (who in all likelihood is on the other side of the planet) is a good idea? I can't off the top of my head think of anyone less trustworthy. Maybe a crack whore or that Nigerian prince that keeps emailing me, but that's about it.

      It's up to parents to monitor what their kiddies are doing online, not Prime Minister David Cameron.

    28. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There is no way to actually prove your identity over the internet, it's not something for someone else to solve, it's unsolvable. The next best thing is the level of trust we can place in a system that will TRY to identify you.

      But let's be clear: unless we're talking face to face in person meetings (with DNA samples) someone who wants to hide their identity on-line (really? that needs a hyphen?) can and will.

      CC? Sure, why not, it's something right? It's not like anyone can apply for and get a credit card at this point right? It's not like little 12 year old johnny doesn't have the ability to write down the numbers from one of his parents cards.

      As well unless things have changed most of these sites don't care what type of card it is (pre-paid, pre-activated etc) so it's not that hard for johnny to go to the local gas station and buy a pre-paid 50 mastercard, use that as age verification because they only actually care if they can charge your credit card 1$, they don't give two craps about your age.

      Nope, sorry, I'm going to go ahead and lay the blame 100% on the parents. a ton of porn sites let you in without paying or verifying, some even do so without a disclaimer so 1 wrong google and you're staring at the money shot. It's up to the parents to control and monitor their kids activities until such a time that they can be considered well adjusted.

      Of course this ignores phones, you really can't control that as much as you'd like, but you CAN control your home network. Control, monitor, educate.

      Stop expecting the government to do your job, that's why the UK is full of little asshole hooligans attacking people with meat cleavers.

    29. Re:How? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re "And yes, "make someone else solve it" is a valid option but only if having the sites apply that solution by making the politicians the "someone else" is also a valid option."

      The UK can ask the US banking system, political system and big pipe internet providers to to "fix" the pipes and payment options into the UK.
      ie the ".com" just fails to load in the UK and a log is sent to some local UK authority about the access attempt.
      If that fails the UK could fund US political leaders who understand the UK's gov internet request. PAC Britannia to reshape the US political landscape with people who are more understanding the UK's position long term.
      Map out every .com site of interest and ensure they never get loaded in the UK?
      An Integrated Cyber Policy. A series of costal super computer centres ensuring no blocked site ever reaches a UK provider under the leadership of a Cyber Supremo.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    30. Re:How? by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      So, precisely how again do they suggest sites verify ages? It needs to at least be proof against a minor with an adult's "borrowed" credit card, and it can't require sites to violate the law. This isn't a technical problem here, it's completely independent of the technology. If these politicians want the problem solved, they need to spend some time thinking about how to solve the problem. And yes, "make someone else solve it" is a valid option but only if having the sites apply that solution by making the politicians the "someone else" is also a valid option.

      The problem is, they don't care about kids seeing inappropriate material... Politicians are, after all, sexually abusing minors left and right in the UK.

      Unemployment too high? You lost your job? What are we going to do about it? Sir, were you aware that your 11yr could possibly be addicted to Tentacled midget porn? You didn't even know that was a thing? Here are some shocking pictures. Go argue with your neighbors and leave us alone.

    31. Re:How? by ihtoit · · Score: 2

      uh... I did a search for "ALS" one time, the top link wasn't a website about Lou Gehrig's Disease.

      Holy fucking shit, Sylvia Saint has the roundest tits in existence.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    32. Re:How? by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Huh?

      I think Cameron's idea is rubbish and unworkable. Doesn't mean that I'm not going to criticise reasons that I consider poorly thought out.

    33. Re:How? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      This. The early days of the Internet were loaded with "Enter credit card number to verify your are legally an adult", and soon someone in Asia was charging stuff to you and threatening to send letters to your employer to ask why you are a scumbucket who doesn't pay their porn bills for Eatgerbilass.com.

      I'm sure some politicians would be fine with that as a cryptic disincentive to something they frown upon (when preening in public, not when their wives to shopping of course) and even having to give a real name for that matter.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    34. Re:How? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm not gonna remember a number like that!

      If I need to bypass a child filter for a porn site in some hellish future UK dystopia, I'll just go ask a kid.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    35. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. Use CC verification.

      Do you really think giving your credit card information to a pornography website operator (who in all likelihood is on the other side of the planet) is a good idea? I can't off the top of my head think of anyone less trustworthy.

      Brother, you shouldn't be entrusting your money with those foul Tools of Satan! Give US your credit card information and advance the Work of the Lord!

      disclaimer: statistics indicate that you're more likely to pick up an infectious malware from religious websites than pornographic ones.

    36. Re: How? by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      No, I'm sure that person was completely sincere. I've seen it many times here on /. and other discussion sites. It usually is in the vein of "The common people are ignorant morons, so we must silence them and ignore them so that we (the intelligent benevolent overlords) can properly rule them without disruption."

      The sad thing is that I've seen it from people on the far left, far right, and centrists of the political range. Seems like most groups want to silence their opposition.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    37. Re:How? by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      Is it ok for adults to have sex with children too? Is it ok to record those that do? If age is just an 'number thing' then why discriminate who can participate?

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    38. Re:How? by Imrik · · Score: 1

      More accurately, kids are allowed to own debit cards that function as credit cards for all intents and purposes aside from billing.

    39. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      Wait, before saying it's not a technical problem, shouldn't we stop to think if it even is a problem?

      Stop trying to be scientific about all this. Don't you know that if criminals view porn that viewing porn will automatically turn you into a criminal?

      Heh. Bet Cameron kept a stash of girly magazines under his bed when he was 10. Because if he didn't, there'd be something wrong with him. Oh wait, he's a politician, never mind that. Although anyone whose moral fibre is weak enough to make him successful in politics probably already had subscriptions to porn when he was 10.

      Instead of "Think of the Children" as consumers, maybe we should be spending more of that time, money, and effort on thinking of the children as victims in general. Being a producer isn't the same as being a consumer and the people who are exploited in making porn (as opposed to doing it willingly) aren't all children. Nor all all victims - children or otherwise - used for making porn.

      A lot of what messes us up about sex isn't sex, it's the fact that we feel obligated to get messed up by sex. We can scar a person for life because of underage sexting, when the actual act and images could have been more of an "indiscretion of youth" and an embarrassment were it not for our Moral Guardians's need to come down so heavy on such things.

    40. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, precisely how again do they suggest sites verify ages?

      It's easy. Sites can verify age because only those over 18 can sign contracts for provision of internet service. For anybody under the age of 18, censuring internet access is the responsibility of parents or legal guardians.

    41. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      None of this affects the validity of using CC as age verification. What's your argument against that? Do you have one?

      Lots of porn sites already use CC age verification, by the way.

    42. Re:How? by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      So, precisely how again do they suggest sites verify ages?

      How do they verify anything? Do you really think people are going to provide a porn website with their actual names and dates of birth? Would you?

      Why the hell would anybody trust a porn site with that? I wouldn't trust most any website with that information ... both because it's none of their damned business, and because I assume they're grossly incompetent at security.

      These idiot politicians want a world which is wrapped in bubble wrap, and must be softened to accommodate children. And I'm sorry, but that's simply not possible.

      But expecting every web site in the world to implement age verification to keep David Cameron happy is asinine. However, most news stories see about Cameron make him sound like a bit of an ass, so that's fitting.

      What he want simply won't work, but he wants to appear to be doing something. Like every other damned politician who thinks they can legislate the solution to the problems of when society meets technology.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    43. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Supposition isn't debate. Do you have any evidence for any of these points?

    44. Re:How? by bickerdyke · · Score: 1

      And porn has the ultimate "Long Tail".

      Who else. Literally.

      --
      bickerdyke
    45. Re:How? by bickerdyke · · Score: 2

      Anonymous proof of age online is one of the features of the newfangled electronic ID cards in Germany. But as expected, there isn't much you can do with it besides checking your speeding tickets. Even services that would not require to trust the government that anonymous indeed means anonymous don't use it.

      --
      bickerdyke
    46. Re:How? by delt0r · · Score: 2

      Back in my day it was magazines. Magazines also don't verify age. One of my friends did like his BnD, shocking images for a 12 year old. I was shocked i tell you.

      So yea don't by the line of "...risks and dangers that young people face online". Our generation turned out just fine.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    47. Re:How? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm not gonna remember a number like that!

      Just remember that credic card numbers have a checksum. Once you know that, you can look up or download the algorithm and generate valud numbers all day.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    48. Re:How? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      I've gotten random links to porn. I'm afraid I also get social email from colleagues and clients who say "Hey, check this out". And I've also had clients who run pornography and escort services. The smaller ones don't always pay their bills, but adult traffic is a _very_ big provider and consumer of high bandwidth Intenet traffic, so they're a difficult market to ignore.

    49. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > authenticate with a national ID card to open the site

      Yeah, because of fun stuff like that (though actually not for porn) I as a 16 year old wrote a program to generate valid (or valid enough, corresponding to whichever place in Germany you liked) national ID card number generator.
      It never took off because there simply aren't enough interesting sites that ask for things like that.
      Children are quite creative and have too much time, if an age check doesn't stop them (almost) nothing will. A simple age check might actually be good for the rare cases where they don't actually want to see that kind of stuff...

    50. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because of the relative power. Much like incest between parents and their own children, they wield so much power for someone who has few options to refuse, or much like soliciting sex from your own employees, it's too easy to create pain and consequences the child has little option to avoid.

      I'm particularly thinking about the Robot Chicken sketch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., which is both very funny and deeply, deeply disturbing.

    51. Re:How? by mister_playboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The number of users smart enough to use torrents but not adblockers seems like it would be small.

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    52. Re:How? by Epeeist · · Score: 1

      If these politicians want the problem solved, they need to spend some time thinking about how to solve the problem.

      Thinking? This is David Cameron you are talking about, ex PR flack and brain the size of a small peanut.

    53. Re:How? by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      What loony would host a porno site in the UK??

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    54. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I can't off the top of my head think of anyone less trustworthy.

      That's funny, I certainly can.

      It's up to parents to monitor what their kiddies are doing online, not Prime Minister David Cameron.

      Ah, so you do know.

    55. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      moralfag.

      get back to 4chan you twat.

    56. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      yeah, if dealing with loonys, clearly is should be in canada.

    57. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I can't off the top of my head think of anyone less trustworthy"

      From what I've heard in interviews with some of the stars, apparently Hollywood producers and agents are far more scummy than anything you see in the world of porn.

    58. Re:How? by khallow · · Score: 1

      None of this affects the validity of using CC as age verification.

      It's a form of age verification that can be charged.

    59. Re:How? by Shortguy881 · · Score: 3, Funny

      He is the Prime Minister of the U.K., so the entire world.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    60. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > So, ask for date of birth then. 12-12-1905 Oh I am lying, see how easy it is.

    61. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's in the queue right behind you!

    62. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can think of someone less trustworthy. For example, David Cameroon.

    63. Re:How? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      So, precisely how again do they suggest sites verify ages?

      Standard politician answer: "That's your problem, not mine."

    64. Re:How? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      I don't think that has ever happened to me. And I have been using the Internet for now more than 20 years. As to "shocking and upsetting" pictures, that is an entirely different beast. For example, pictures of Cameron qualify. I am routinely upset and disgusted when I am exposed to these.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    65. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      That number won't pass Luhn checking - try 4000 1000 4000 1000 instead.

      Yes, it does pass. It's a valid test number. I've used it during development for years.
      http://www.ee.unb.ca/cgi-bin/t...

    66. Re:How? by jandersen · · Score: 1

      Look, you are talking about the leader of the Conservative Party, a party that claims to be 'for working people', which either demonstrates that to them 'work' means 'the sort of things they do in Wall Street or London City', or they are just full of weasel words; you tell me. My guess is, they don't know and they don't care how this is supposed to work, he is just posturing.

      However, I think there is a more realistic side to this - as it is now, there aren't really any rules, or if there are, these sites are getting away with simply ignoring them and hiding behind 'free speech'. The police or other authorities can't do anything against them, because they have to follow the law - so if you see this as a problem and want to tackle it, you have to change the law so police are allowed to take action. As I see it, it is about putting pressure on porn sites to start taking things seriously, because they haven't bothered until now.

    67. Re:How? by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      What if there is no "relative power" involved? What if a man goes into a city park, walks up to a group of 10-year-olds and asks who wants to have sex with him? There is no power he has over them, they can leave or ignore him as they choose, or they can choose to go with him of their own volition.

      While I do agree that our society puts too much force on the taboo of nudity, I think the ones who fight against it face the risk of simply giving free license to every pervert to do whatever they want, including pedophilia and incest. How exactly do you draw that line, without someone feeling they are being discriminated against?

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    68. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There are no dates before 1970.01.01, blasphemer!

    69. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He wants to have this extended to overseas websites, so... the latter.

    70. Re:How? by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      I did once but that was like 12 years ago. I was troubleshooting an error with SQL Server and one Google link looked like it might be promising. What was shown in the little blob of text was the error code, and some description of it. So I clicked on it and found my self at a porn site. It just so happened the my boss walked by and asked what I was doing. I explained what happened and then hit the back button, showed her the link on Google that looked perfectly reasonable and then clicked it so show that this was inadvertent. That however has been the one and only time it has happened to me.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    71. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol newsgroup. What decade is this?

    72. Re:How? by JazzLad · · Score: 1

      That's absurd, the UK Prime Minister can't make rules for other countries, violating their sovereignty. I'm embarrassed for by British friends that their PM would think that he could do this. It's offensive.

      Just who does he think he is, the American President?

      ~

      --
      "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
    73. Re:How? by MBGMorden · · Score: 1

      Once you know that, you can look up or download the algorithm and generate valud numbers all day.

      And so can a kid. It's been a long time ago (33 years) but when I was 11-12 I had a VERY good concept of programming and how to tinker. The internet wasn't really a thing in most households yet but I still knew computers, and most kids these days do too - even moreso.

      And even though internet porn wasn't around back then - guess what - we still had porn as kids. Typically it was in the form of a magazine that some kid smuggled out of his dad's collection, so it certainly wasn't in the same volume, but every kid in the neighborhood seen it and almost all grew up to be perfectly normal adults.

      This is all focused on nothing - by the time someone is aware enough about sex to try and access a website, they're GOING to be able to get that content.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    74. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is all really moot since almost all the major porn sites all operate out of the USA.

    75. Re: How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your every search will be monitored and recorded because won't somebody please think of the children.

      aren't the people that think of the children when searching for porn pedophiles?

    76. Re:How? by Falos · · Score: 1

      Not exactly, within the spectrum are people who will sincerely type "free mp3 downloads" into google and click things. Torrenting is only a few ticks up, all it really takes is overhearing the word and they're running around with the most ad-laden phone-home clients google has to offer.

      They are advancing from the larval stage, and those who survive the burning forge of the chrysalis will emerge with better defensive wisdom, like you mention.

      The rest will make phone calls to the "knows computers" family member, once the OS is ad-riddled past functionality.

    77. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So still above average size for politicians and "media personalities" ?

    78. Re:How? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1, Insightful

      What if there is no "relative power" involved? What if a man goes into a city park, walks up to a group of 10-year-olds and asks who wants to have sex with him? There is no power he has over them, they can leave or ignore him as they choose, or they can choose to go with him of their own volition.

      Except for the fact that he's more intelligent than they are, vastly more experienced and knowledgable, much richer, and twice their size. Except those things, he doesn't have any power over them.

    79. Re:How? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      You'd be surprised.
      I'm cleaning up malware like there's no tomorrow from people's computers - and most of it is injected through this path:
      - torrent website - click on pop-ups with porn - get malware.
      I guess it depends on country, though. Where I live, torrents are a BIG thing. People watch movies, play music, jerk off on porn - all coming through torrent sites.
      There are private trackers which are malware-free, and those with not enough brain to get an account there will go to the malware-laden public ones. They usually search for "porn torrent" and click on the first link they see.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    80. Re:How? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      And so can a kid.

      Yep. In fact I remember back from the early days of the web when most porn sites seemed to require a credit card for verification, some enterprising and publicic spirited soul hosted a CGI script which generated random numbers passing the checksum.

      And even though internet porn wasn't around back then - guess what - we still had porn as kids.

      Well, there was porn back then on the internet just about and certainly plenty within a couple of years. In fairness most of us didn't have internet connections. One enterprising kid with tech-head parents had acces to a dual ISDN line and a CD burner. He made a tidy profit flogging CDs of internet porn at school.

      This is all focused on nothing - by the time someone is aware enough about sex to try and access a website, they're GOING to be able to get that content.

      It's pointless and like so many things the politicians love to do, stupid. It won't stop anything. Only UK sites are covered by this and it's not like there isn't porn all over the ENTIRE REST of internet across websites, torrent links, usenet and I dunno, there's probably even FTP servers and gopher sites out there hosting porn because some nutcase thinks it's funny.

      But yeah between all the non UK porn sites (i.e. about 99.9% of them) and bittorrent, I'd say that they've got this one thoroughly covered.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    81. Re:How? by war4peace · · Score: 2

      Looks like a simple question but I've been pondering it.
      We have very mature 14 year olds, I met a girl about 10 years ago and I swear to God she looked like she way 20 and talked like she was 20. She was 14. No, I didn't bang her if that's what you're wondering (I was engaged at the time and I'm the kind of dude who doesn't cheat).
      Since then I saw many girls and boys whose age couldn't have been guessed. "Overgrown" comes to mind, there's no way you could tell they're less than 18. Now, there's people over 18 who look like they're 15, also there's people who act like they're 12 even if they're 30 and so on and so forth. The problem is that theer's no universally applicable algorithm which would say "this person is an adult, that one isn't" unless you throw in an arbitrary, universal threshold. In our society, it's age. Not perfect but probably the best of the many imperfect possible solutions.
      The alternative would force a case-by-case verification using complex methods (psychological age, physical age, intelligence testing maybe, behavioral testing, etc) which simply is too tedious and complicated.

      So until we figure out a better way to separate adults from non-adults... age is the threshold. Again, not perfect but there's no better solution at the moment.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    82. Re:How? by rwa2 · · Score: 1

      Heh, I ran Picasa's face recognition on my pr0n dir, and the results were pretty awesome.

      Also most of the Czech models apparently have indistinguishable facial structure.

    83. Re: How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think leisure suit Larry had the best child verification on an Atari .. I had to ask mum the questions to get into the game.

      But. Problem is a lot of memes will die.. Tubgirl. 2girls one cup. Mr handz. Urinal poop. Eel soup.. All the greats.

    84. Re:How? by rwa2 · · Score: 1

      I'm not gonna remember a number like that!

      If I need to bypass a child filter for a porn site in some hellish future UK dystopia, I'll just go ask a kid.

      Heh, anyone remember the great age verification questions on the beginning of the first Leisure Suit Larry?
      "Which of the following people was the drummer for Queen?" and shit like that.

    85. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And so can a kid. It's been a long time ago (33 years) but when I was 11-12 I had a VERY good concept of programming and how to tinker. The internet wasn't really a thing in most households yet but I still knew computers, and most kids these days do too - even moreso.

      You, and this strip of Dilbert, absolutely nailed it.

    86. Re:How? by totallyarb · · Score: 1

      Unemployment too high? You lost your job? What are we going to do about it? Sir, were you aware that your 11yr could possibly be addicted to Tentacled midget porn?

      Would you prefer that they answered honestly: "Finding you a job is not the government's responsibility. This is Britain, not the Soviet Union."? Given the choice between (a) antagonising a potential voter with a truthful response, (b) actually turning Britain into the Soviet Union in order to give a more pleasing response, or (c) changing the subject and moving on... I know what I'd pick.

      --
      -- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
    87. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Bing. Bing Video Search is the engine of choice for porn.

      Maybe not for anything else, but it seems to have mastered the art of video search for adult material.

    88. Re:How? by kheldan · · Score: 1

      'Proving' age isn't going to be the issue. Porn sites moving their hosting to outside the legal boundaries of the country will be the problem. Or does Cameron think the British Empire still exists, and he can just send troops to another country to enforce his wishes? I never cease to be surprised when politicians in any country fail to learn that you can't legislate morality. The onus of 'protecting' children from things on the Internet still falls squarely upon parents, as it should be.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    89. Re:How? by theArtificial · · Score: 1

      You could bypass those by pressing ctrl-alt-x.

      --
      Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
    90. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just tried it on Google and DuckDuckGo and for both the first page only had results about Lou Gehrig's Disease. However, Google does tailor its results based on user profiling, so perhaps it simply thought that's what you wanted to see

    91. Re:How? by digitalPhant0m · · Score: 1

      This was an effective age verification before there was google.
      When I asked my parents "who was Joe Dimaggio?"... They knew *something* was up.

    92. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then It's an advertising issue, why are they blaming the porn sites?

    93. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless you're downloading warez, how is multimedia an attack vector?

    94. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the leaders of the worlds countries had their way, I think the entire internet would have maybe 7 pages of approved content.

    95. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps he should just cut all the fibre optic lines of unpleasantness to his silly little island...

    96. Re:How? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      The Daily Mail is one of the main driving forces behind this anti-porn campaign.

      They don't like the competition.

      Non-brit explanations: The 'Daily Wail' is a newspaper known for stiring up moral outrage, usually against 'benefit cheats' or immigrants. They have been running a campaign urging action be taken against internet pornography for some time. Their front page is usually filled with the latest gossip columns showing pictures of celebrities in bikinis that cover very little skin, and promises more more 'exclusive photos' at the article.

    97. Re:How? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      I think that is the plan.
      1. Demand self-regulation and age verification, knowing this is an impossible demand.
      2. When very few sites adopt age verification, use this lack of action to justify intrusive government regulation.
      3. National firewall to censor all the porn sites hosted overseas, along with anything else the governments wants gone.

    98. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they are in a position to make porn, they likely have no reason to actually make porn because they're already getting pussy, duh.

    99. Re:How? by fisted · · Score: 1

      and most kids these days do too - even moreso.

      Unfortunately this isn't true. It's true for the kids which grew up with computers before they became polished appliances, but those are generally adults now.

    100. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Site B: In Uruguay

      Doesn't sound like you're onto a winner with most people there... not that there's anything wrong with that!

    101. Re: How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the US government had really wanted to fuck the porn industry over, it could have enforced the law that says obscenity is not eligible for copyright protection.

      Any country could do the same thing, if any country was really sovereign.

      But instead of choking the industry off, so that all porn would then be amateur porn, the governments decide to try to censor porn, which is unworkable without creating an apparatus that can censor anything.

    102. Re:How? by nytes · · Score: 1

      Were you trying to filter out any images that had faces?

      --
      -- I have monkeys in my pants.
    103. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you are fine with giving your cc number to someone you do not intend to give money to; please put your credit card number, expiration date, and cvv code here.

    104. Re:How? by ultranova · · Score: 1

      If these politicians want the problem solved,

      They don't. They want to play for the cameras and if they can also get another excuse to lock down the Internet, all the better for the Lidless Eye.

      These people are simply never happy as long as anyone else is.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    105. Re:How? by nytes · · Score: 1

      Map out every .com site of interest and ensure they never get loaded in the UK?
          An Integrated Cyber Policy. A series of costal super computer centres ensuring no blocked site ever reaches a UK provider under the leadership of a Cyber Supremo.

      Hadrian's Wall V 2.0

      Someone needs to send him an email from davidcameron.primeminister@gmail.com telling him that identity verification on the internet is easy and there's no excuse that porn sites couldn't use it.

      --
      -- I have monkeys in my pants.
    106. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey! There's no need to insult crack whores here!

    107. Re:How? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      1. Visit shady torrent site.
      2. Search for whatever porn you fancy.
      3. Click the wrong "Download" button.
      4. Install "Updated Flash".

      This is just one of the gazillion attack vectors.
      There's the .exe wrapped porn file which actually lets you jerk off while the malware silenty does its job in the background. The archived video which is actually an archive, but the unpacker does more than just unpack...
      And so on and so forth.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    108. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have them show their tits while holding a sign with today's date and a random message (that you give them) on a sign.

    109. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      haha- yea- so true. Maybe Cameron should re-think this. They've already criminalized near all 11-18 year olds and given many psychological problems (probably the same people speaking up loudly about how harmful pornography is now).

    110. Re:How? by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      Doh - I must have fat-fingered the number. It does in fact pass.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    111. Re:How? by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      What if there is no "relative power" involved? What if a man goes into a city park, walks up to a group of 10-year-olds and asks who wants to have sex with him? There is no power he has over them, they can leave or ignore him as they choose, or they can choose to go with him of their own volition.

      Except for the fact that he's more intelligent than they are, vastly more experienced and knowledgable, much richer, and twice their size. Except those things, he doesn't have any power over them.

      Except for the fact those qualities don't come into play in the scenario I described.

      More intelligent - why does that matter for having sex? Dumb people aren't allowed?
      More experienced - in having sex, or in life in general? Moot point anyway.
      More knowledgeable - again, about sex or life in general? Another moot point.
      Richer - A) not necessarily, B) that doesn't matter among adults' rights to have sex, why would it here?
      Bigger - Did I say he grabbed the kids and dragged them off to the bushes?

      Sorry, you post doesn't explain at all why it makes sense to distinguish between adults and children concerning sex, which was the point my first post was responding to. Nothing in your arguments establishes any real power over children other than brute force. If the sex doesn't involve brute force, the claims of the adult being smarter or richer don't seem to be a valid reason to prevent it.

      As a final point, what if the adult was a 120-pound woman in her 30s, and she approached a group of athletic teenage boys (who are still below age of consent in their state) who are from rich and influential families? Your arguments don't hold up at all.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    112. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Watch your language, a 12 year old might read it. For Your protection (tm), You are now required to install the optional content filter, or face incarceration.

    113. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Warning, the following is a bit of a slippery slope argument, but consider this: a mandatory requirement for identification on certain sites starts being required. It is woefully ineffective, because of the inherent flaws of depending on the client to verify its own credentials. This provides leverage to institute a trusted organization to verify said credentials, which is easily "misused" to identify browsing patterns.

    114. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Midget utensil porn? You get hard watching coffee spoons?

    115. Re:How? by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      When I was in college, we had a credit card for the fraternity dog. I assure you that the dog was not 18.

    116. Re:How? by KGIII · · Score: 1

      This was true in 2012. I do not know if it still is.

      http://www.slate.com/articles/...

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    117. Re:How? by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I envy today's youth. I was born in 1957. Porn was damned hard to come by (no pun intended). We had to work for our porn or jerk off to the Sears catalog. Playboy? That was special. If you had a Playboy you were king. Of course, you were also in trouble for stealing your dad's Playboy. I was a Marine brat at the time so I had more access to porn than most but, still, it was as rare as hen's teeth and selection was sorely limited.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    118. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm... Given your username maybe we should not be taking porn advice from you?

      Then again, maybe you are the perfect source.

    119. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I do not know what they are putting in the water these days but young ladies are far more developed now than they were when I was young. I was born in '57 and there has been quite a change since then. I am not sure that this means anything needs to change, however.

      Anyhow, I am AC. This is KGIII but I have run out of posts for the day it seems. They have an arbitrary limit of 50 even if you have excellent karma. Silly pricks.

    120. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Until they use a free proxy or VPN service. You can get a few free trials and some that just last forever VPN (proxies, really) as extensions for your browser. Opera purchased SurfEasy and they give away 500 MB of traffic a month with the option to get more. It seems that if you refer friends and whatnot you get even more monthly quota allotments. I poked at it but I have actually not used it yet. I use CyberGhost which is what I have always used I guess. They have never had a Linux client that I know of but they do have a browser extension. The extension is free at least in Opera. Well, Chrome I think. You can just install Chrome extensions in Opera easily enough.

      KGIII

    121. Re: How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We can let those go. So long as they are not being stifled but die of their own volition? Yeah... We can let those pass away into the next life. Seriously, we will be just fine without them.

    122. Re:How? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Sites that are distributing malware are not exactly legitimate porn sites though - if it were technically feasible to shut them down then we already have sufficient legal justification for doing so from the Computer Misuse Act.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    123. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How? Simple: If you want to block minors from entering the site, then on entry, just ask if people entering the site are fully sexually developed, and present two large pictures showing male/female genitalia for comparison (or one picture, of them both together, if you need to save screen space).

      If you want even better verification, the site can show further pictures of fully developed adults in various degrees of sexual interaction (or videos, for sake of clarity), and can ask the visitor to tick pictures which represent sexual interaction.

    124. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, you're looking for porn, do your prick!

    125. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A bit like bitcoin mining?

    126. Re:How? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You genuinely believe that the government does not have influence over employment rates? ROFLMAO

  2. And yet sites have no trouble putting up paywalls. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Greed is greed.

  3. porn.gov.uk by Dynamoo · · Score: 0
    I read that the government is going to set up it's own porn portal for "approved" smut while banning everything else. I read it on the internet so it must be true.

    Two things.. one, almost all of these porn sites are not in the UK so basically won't give a shit.

    Secondly, isn't it the case the those people who are most on a crusade against porn are the ones with the really sick and disturbing fetishes. Perhaps I could have 30 minutes with David Cameron's personal laptop just to check?

    --
    Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
    1. Re:porn.gov.uk by k2r · · Score: 1

      > Two things.. one, almost all of these porn sites are not in the UK so basically won't give a shit.

      That's why you will really need mandatory filtering in the UK, soon.
      Won't anyone think of the children?

    2. Re:porn.gov.uk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They already have, link.

    3. Re:porn.gov.uk by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Secondly, isn't it the case the those people who are most on a crusade against porn are the ones with the really sick and disturbing fetishes. Perhaps I could have 30 minutes with David Cameron's personal laptop just to check?

      I didn't realise there was "pandering to bigots while shitting on anyone not a tory crony" porn, but well, I should have realised because of Rule 34 and all.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re:porn.gov.uk by ray-auch · · Score: 1

      > That's why you will really need mandatory filtering in the UK, soon.
      > Won't anyone think of the children?

      There already is mandatory filtering precisely because people were thinking of the children...

  4. Parenting by toxygeneb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about instead of trying to introduce draconian inappropriate laws that will no doubt be misused to censor other sites the government properly fund the enforcement of existing laws? We already have very effective parental neglect laws and if a child as young as the Childline survey suggests is accessing pornography surely the parents are neglectful?

    --
    Equal Rights, Representation, Education & Welfare
    1. Re:Parenting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about instead of trying to introduce draconian inappropriate laws that will no doubt be misused to censor other sites the government properly fund the enforcement of existing laws? We already have very effective parental neglect laws and if a child as young as the Childline survey suggests is accessing pornography surely the parents are neglectful?

      Because most people are too lazy and stupid. They think that the government needs to act as mommy and daddy.

    2. Re:Parenting by BeerCat · · Score: 1

      Parental neglect laws don't apply when you are the Prime Minister, though...

      http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incomin...

      I mean, what kind of person leaves their 8-year old behind in the pub because they forgot about them?

      --
      "She's furniture with a pulse"
    3. Re:Parenting by jstuxx · · Score: 1

      What's the problem with censoring pornography sites on the Internet. It's not like the Internet is this free for all uncensored medium where anybody can post whatever they like without repercussions. If I decide to distribute the new Taylor Swift song I heard, my site will be torn down like Megaupload and I will immediately face charges. If I decide to post some white supremacy message (not this won't happen if I'm a Black supremacist posting supremacy messages) it will immediately be removed and I will immediately be arrested for promoting hate speech. What's with the double standards, people get all touchy when we talk about censoring pornography but don't seem to care that the Internet is already censored.

    4. Re:Parenting by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Such a simple and rational solution right? Too bad that the governments there have spent the last 20 odd years restricting what parents can actually do to their children in terms of punishment. The state is more of a parent then anything else.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    5. Re:Parenting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, what's wrong with distributing a Taylor Swift song? DMCA is an attempt to make it illegal and it causes a shitton of problems and is just a crap law to boot. Nobody likes it who is being constrained by it.

      So the question here is why should the same law be acceptable in the case of pornography, given how bad a similar reasoning law applied to copyright is perceived as being?

    6. Re:Parenting by doobydoobydoo · · Score: 1

      ... if a child as young as the Childline survey suggests is accessing pornography surely the parents are neglectful?

      That would only hold if parents had some magical ability to effectively block all access by kids to mobile phones, handheld consoles, games machines, computers, and also access to those of any of their friends, peers, etc.

    7. Re: Parenting by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      I don't know about black supremacists but plenty of nasty religious extremists are in prison in the UK and there are a number of banned organisations.

    8. Re:Parenting by jstuxx · · Score: 1

      Yes but nobody would dare complain about copyright or about white supremacists not having freedom of speech and freedom of expression, yet the same restriction does not apply to black supremacists who can post whatever garbage they want, it will even be promoted. The Internet's already censored and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Why not just censor pornography at least it will do something good for society.

    9. Re:Parenting by Xest · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No it's not even that. When I was a kid growing up in the UK before the internet we still encountered porn at that age - either left by builders in the building sites we used to dick around in, brought into school by that one kid whose dad creepily collected page 3 pictures from The Sun, or call girl leaflets with pornographic imagery on them that used to be left in phone boxes (remember them?).

      The fact is, kids will encounter porn, you could ban the whole internet and they still would, just like I did and everyone I knew at school did. Porn is everywhere, kids will see it. It's not neglect, because it's an impossible task preventing it. My parents weren't even remotely neglectful, they let me go out and play all by myself like every other kid of my age before this nanny state view where all kids can't leave their front garden without an adult nowadays up until the age of 16 or whatever the fuck.

      All that needs to be done is to make sure kids understand what it is and how to interpret it, nothing more.

    10. Re:Parenting by Shortguy881 · · Score: 1

      Worse yet, the government thinks it needs to act as mommy and daddy.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    11. Re:Parenting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't most (if not all) mobile phone networks already block access to porn by default? As do, I suspect, most public WiFi nodes. So the only way for a minor to access porn from their mobile device would be via WiFi on their home, or a friend's home, internet connection.

    12. Re:Parenting by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Possibly the only real danger from porn to kids is that they could think being able to perform these things is expected from them as well. Explain that the performers are specialized athletes, that this is an acrobatic performance and in addition that it is cut together from a lot of material taken over hour or days, and that danger should be dealt with.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    13. Re:Parenting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Parents should take care of their fuck turds. Not make it society's responsibility.

    14. Re:Parenting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bah!
      SOCIAL CONTROL.... it's the new Gold Standard.
      Bunch of mommy coddled wussie addlers these Brits are.

    15. Re:Parenting by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      In the US, a white supremacist site is perfectly legal. There are hosting providers on the Internet that won't host one, but there are those that will. Hate speech, being speech (and often political speech), is legal in the US.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    16. Re:Parenting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No... You can post your "angry screed about niggers." You can post it here and you will just fit in with the rest of the racists. If you want then you are able to buy web hosting that allows free speech. So long as you are not inciting others to violence you can be as racist as you want to be. Just because you are too lazy to seek out a company to provide that platform does not mean it does not exist.

    17. Re:Parenting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the hell kind of porn are you watching?

      KGIII

    18. Re:Parenting by jwhitener · · Score: 1

      Or we should not care, like we never cared in the past. Before the internet, I think every kid on the planet found a stash of porn mags at some point. If mom/dad found out the kid had looked at them, they were punished or talked to in whatever way those parents deemed appropriate. Law enforcement and/or government laws were never involved.

      I suppose the difference with magazines was they were 'behind the counter', so it seemed like we were "protecting" kids from them. I suppose this politician is just calling for the same thing: some sort of digital "store counter / store clerk" to regulate access to porn. Basically security theater.

  5. Percentages? by miketheanimal · · Score: 5, Informative

    A recent Childline poll found nearly 10% of 12-13-year-olds were worried they were addicted to pornography and 18% had seen shocking or upsetting image

    Years ago (mid 80s or something) there was a "video nasty" frenzy in the UK based on figures that purported to show what percentage of kids and watched "video nasties". The data was gathered by asking kids which of a list of films they had seen. Turned out to be totally bogus, a later study got the same results when the list had a mix of real and invented titles. Not suprising really. Are these figures any better?

    1. Re:Percentages? by johanw · · Score: 0

      That isn't relevant. The named numbers are usefull in his cause, so they are presented as fact. That happens everywhere - remember the "indisputable" proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

    2. Re:Percentages? by Kkloe · · Score: 2

      I would say yes, if we are talking about the 80's you would have to had 3 things, tv, movie player, video cassette and electricity. None of them could go into your pocket, being carried around 24/7, cheap and have access to them all the time from wherever you are as a kid.

      now we have laptops, smartphones and tablets and internet

    3. Re:Percentages? by Nyder · · Score: 1

      A recent Childline poll found nearly 10% of 12-13-year-olds were worried they were addicted to pornography and 18% had seen shocking or upsetting image

      Years ago (mid 80s or something) there was a "video nasty" frenzy in the UK based on figures that purported to show what percentage of kids and watched "video nasties". The data was gathered by asking kids which of a list of films they had seen. Turned out to be totally bogus, a later study got the same results when the list had a mix of real and invented titles. Not suprising really. Are these figures any better?

      This is the internet, 135% of all statistics are made up. The last 47% are skewed in favor of whatever the article is trying to sell.

      --
      Be seeing you...
    4. Re:Percentages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So is it the responsibility of your government to parent your children, which ends up restricting the choices and freedom of consenting adults?

    5. Re:Percentages? by tlambert · · Score: 1

      That isn't relevant. The named numbers are usefull in his cause, so they are presented as fact. That happens everywhere - remember the "indisputable" proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

      To be entirely fair there, the U.S. and Britain knew he had them because we sold them to him in the first place.

      http://rense.com/general29/wes...

    6. Re:Percentages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Single mothers. Asylum seekers. Aunt sallies all. Punch bags to bash, a threat to exaggerate, with the correct sexual, moral and ethnic make-up to fit the demonology that would elicit the maximum response form the Tory heartlands.

      But pornography, thought Nicole, hard core pornography, well that was one threat that wasn't exaggerated.

      "It's not exactly an aunt sally though, is it?" she said.

      Palablane gave her the sort of grin that would scare psychiatrists.

      "I understand your reservations Nicole, but believe me, it's the biggest one there is. It's the queen of aunt sallies. It's a cheap politician's wet dream. Christ, these days, nobody in government wants to suggest or implement a policy that won't deliver a return before the next election - or even before the next opinion poll. But this? It's video nasties all over again. Not just something you can blame, but something you can ban. So that you can show the electorate that you're Getting Something Done. Thatcher's lot did it back in '83 to distract attention from the fact that crime was going through the roof and there was rioting on the streets. They brought in the Video Recordings Act which blamed it all on a few cheesy B-movies and banned, amongst other things, hard porn.

      "Then, in '92, after the Jamie Bulger killing, you had another uproar. David Alton, for whom the irony of being nominally a "liberal" never quite chimed in, sniffing for votes by Getting Something Done, demanding that video censors be given powers that they... er, already had, since the Video Recordings Act in 1984."

      "But this isn't Childs Play 3 or Reservoir Dogs, Jack, this is hard porn!" Nicole protested.

      "Woooh! It's the bogeyman, isn't it? All dark and scary. At least that's what Mikey-boy's relying on. But think about it Nicole. Rape, sexual violence, misogyny, these things have been around since we came down from the trees. Pornography happens along at the arse-end of the twentieth century and it's suddenly the cause of it all? What, does it work retroactively? Do wankmags travel through time? Perhaps Stephen Hawking should investigate..."

      "When asked whether sexually explicit material should be legal in the UK, most people say yes it should. Ask the same people if hard-core pornography should be legal, and they all say no. So you ask them to define pornography and they say: sexual material that is perverse, depraved, corrupting. Offensive to women, yakka yakka yakka. Who the fuck's going to say yes, let's legalise that? Nobody. But it's completely meaningless. There's no imperial scale of depravity, no universal standard of what's offensive to women or to men for that matter. It's entirely subjective. And this is Swan's coup. That's why pornography, like it or loathe it, is the greatest aunt sally in politics. Back Swan, vote against porn, and you're voting against whatever you individually disapprove of, your own personal sexual demon. Nobody knows what they're really objecting to, because nobody's ever going to see this material that they're banning. But in the voters' minds it's whatever they don't like. This fine upstanding man in fighting for them, against whatever they don't like."

      From Country of the Blind by Christopher Brookmyre.

    7. Re:Percentages? by delt0r · · Score: 2

      Ask a teenager how much sex they are having... Yea right they answer that honestly. It reminds me of a seminar on big data. It started as "Big data is like teen sex; everybody is doing it all the time, but no one really know what or how to do it".

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    8. Re:Percentages? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Where I am we had "pornographic rock music". One of the records taken by the police had a track called "doing the shag", which was an instrumental. Meanwhile some corrupt police were deep into a prostitution racket and the state police commissioner was playing out the "street value" drug joke in reality - selling the evidence! He went to jail as did several members of the government at the time.
      Be careful when someone plays the morality card and see if you can look behind the curtain to see what they are trying to distract you from.

    9. Re:Percentages? by Xest · · Score: 2

      Yeah, I know I didn't really have a firm grasp on what did and didn't count as addiction at that age - even by the age of 18 I was still grappling with the concept of whether spending 8 hours a day in online video games was addiction or not. Given that I could still walk away at any moment and do something else for days on end, and at times, did, I'm still not overly sure to this day if it was.

      Ask a 12 - 13 year old whether they're addicted and they'll have no fucking idea.

    10. Re:Percentages? by jbmartin6 · · Score: 2

      "18% had seen shocking or upsetting images" seems pretty tame to me, they are barely looking to have this low a shock rate

      --
      This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    11. Re:Percentages? by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      ... You do realize there was proof (we sold them to him) and that he was bragging about it on national TV in order to keep Iran from walking all over his ass right?

      Take your ignorance and shove it up your ass, your political agenda and reality are two entirely different things. It is possible to disagree with war and not have to make up a bullshit excuse for why you disagree, especially when you continue to drive your Ford Explorer around cheap gas because of it.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    12. Re:Percentages? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Very much this. Very likely, 10% is smaller than the margin of error for this kind of survey. Also, kinds being worried about things they do not understand does not offer any insight into whether they really have a problem. My guess is that this is the best the censors could come up with (pathetic as it is).

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    13. Re:Percentages? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      And how could they? Ask them whether they are addicted to food or air and you will get responses about as meaningful.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    14. Re:Percentages? by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      Did they really check to make sure that the movies didn't exist? Once you start looking at independently produced movies, there's a lot of movies that exist that you would just swear are fake. Such As:

      Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
      Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter
      3 Headed Shark Attack
      I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle
      Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
      Slaughtered Vomit Dolls
      Thankskilling

      Just look it up. Think of a plausible movie title, and it probably already exists in some form or another.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    15. Re:Percentages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Saw a shocking image - so what? Just CLOSE it, then.

      Addicted to porn? Describes anyone above 12 or so who aren't getting regular sex. So they go for the available substitute instead.

    16. Re:Percentages? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Those ones were. The Childline survey has been quite throughly discredited: They hired a survey company that actually brags on their website about being able to generate whatever conclusion their customer requires, and the methodology was flawed in several serious ways.

    17. Re:Percentages? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      To be precise, we knew that Saddam had had chemical weapons. The 2003 invasion found some leftovers from that time, but nothing else. The UN inspection teams were apparently effective.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    18. Re:Percentages? by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      You know what else has really bad withdrawal symptoms? Falling. Once you've done it for several seconds, quitting cold turkey is usually immediately fatal.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    19. Re:Percentages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How dare you question the authenticity of politically motivated studies you harassment misogynist gamergater neckbearded scum!!

    20. Re:Percentages? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      An honest survey company, link or it didn't happen.

      They all know how to get the answer they want. None I know of will admit it.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    21. Re:Percentages? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      As you request.

      The survey was conducted by OnePoll. They describe their survey service as "Survey-led storytelling. Our PR surveys generate data driven content for brands & agencies."

      http://www.onepoll.com/

    22. Re:Percentages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To be more precise, the US and Britain knew any of the chemical weapons they had sold to Saddam Hussein were well past their use-by date so he didn't in fact have anything that he could use against the coalition forces. This made it safer to invade Iraq than it had been a decade earlier.

    23. Re:Percentages? by radio4fan · · Score: 1

      No, you're spot on. This poll is totally bogus.

      He told The Independent: “The NSPCC and Childline, organisations that exist for the protection of children, are quite deliberately using an atrocious study to feed into moral panic, and it’s clearly been coordinated with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.”

      Mr Barnett said that regulators had been using porn for several years to justify internet censorship and “create a case for turning Britain back into a digital island”.

      Source: NSPCC accused of risking its reputation and 'whipping up moral panic' with study into porn addiction among children

    24. Re:Percentages? by Kkloe · · Score: 1

      Huh?, when was that the question, we are talking about percentage here

  6. Alternative Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Block underage access or get a facial", Cameron ejaculates on porn industry.

    1. Re:Alternative Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fark is down the hall to the left. Might make a good submission there.

  7. Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How is pornography more harmful to children than say, unconditional praise?

    1. Re:Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Prepubescent children do not have fully developed genitals or sexual identity, and pornography only serves to confuse them since they are not yet capable of relating to the content. In contrast, their fully functional ears receive unconditional praise just fine (with the obvious exception of the deaf).

    2. Re:Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Prepubescent children do not have fully developed genitals or sexual identity, and pornography only serves to confuse them since they are not yet capable of relating to the content. In contrast, their fully functional ears receive unconditional praise just fine (with the obvious exception of the deaf).

      Sex is confusing to kids so it needs to be banned?

      Oh, I know they can hear unconditional praise. It's creating millions of entitled, selfish assholes.

    3. Re:Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure it does. I developed a fetish for chicks-with-dicks because my neglectful parents let me watch porn tapes when I was small. I didn't want to grow up with any weird fetishes, but now as an adult I still can't get rid of them. I blame my parents for my sexually confusing childhood.

    4. Re:Discuss by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      you don't have children, do you?

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    5. Re:Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, so you are worried that pornography will cause children to think in a way you don't like.

      Thanks for admitting that this is nothing but thought policing.

    6. Re: Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's wrong with thought policing? Thoughts ultimately lead to acts. Better to prevent bad things from happening than having to cope with the aftermath.

    7. Re: Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > What's wrong with thought policing?

      Seriously? You have to ask? Go read 1984 or the history of totalitarian regimes. If they can put you in jail for what you think, nobody is safe.

      > Thoughts ultimately lead to acts.

      Well, duh. How do you know whether an act is right or wrong? Thinking. If you're not free to think WHATEVER you want, you have no free choice.

    8. Re: Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pffft. Different people react to the same material very differently, and you absolutely cannot predict with any certainty how a particular person will react to a pornographic work.

      Thoughts lead to actions, but you can never prove in a courtroom that any thought was the cause of any act, or even that the person ever HAD that thought. There's simply no legal justification for policing what people see, hear, read, or think.

    9. Re:Discuss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am kind of hoping that they do not.

      KGIII

  8. Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is just the beginning of another five years of the Tories and their rural mafia shoving their crappy conservative values down the throats of the 63.9 percent of the UK population that did not vote for them and now that the Scottish national party has split the Labour vote it looks like this is how things will stay this way for the foreseeable future. It is an utter travesty that a political party can achieve a parliamentary majority with 36.1 percent of the population behind it and that a party that gained 12.9% of the popular vote (UKIP) gets one parliamentarian. I'm no fan of UKIP by any means but they should have gotten more seats.

    1. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're ignoring the turnout. Only 66.1% of people bothered to vote. Which means 33.9% of the electorate don't care who won. Their inactivity is just as complicit in the result as those who voted for the "nasty party".

      And this is moot anyway. British democracy allows you to select your local MP - and that's all. The PM and the government are appointed by the Queen based on the allegiances of the elected MPs.

    2. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      This is just the beginning of another five years of the Tories

      No, not another. This is something new. The last 5 years were apparently heavily tempered by the lib dems. I say apparently because it wasn't all that apparent at the time, but now without having to please another coalition party they've gone into full batshit crazy slash and burn (except fopr cronies) mode.

      Well, all those whiny Lib-Dem supporters who through a massive shitgit when the CON-lib coalition wasn't 100% pure libdem and defected, congratulations, you've got the government you deserve. Unfortunatley the rest of us are stuck with them too.

      It is an utter travesty that a political party can achieve a parliamentary majority with 36.1 percent of the population behind it and that a party that gained 12.9% of the popular vote (UKIP) gets one parliamentarian. I'm no fan of UKIP by any means but they should have gotten more seats.

      It's an even bigger travesty that a party with a mere 4.7% of the votes got a massive 56 seats.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    3. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      UKIP got as many seats as they won. Picking up a few votes here and there, declaring they should have more is not how the UK voting system operates. Proportional representation fails where it is implemented because you always end up with fringe nutters getting seats. Most people voting are too thick. Why should people with no education, no life experience and no money-sense have any influence? Anyone not having A levels shouldn't be allowed to vote, unless they've been working for 10+ years. Anyone that's never worked, only lived off the state, and cannot be bothered to enhance their education certainly should not have any say in selecting the next set of oligarchs' puppets for government.

    4. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      This is just the beginning of another five years of the Tories and their rural mafia shoving their crappy conservative values down the throats of the 63.9 percent of the UK population that did not vote for them and now that the Scottish national party has split the Labour vote it looks like this is how things will stay this way for the foreseeable future. It is an utter travesty that a political party can achieve a parliamentary majority with 36.1 percent of the population behind it and that a party that gained 12.9% of the popular vote (UKIP) gets one parliamentarian. I'm no fan of UKIP by any means but they should have gotten more seats.

      Just out of curiosity, does anyone who lives outside the UK actually understand British politics?

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    5. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I've been trying to think of a way we can get the Single Transferable Vote introduced. It's going to be difficult, especially since the people with the power to do it would be giving up some of their power. Also, most of the British public claim they are too thick to understand it.

      Anyone have any ideas?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      Few people in the UK understand British politics either, including the post you quoted.

    7. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      It's going to happen anyway, UK politics are in turmoil. Labour is on the verge of committing suicide, and when it does it'll fracture leaving the Tories the only electable party.

      Except, they wont be electable because the longer a party is in power, the more fucking batshit it becomes, and as such people are going to split away from it and it wont hold a parliamentary majority. It may remain the biggest party but wont be able to form a government, hell, it's barely there now - wait until the EU referendum is over and hard right Tories defect to UKIP whatever the result, their majority doesn't have much life in it. We've already seen a massive split of the vote the last two elections - an unheard of coalition, followed by a fracturing of parties.

      As soon as we get a non-Tory coalition, it'll happen because it'll have to. If no party can guarantee that all it has to do is wait 5 years for it's turn as has been the case for decades with the back and forth between red and blue then it'll be in their interest to make sure they can maintain at least some reasonable amount of power without getting fucked by FPTP.

    8. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      I've been trying to think of a way we can get the Single Transferable Vote introduced.

      STV won't solve a lot of the problems. The district nature of it is what allows wild misrepresentaiton. I suspect the SNP would have gained their 56 seats with STV, while still acrtuing around 5% of the votes.

      But the plus side is you get to vote for a person as much as a party.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    9. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Just out of curiosity, does anyone who lives outside the UK actually understand British politics?

      Yes. His name is Rupert Murdoch :(

    10. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 1

      66% turnout, sadly, isn't all that bad by the standards of most democracies.

      By contrast, in the 2014 U.S. Congressional elections, an estimated 36.6% percent of eligible voters participated. (Source: http://www.usnews.com/news/blo... ). I'd have gladly taken the UK turnout rate.

    11. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 2

      You're ignoring the turnout. Only 66.1% of people bothered to vote. Which means 33.9% of the electorate don't care who won. Their inactivity is just as complicit in the result as those who voted for the "nasty party".

      And this is moot anyway. British democracy allows you to select your local MP - and that's all. The PM and the government are appointed by the Queen based on the allegiances of the elected MPs.

      Yes but with the way the UK electoral system is organized most of the people who voted for UKIP, just to take one example, might just as well not have bothered. They were a significant portion of the population and got one MP, agian I'm not a UKIP fan but those voters deserve representation. The whole system seems to be geared up for a couple of large parties taking turns at being in power with the Tories in particular riding tiny rural constituencies into power backed by a ridiculously small number of voters.

    12. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Districts would have to be grouped together to implement STV. It only works properly if there is more than one seat available.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    13. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 1

      Just out of curiosity, does anyone who lives outside the UK actually understand British politics?

      Few people in the UK understand British politics either, including the post you quoted.

      Who's talking about UK politics? I don't give a rat's ass about understanding UK politics. I was musing about the idiocy of the UK electoral system. Given 650 parliamentary seats, UKIP would have won at least 70 seats using electoral rules used in countries that try to minimize gerrymandering. Under the current UK system they get one seat, I repeat one seat. That is neither fair nor is it normal by any standard. I do not need to be an expert in UK politics to know that that's a stupid system, all it takes is basic math.

    14. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 1

      Except, they wont be electable because the longer a party is in power, the more fucking batshit it becomes, and as such people are going to split away from it and it wont hold a parliamentary majority. It may remain the biggest party but wont be able to form a government, hell, it's barely there now - wait until the EU referendum is over and hard right Tories defect to UKIP whatever the result, their majority doesn't have much life in it. We've already seen a massive split of the vote the last two elections - an unheard of coalition, followed by a fracturing of parties.

      I was thinking something similar. He really has two choices. Piss off the other EU nations, keep things peaceful at home and risk leaving the EU (the route he will take if push comes to shove) or try to compromise and be conciliatory with the EU nations in which case he'll have a backbench rebellion on his hand which might split the party. With an industry that is riding him not to leave the EU, a parliamentary majority of just ten MPs and band of rebel backbenchers that is way bigger than ten MPs his position is difficult to say the least. He would have been better off in a coalition, unheard of as that may be in the UK even if it is normal in most other countries.

    15. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      I actually completely agree with you on that aspect of your post (though UKIP not getting more seats is one of the upsides of the current electoral system because less far right is a good thing, no matter good they are at pretending they're not.). It is unfair all the same, and our electoral sytem is completely broken. It is neither representative on a local level (AV was rejected) nor representative on a national level (PR hasn't been allowed).

      My comment about you not understanding British politics was more in reference to your jab at the Tory being propped up by some rural mafia - don't believe it, the amount of constituencies where Tory candidates have a 50%+ majority in rural areas is still only a fraction of their seats. Their support base is primarily the other 50s, whether urban or rural.

      The fact that Cameron and co. as well as his city mates go and shoot pheasants in the countryside on weekends doesn't mean there's some great rural backing for these guys. It's just where they go when they're bored of fucking people over in the city during weekdays. Even on issues like Fox hunting there are more than enough of us who live rurally that hate Fox hunting not just because it's pointless, selfish, and requires you to be a real actual psycopath, but because we get fed up when some rich Tory toff decides he's going to blockade a country lane illegally with 100 dogs so we can't go and get our shopping and have to turn back because they think they own the fucking place.

      Trust me, if rural folks had some special hold over the Tories, I wouldn't be commuting to work on a 45 year old train running on Victorian era tracks from a station that I drove to on terribly maintained roads full of potholes.

    16. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Builder · · Score: 1

      Remind me - how many times did Labour attempt similar controls ? Oh, yes, loads.

      How long did Labour want to hold people without charge or trial ? 90 days I seem to remember...

      It's just politicians - Labour, Conservatives it doesn't matter. They all want one thing - control (which leads to more power). I've never seen a politician here roll back an abhorent policy that they fought massively against when they were in opposition. Because when they're not in opposition anymore, it's too useful to them to get rid of.

    17. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      I don't think any government can realistically split from the EU and get re-elected, it's an inherent death wish, and I suspect that's why Cameron said ahead of time this would be his last parliament either way - if he loses the EU vote and we pull out he wont be able to stick around regardless.

      The problem is that even if Farage is right (which, frankly, he isn't, in the same way that Alex Salmond had the same fantasies and wasn't right either) and we can somehow make up the loss of EU trade, we wont do it overnight, those trade agreements we have with the EU will take years to renegotiate and we'll be stuck in limbo in the meantime facing high tarrifs. So even if it is only temporary, and even if we did do better in the long run, an EU exit inherently means at least a couple of years of recession and declining economic growth. Any PM in charge when that happens is automatically fucked whatever the outcome.

      Then like you say, if he wins, and we stay in the EU, then the bitter old folks on his back benches will defect to UKIP, quite parliament altogether, or just be difficult anyway, so he'll lose his majority.

      A coalition in the UK isn't that unheard of though, we just had one :)

    18. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Labour is on the verge of committing suicide"

      No. Labour is about to get a leader who is a socialist. That the other candidates are all convinced that adhering to their centrist views, which have lost them two elections, is where the death of the party lies.

    19. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      "And this is moot anyway. British democracy allows you to select your local MP - and that's all. The PM and the government are appointed by the Queen based on the allegiances of the elected MPs."

      Yes, but even that's broken. Some MPs are elected with as little as 25% of local support, the vast majority under 50%, and I believe even a majority under 30%.

      So even our elected representatives aren't really our elected representatives. They're just people who represent a local minority in a vast amount of cases.

      This is FWIW what AV would've fixed - it would've ensured MPs had to at least somewhat represent even if not a first choice over half of the electorate. It was rejected though as people don't want local representatives, they want proportional representation as shown by most polls, but this wasn't allowed as an option so we're stuck with what we have which is broken in both ways - it's neither nationally representative, nor is it hardly ever locally representative.

    20. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      Um, no. Milliband was too far left for the electorate and they lost hard as a result. Why do you think that going even further left will help exactly?

      The centrist candidate last time was David Milliband, the centrist candidate this time is Liz Kendall. Neither were/will be elected, even though they're the only options that would have/will make Labour tolerable to the electorate.

      People voted towards the right, they would probably have tolerated something slightly more the left (i.e. actual centre), but Milliband was too far to the left to be tolerable to most people. Your solution is to swing to a leader even further away from what people wanted, really?

      Gordon Brown had the same problem, he was just a little too far left to be tolerable. No one wants Brownites like Milliband, Balls, and Burnham. They want people who are willing to balance state handouts with fiscal responsibility, Corbyn is the exact opposite of that - he believes that we have infinite money that we can just use to give more and more handouts to everyone.

      Good luck with that, that was exactly what lost both Brown and Milliband the election, except now you want to double down with it and do it even more, as if you believe that if you throw enough fail at something it'll become success. No, just no.

    21. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by jpapon · · Score: 1

      It's an even bigger travesty that a party with a mere 4.7% of the votes got a massive 56 seats.

      Is it though? They won essentially all of Scotland. Having 8.6% of the MPs seems fairly reasonable.

      --
      -- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
    22. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What you neglect to mention is that the SNP got close to or over 50% of the vote in nearly every constituency they actually stood in.

      And also a 50% share of the vote across the whole of Scotland - Labour wining 24% and all the other partys (Conservative, LibDem, Green, UKIP) and independents splitting the remaining 26%.

    23. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Is it though? They won essentially all of Scotland. Having 8.6% of the MPs seems fairly reasonable.

      They got 4.7% of the vote and have 8.6% of the MPs. How is massive overrepresentation reasonable? It's on a pure numbers game it's a worse overrepresentation than the Tories have though of course it's not as bad as either the UKIP or Lib Dem underrepresentation. ... of course, it's been a massive foot shooting exercise because while the SNP have more MPs than at any time in history, the Scots have essentially lost representation because it's going to be hard for a UK wide party to ever make a coalition with the SNP because it will upset the majority of the voters.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    24. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by ACE209 · · Score: 1

      Proportional representation fails where it is implemented because you always end up with fringe nutters getting seats.

      Under the assumption that parliament should represent the whole population I consider that a good thing.
      When a small part of population has a certain unpopular opinion, that should be reflected in parliament.
      Otherwise it's like taking the right to vote away from people you disag.. oh .. you actually propose that in your next sentence. Nothing I can do here I guess.

      --
      "we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
    25. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      And yet the situation is still better than in the US.

    26. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      We run a system of proportionalish nonrepresentation, with an election held whenever it rains three times on a Thursday.

    27. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Before the EU England traded more with the USA than the rest of Europe.

      They could drop out of the EU and join NAFTA and be way ahead. Depending on how bad the EU screws the pooch regarding Greece/Italy/Spain.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    28. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by LainTouko · · Score: 1

      The SNP surge is irrelevant, since they're anti-Tory. (Except perhaps for the scare games it allowed the Tories to play.) If every SNP seat had been won by Labour, the Conservatives would still have a majority. And if Labour reached a point where they would have a majority if only they had those SNP seats, the Tories would be out of power because Labour and the SNP would certainly unite to block them, even if they weren't able to unite to do much else.

    29. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by nytes · · Score: 1

      Don't blame me. I voted for the Very Silly Party.

      --
      -- I have monkeys in my pants.
    30. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      'Monster Raving Loony', all the others are splitters.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    31. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by tsotha · · Score: 1

      There's nothing wrong with ceding a few seats (out of hundreds) to "fringe nutters". The whole point of a milti-party parliamentary system is for people who aren't in the majority (or the largest plurality) to get their say, and the district-type systems always short parties that aren't based on regional pork-peddling.

    32. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd submit that that is talking about UK politics. I am still trying to figure out why you guys keep misspelling mudkips.

    33. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      though UKIP not getting more seats is one of the upsides of the current electoral system because less far right is a good thing

      Not necessarily. Parties like these thrive on populist rhetoric, and when they actually get power (even if it's local and limited in nature) and can't really deliver, their support plummets quickly. The only case where it doesn't work is when mainstream parties are even more demonstrably incompetent, but then the real problem is there.

    34. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The previous AC had at least one thing right, that "most people voting are too thick", and many of the ones that aren't "thick" are either just don't care or are still too easily taken in by the politicians' bullshit. Unfortunately I don't have a good solution, I gave up caring when the majority of the voting population voted against AV in the referendum, while perhaps not ideal it would have been an improvement, but too many people bought into the BS peddled by the "No" campaign for that one.

    35. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      No, not even remotely close. Before the EU, the world was massively different and the EU was in ruins from a massive war.

      It's like saying "Before the fall of the British empire, Britain did better with India". Right, but we're not before the British empire, just like we're not before the EU. NAFTA isn't even remotely as comprehensive a free trade agreement as what the EU has - you still have massive customs barriers as anyone that has tried to move goods between the US and Canada vs. between European states can tell you.

      Of course, the EU doesn't preclude us also having partnerships with these countries as well - it's not mutually exclusive, why limit ourselves to one just because people like Farage hate foreign people that aren't largely of British cultural descent?

    36. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      British politics has this problem though where for some reason the noisiest minority gets to drive the whole agenda. We also really don't have much of local powerbases where they can fail hard, the closest thing are local councils, but councils don't always listen to elected councillors anyway so they typically fail or succeed in spite of who has been elected to try and tell them what to do.

      Take for example the EU referendum - in the European elections, despite a favourable demographic turnout for the far right, far right parties only won about 30% of the vote. The other 70% was won by parties whose stated aim is to remain in the EU. Yet for some reason, we're having a referendum on EU membership despite there being clear overwhelming support for staying in (recent polls put it overwhelmingly in favour of the EU). Quite why we're wasting hundreds of millions on a referendum like this just because a vocal far right minority screams the loudest I've no fucking idea - they had their referendum, it was called the European elections, and despite disproportionate positive media coverage, turnout favouring their electoral base, and so on and so forth, they still lost hard.

      Probably the real problem here is that the press love sensation, so they'd rather praise the far right for causing a stir, than question them for lying their way to power with populism. As such we have this problem whereby there's no one with any real voice that can expose their wrongdoing and lies on a grander scale.

    37. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      I think my point is ultimately this: if you're seriously afraid that people will vote for a far-right party in sufficient numbers that they will end up exercising considerable power, to the extent that proportional representation (i.e. accurate expression of those people's will) is undesirable, then the society itself is badly broken for whatever reason. You can postpone the inevitable trainwreck for a while by suppressing that vote or rendering it useless, but ultimately you'll lose that game anyway, except that all that anger will get released over a much shorter period of time.

      I don't have an answer as to what to do with such a society, though. Especially when you're on the inside.

    38. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      I don't know if it's that simple really, the tide of far right support has grown during the economic crisis, there's something to be said for the fact that if you can hold out against it long enough whilst combating it's lies and ideas that you can stem the tide.

      I think it's probably peaked in the UK (and possibly Europe in general) now, as the economy is strengthening people are moving away from UKIP et. al. again and support for the EU is growing once more as those who want to pull out for no other reason than they hate foreigners (at least, that's all I can assume given that none of their other arguments actually make any sense, and the mask slips all too frequently) are beginning to get ignored once again.

      I think really this is the problem they had in Nazi Germany, the country was suffering and far right sentiment grew, the problem is it grew just large enough to corrupt the system and cement it's hold on the country.

      Effectively, I believe the situation is this, there is around 5% - 10% of a population that are genuinely far-right in most European countries, but there's another 30% or so of useful idiots who are trivially swayed by populism - they like lies that sound good and phantom enemies to hate on. The trick is to prevent that 30% from giving strength to the genuine 5% - 10% of extremists by either educating them by questioning lies and seeking facts (which the media fails hard at in the UK) or just keeping them happy and so dumb to politics, because if they're happy they just don't care about anything but themselves. These are the folks who if they're employed and earning just fine don't give a shit about politics, but if they lose their job because the economy is shit will vote purely on a single "Mexicans stole your job" type soundbite they heard on the radio in passing - more detailed explanations about why they actually lost their job, which may sometimes even include some blame on their own part, are just too long winded, and too difficult for them to hear.

    39. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      The EU didn't happen right after WWII. When England first joined the EU it, in fact, traded more with the USA then 'the continent'.

      NAFTA being less comprehensive than the EU is a FEATURE, not a bug. NAFTA won't leave England on the hook for Mexico's bad debt.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    40. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      Yes... because Europe still didn't fix itself immediately after the war. It kinda takes time to rebuild a whole fucking continent.

      "NAFTA being less comprehensive than the EU is a FEATURE, not a bug. NAFTA won't leave England on the hook for Mexico's bad debt."

      No but it does leave us open to getting fucked by US protectionism just like Canada has with things like lumber, and fresh water.

      Why be a bitch to America when we can be an equal in Europe as we are currently?

    41. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Being America's bitch is a superior position to being an 'equal in Europe'.

      Do you really want to be equal with Greece? (Equal in the EU means you get to pay their bills and be called names for it.)

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    42. Re:Happy, happy, joy, joy... by Xest · · Score: 1

      I don't think you realise how much of a fail your argument is - being equal to Greece means that if shit hits the fan for us then we too get bailed out. Yes, I'd love that security blanket, in fact, that's precisely why we're in the EU because last time we fucked up and nearly went bankrupt Europe did indeed do all of that for us.

      In the meantime, whilst we're doing well we get to be equal with countries like Germany and France.

      Besides, the world is moving East, not West. Moving the opposite direction to the tides of change would be one of the most braindead things we could do over the next 50 years either way. We'd attach ourselves to a falling empire, whilst the rest of the world moves on into a multi-polar world involving China. There's a reason our own government regardless of the EU shunned the US and joined China's new investment bank - they're not stupid enough to tie us to the sort of past fantasy that people like you Farage, and Liam Fox long for but just doesn't exist anymore and will not exist any time in the next century at least. The British empire is gone, and America is declining as the once sole superpower, we're going to have to adapt to that reality if we want to continue to be prosperous.

  9. it is safer to learn about sex from family :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, it is known fact it is safer for a child to learn about sex from his father, uncle, neighbor, mother lovers, local priest, local shopkeeper, teacher, ... - than from Internet.

  10. Just try it by Gaygirlie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shutting down all online porn-sites in the UK? Yeah, go ahead, see how long the public is willing to play along; I predict quite an uproar. Besides, it wouldn't stop porn-sites from outside the UK anyways, so it would both upset a lot of people and yet be wholly ineffective.

    1. Re:Just try it by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      More likely people will simply get their porn elsewhere.

      What, you think kids get their porn on legit UK websites and not via various methods of sharing ranging from torrents to social media?

    2. Re:Just try it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shutting down all online porn-sites in the UK? Yeah, go ahead, see how long the public is willing to play along; I predict quite an uproar. Besides, it wouldn't stop porn-sites from outside the UK anyways, so it would both upset a lot of people and yet be wholly ineffective.

      Uproar? Over shutting down of porn sites? You can't be seriously talking about englishmen here

    3. Re: Just try it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uproar? There won't be any uproar. People have seen their rights eroded over the last twenty years, including workers' rights, and there hasn't been anything large scale. Nothing has changed the governments' minds. Internet-related rights issues don't even register on the radar. If they want to shut off content from the internet they will do it. They've done it in Australia and there has been no uproar. Learn to deal with the new world, there's nothing you can do about it.

    4. Re:Just try it by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      Shutting down all online porn-sites in the UK? Yeah, go ahead, see how long the public is willing to play along; I predict quite an uproar. Besides, it wouldn't stop porn-sites from outside the UK anyways, so it would both upset a lot of people and yet be wholly ineffective.

      Right...because such sites couldn't possibly be blocked regardless of where they're based...

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    5. Re:Just try it by Gaygirlie · · Score: 1

      Right...because such sites couldn't possibly be blocked regardless of where they're based...

      Right, that worked so well for e.g. The Pirate Bay...

    6. Re:Just try it by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      Yes well that was my point wasn't it

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    7. Re:Just try it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think there are any major sites in the UK anyway.

      If there are, I assume they're already in the process of moving abroad in light of these developments.

      AFAIK, all the big sites are based in the USA. Specifically, California and Florida.

    8. Re:Just try it by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      It's probably safe to assume the plan has 'national censor firewall' as a later component.

    9. Re:Just try it by purple_cobra · · Score: 1

      What was that joke about porn on the internet? Something like: If you got rid of all the porn on the internet, there'd be a single page left reading "Bring back the porn" ? The other concern is that ATM, we have a committee of arseholes (Jack Straw is amongst them, need I say more?) examining the Freedom of Information Act to see how best to gut it, so we won't be able to check what non-work network requests are going out from parliament (given the current stories about a very high-level paedophile group in parliament, some of that shit could be very dodgy indeed). Cameron (and another Tory genius, Theresa May) also think they can ban encryption without banning encryption. No, I don't know either, but look on the bright side: aliens may invade and take them all away somewhere for questioning. That scenario is more likely than a sensible, humane, well-researched and fully-costed proposal coming from this group of utter numpties.

  11. Moron by MrL0G1C · · Score: 2

    Cameron you complete fucking moron, (at least) three things:

    1. Most porn sites are not in the UK.
    2. Computers can't tell if people are lying.
    3. Most people want free porn and are too lazy or too smart to be giving potential criminals their personal details.

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    1. Re:Moron by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      #2: yet apparently Facebook can tell if you're contemplating suicide...

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    2. Re:Moron by Jamu · · Score: 1

      4. Porn is subjective. I'll assume Cameron's definition to be "shows the naughty bits of someone's body".

      --
      Who ordered that?
    3. Re:Moron by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

      Not to mention that sex is a natural act and thus should not be disturbing so the whole thing is based upon a false premise.

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    4. Re:Moron by tsotha · · Score: 1

      Yep. He might manage to wipe out porn hosting in the UK, but he's not going to make it any harder for kids to get access to porn.

  12. Here's a better idea by DrXym · · Score: 2

    The ISP is required to be offered child web filter for free as part of the service. A new applicant may choose to enable it or disable it as their circumstances dictate. The default should not be on. There should be a simple web interface controlled by the account holder to modify the settings at any time. That's the end of the matter.

    1. Re:Here's a better idea by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 1

      They already have this : it now defaults to "on" by default.

      It's DNS level filtering though, so it can be defeated by a simple change of settings. The younger generation are mostly techno-dufuses though, so it probably defeats them.

    2. Re:Here's a better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But but, hang on... we _already_ have this in the UK (the 4 main ISPs on a "voluntary" basis, which means "we'll go along with what the government tells us so they don't introduce a law that forces us to")... it's already covered.

      Cameron's policies can best be described as "imagine what a man frightened by things he doesn't understand will do to protect his own children that heaven forbid doesn't involve spending time with them." There's only so much one overprivileged Etonian can do, after all.

    3. Re:Here's a better idea by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      Three UK have always had an adult content filter defaulted to "on". You had to either call CS and giver over a credit card (not a debit card for some reason) number to "verify" your age, or go into a store to have a salesdroid unlock your account.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    4. Re:Here's a better idea by DrXym · · Score: 1

      Same for Ireland. It should be an opt-in requirement not opt-out. I was blocked out of a site tagged "adult" despite it being a humour / discussion board. Meanwhile I'd have no problem viewing any number of seriously disturbing things on YouTube, Facebook or other sites because DNS filtering is no use for those.

    5. Re:Here's a better idea by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      the really weird thing is, Virgin used to (I don't know if they still do) have default locks on adult content too, thing is you have to be over 18 here to consent to contract. Don't they think someone who is old enough to sign a fucking broadband contract is *legally* old enough to view/purchase/STAR IN porn?

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    6. Re:Here's a better idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every generation are mostly techno-dufuses though, so it probably defeats them.

    7. Re:Here's a better idea by radio4fan · · Score: 1

      The ISP is required to be offered child web filter for free as part of the service.

      For FREE?

      Why on earth should people who don't want this kind of bullshit (maybe like me, they have no children) pay for people who want it?

      I say if people want their web filtered so that children can't access porn, let them choose an ISP who offers this virtual impossibility.

      Typical Tory bullshit. They claim to be in favour of:

      • "Let the market decide"
      • Personal freedom
      • Less red tape
      • Smaller government

      But when it comes to sex, they just can't help themselves from doing the exact opposite to their supposed principles.

  13. Tell the govt what!!!!!! by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

    possibly with a regulator to oversee and enforce controls.

    Please enter you gov't ID here [ ] [OK]

    Then click ok so that the gov't can confirm that you are authorised to watch gay midget porn.

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    1. Re:Tell the govt what!!!!!! by tepples · · Score: 1

      I gather from the article that it's anonymized such that the government can see only that some licensed business requested at X date and time that citizen 123456789's age be compared to 18, and that business 987654321 made X requests during a given month.

  14. Protect the children - but not from this or that. by KenDiPietro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Kids are getting access to disturbing images, you say? You want to ensure that children are prevented from seeing these kinds of images by passing a law if necessary? But will the children still be able to see people being blown up or otherwise being ripped to shreds during prime time TV? Because otherwise, I'd hate to think we'd be putting people out of work in our "legitimate" entertainment industry.

    As an aside, anyone else enjoying the irony in the British government which for decades had gone to great lengths to protect the identity of people they knew were repeatedly sexually assaulting children now claiming that this measure it to protect children? Exactly when will those prosecutions be beginning, Mr Cameron?

  15. hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While the rest of the world is gradually realizing that sex is a natural and healthy thing, the UK is taking a trip back I to the dark ages. And they seems quite proud of it too.

    1. Re: hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They need to overthrow Cromwell again and scare off the puritans but they lack colonies as dumping grounds.

  16. Erm... by Squalid05 · · Score: 2

    How would he shut down non-UK websites? I imagine the majority of porn sites are US/Non-UK... so when shutting them down doesn't work, would he try and block them? (A la torrent sites - look how well that worked out...) And what does he define as "porn"? If I put a picture of me naked on my UK-hosted .COM domain, would he try and shut me down? What would be the financial cost to taxpayers for doing that?

    --
    To dare, is to do.
    1. Re:Erm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I recall reading an interview with a member of the BBFC many years ago where he was talking about the problem they had classifying a foot fetish video. The film itself consisted of nothing but close-up shots of women's feet and shoes, in terms of imagery you could show clips from the film taken out of context to almost anyone and they wouldn't find them offensive. However, the video itself was being released as an item of pornography and they were concerned about the public's perception if they were to assign the video a very low rating.

    2. Re:Erm... by jstuxx · · Score: 0

      I find people dumb who talk about the cost to taxpayers, but haven't got a clue what their taxes are actually used for. 90% of British taxes go into the Queens pocket.

    3. Re:Erm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for proving your own thesis there.

    4. Re:Erm... by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      um... just no.

      All taxes go into the consolidated fund. Out of that, MOST of the money goes to pay part interest on loans made on behalf of the British Government through the five largest banks in Europe. I say part interest because the arrangements are such that the loans will NEVER be paid off because the interest rates alone exceed the GDP of the entire nation. The Royal Family actually receives very little money from the public purse (shy of £40 million this year). Most Royal income comes from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    5. Re:Erm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's always been funny. It actually turns out the money given to the royal family is in exchange for use of the royal families land, as they do still own it. The amount it would cost to rent the land was something like several hundred million pounds a year and to out right purchase the British government just couldn't afford. Then there's the tourist income which they provide to the country. It's estimated that the royal family is probably one of the most underpaid groups out there since the UK government would be out something like 1.5 billion pounds a year if not for them.

    6. Re:Erm... by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      the Duchy of Lancaster was worth something like £320million in rents last year. Most of the public spending on the Royals is actually the Duke of Edinburgh's stipend, who is the only one since 2012 to actually get a stipend.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  17. fat people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    maybe if the british population wasnt so obese, there would be more pleasant bodies to look at, thus reducing pornography consumption.

  18. Silly puritans by X10 · · Score: 1

    I mean, when members of the House of Lords make selfies in womens underwear, don't you realize your prudishness is the cause of that, not the effect?

    --
    no, I don't have a sig
  19. Surely "Are you over 18? Y/N" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Surely "Are you over 18? Y/N" is enough. After all, I verify you are a friend or foe by ASKING. We verify your story in court by asking.

    There's nothing technological possible to verify that cannot be EASILY bypassed or faked.

  20. No, no, no by Cafe+Alpha · · Score: 4, Insightful

    they're trying to prevent what they're always trying to prevent:
    being blamed or losing their jobs when some nutcase parent gets upset.

    The purpose of policies is to be seen pretending to do something about fictional problems that have no solutions for the simple reason that some very loud people believe there's a problem.

    1. Re:No, no, no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here in Brazil we have a saying about measures taken knowing they wont be effective. We call them "to Englishmen see" i.e. There will be a law forbidding kids to watch porn. This law wont work. Its just to Englishmen see

    2. Re:No, no, no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The purpose of policies is to be seen pretending to do something about fictional problems that have no solutions for the simple reason that some very loud people believe there's a problem.

      Machiavellian Politics at it's finest!
      Somebody must have been reading "The Prince."

    3. Re:No, no, no by Cafe+Alpha · · Score: 1

      I thought Brazil was colonized by Portugal and invaded by France. Why is it for "Englismen" to see?

  21. We'll (the US) have to invade. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm quite impressed with the quality porn out of the UK. It's not as boring as Czech college kid orgies or US blow, eat, fuck in ridiculous positions. And the amateur wecam porn that justs shows some fat guy's ass going up and down between someone's legs just sucks.

    Pro porn is just soooo boring now. The latest "teen" craze is something I don't get either.

  22. UK porn, lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Noone watches UK porn anyway, what, with those snaggle teeth and bad haircuts... "Cheerio mate, Bob's your uncle! Let's get us some figgy pudding and a pint". Yeah, that charms the old snake...

    1. Re:UK porn, lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't stop... nearly there...

  23. Keep going cameron by tomxor · · Score: 2

    Once you turn our internet into something resembling China's, maybe will people finally realise what a moron you are and vote you out.

    1. Re:Keep going cameron by jstuxx · · Score: 1

      Our Internet is worse than China's. Black supremacists and feminist fanatics are allowed to express inflammatory views and are defended because "we can never ever censor the Internet it's the most immoral thing in the world" yet if a white person posts similar messages he will get arrested for promoting hate speech and racism, so what happened to censorship being wrong? At least in China they just censor the whole sh*t, and don't lie about it about as "we are a democracy which believe in the people's liberty and freedom of speech.".

  24. AV referendum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The UK electorate recently had an opportunity to change the electoral system to the "Alternative Vote", while would at least have decreased the disparity between the percentage of the vote and the number of MPs. In the referendum on the subject, 67.9% voted "no". So however twisted the current system is, I think they only have themselves to blame...

    1. Re:AV referendum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Plurality is consistently bad. AV is somewhat less bad until it blows up spectacularly. Which is better is a matter of debate, but I'm not surprised that the voters would adopt a "better the devil we know" position. It's also rather telling that the Cons-Lib coalition neither went straight to MMP or STV nor ran a New Zealand-style two-stage referendum.

    2. Re:AV referendum by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 1

      The UK electorate recently had an opportunity to change the electoral system to the "Alternative Vote", while would at least have decreased the disparity between the percentage of the vote and the number of MPs. In the referendum on the subject, 67.9% voted "no". So however twisted the current system is, I think they only have themselves to blame...

      You're preaching to the converted here, I'm in the minority who was in favor of that change. In fact I don't think it went far enough. I won't be happy until one citizen effectively has one vote. The way it is now rural constituencies for example weigh more than heavily populated areas which is downright unfair and as I pointed out the fact that UKIP got 13 percent of the vote and one MP is simply outrageous. Democracy is about fair representation, not keeping the Tories in power so that they can lock the British people in behind a national firewall, record and warehouse every word they say or write, watch their every move with CCTV cameras and shove laws like this down their gullet that is effectively implementable for those burdened with following it. Oh, and if David Cameron thinks he's going to keep teenage boys from finding titty pictures on the internet he's in for a surprise.

  25. Gee, 12-13 year olds worried about sex somehow? by swb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Doesn't sound like a porn plague, it sounds like puberty.

    12-13 year olds going through puberty, their hormones turned up to 11, obsessed with sex in some manner or other? Unsure of feelings they have about sex, worried they think about it too much (or not enough), all the anxieties of youth and social/sexual roles?

    This is somehow new and driven by online porn?

    When I was that age we were obsessed with porn, too. Everybody knew whose dad had a skin mag, some had their own secret stash. My friend and I on our way to junior high in 1978 found 3 porno mags in the street. Two were issues of Hustler and one was called "Double Cunt Fucker", a hardcore mag that had penetration, a 3-way and jiz shots. Probably average for what's online.

    The problem with porn is that it's only appealing because society can't get a grip on sexuality.

    1. Re:Gee, 12-13 year olds worried about sex somehow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      > and one was called "Double Cunt Fucker"

      Bizarre but that was actually David Cameron's nickname at Eton

    2. Re:Gee, 12-13 year olds worried about sex somehow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Weasel words. These aren't generalized sexual anxieties, these are specific sexual anxieties.

      Reading one of your Dad's porno mags in the woods with your mates isn't "obsessed with porn". Staying up until 4am surfing xvideo.com 5 nights a week is "obsessed with porn". This wasn't even a possibility when we were that age.

      And I'm not even sure what your last sentence means.

  26. Understanding? by Fnord666 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't think Cameron understands how this whole "internet" thing works.

    --
    'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
    1. Re:Understanding? by scsirob · · Score: 1

      Surely he has a direct line to Al Gore who invented the whole thing, doesn't he?

      --
      To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
    2. Re:Understanding? by Christian+Smith · · Score: 1

      I don't think Cameron understands how this whole "internet" thing works.

      He's too busy down the pub watching his team, Aston Villa (aka "The Hammers") play, before going home and leaving his child behind.

      The guy is a bona fide moron.

  27. Re:Protect the children - but not from this or tha by esperto · · Score: 1

    I would comment a similar thing.
    I can't understand quite why some people are so worried teenagers may watch porn, or even see a boob on TV (even though every one sucked on one for 1 year), but will quite happily let prime time TV show extreme violence, either real (news) or fake (series or movies).
    If they are so worried that kids watching sex will repeat the acts, why they are not in a even more vicious "crusade" against all and any form violence on TV and internet?
    Up to 50 years ago I could understand people have this kind of attitude, when pretty much sex was synonymous of pregnancy and the parents of the kid (the girl's parents only usually) would bear the cost of it, but for decades we have quite good anti-conceptional methods that (when used properly, of course) can pretty much eliminate the risk of undesired pregnancy and greatly reduce transmission of STD.
    To me, if they want to legislate the content of porn site, it should be incentivizing use of condoms, pills, and other methods (facials are also good for pregnancy prevention hahaha).

  28. I see cumshots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OH MY LORD!

  29. Yet by ihtoit · · Score: 0

    they can't root out paedophiles in the BBC or Westminster.

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  30. Responsibility by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

    How about parents taking some responsibility here.

    There's been porn on the Internet as long as there's been an Internet and I doubt that will ever stop.

    Educate your kids to these risks the same as you would educate them for any other risks and they'll police themselves better than any end site will be able to.

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    1. Re:Responsibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not at issue. Parents will always take responsibility, that's kind of how parenting works. But you are a naive idiot if you think kids that age listen to their parents more than their peers. If you don't have kids that age, shut the fuck up about parenting them.

      The issue here is: how about the people marketing porn take some responsibility here. It doesn't have to be one or the other, it can be both. Can you grasp that? It's really not that complicated.

    2. Re:Responsibility by jstuxx · · Score: 1

      The Internet has been around since the 1960's, there has been porn on the Internet since it became public in the late 80's and late 90's. Was making it public a good idea? Who knows.

  31. Yes. those "porn" sites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fun fact, most of those "kids" likely do not even go to any porn sites and generally find said porn being shared with each other through Facebook.
    Likewise they find it via Reddit, 4chan, Imgur and loads of other not-porn sites.

    So, what you are saying is your precious little internet filter didn't do a fucking thing? Whodda thunk it?
    All that wasted millions, forced on to ISPs, and it didn't do shit.

    So go fuck yourself David Shameron. Let's see you block Facebook and have a future worth living.
    Your party will never get re-elected for the next century, if ever, even with all the old fucks voting for you because they are delusional in thinking cutting government spending will save their precious pensions and health. (the latter part has already been destroyed by the tory fucks. They have turned the English and Wales NHS in to a disaster when it was one of the top-3 rated healthcare systems in the world!)
    After the mess they are going to turn this country in to over the next 5 years, he'll be lucky he doesn't have the country wanting him lynched when he gets rid of human rights and brings back the death penalty. I say do it. Who wouldn't want to see that prick swing along with his rich-kid cronies who have never had to live through a single bit of hardship in their entire snobby life?

    We need to write in to law a clause that prevents anyone from being a leader (in any country!) unless they go through a programme that subjects them to everything so they actually do have experience with it on SOME level.
    Being on welfare. Being homeless. Simulated illness, poverty and everything in between. Simulated war even.
    David Cameron would fail on all. The only thing he is good at is having a silver spoon up his ass.
    We have too many social retards in office that don't have the slightest clue what the lives of most of the country are even remotely like.
    Look at Ed Milliband as well. Holy shit. He is the reason Labour never even got voted in. He was such a social outcast people would rather have the tories destroy the country for 5 years than have him.

    All I know is I am getting out before these rich-kids hellbent with power destroy this country further. I suggest you all do the same.

  32. The government as parental guardian? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So we have such bad parents that now our governments feel the need to intervene to save the kids. How noble, although we all know kids going through that stage
    will find a way to look at porn. Maybe have to go back to the Sears catalog or National Geographic. Playboy I guess still has a paper edition. So let's not worry about our kids getting radicalized by Islamic terrorists, but let's stop them from looking at boobies.

  33. Cameron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is a fascist. He doesn't care his demands to be unreasonable, just like any other fascist on earth, he probably thinks that internet is some kind of advanced TV.

    Besides they still have to prove that porn hurts children, following my own experience it doesn't... until then their claims are baseless and without merit.

  34. Won't some one PLEASE think of the children by Snufu · · Score: 1

    .. and not our lack of leadership regarding issues of poverty, income inequality, education, criminal bankers, revolving door lobbyist appointments, pollution, global warming.

    I thought this type of wedge issue diversion was mostly an American political tactic.

  35. Its not what people thinkl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cameron is demanding US/foreign porn sites spending millions on age verification and personal data protection/storage compliance. If foreign websites do not introduce age verification he will ask ISPs to block them in the UK.

      Again, the Tory govt is insisting porntube/xhamster/redtube etc introduce age checks or they will be blocked in the UK. This also includes websites where porn is present, Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter etc.

    Yes, this is impossible to implement, and yes, they haven't even thought about the basics.

  36. Twenty years behind the times - just like Cameron by dbIII · · Score: 2

    Do you really think giving your credit card information to a pornography website operator

    Whether you like the situation or not you've somehow managed to deny what happened about twenty years ago and led to the widespread use of credit cards on the net that we have today. Ironically the problem to be solved back then was for the pornographers to trust their customers and not the other way around.
    Do you really think giving your credit card information to kids on minimum wage is a good idea? Somehow retail operates that way without a lot of fraud despite plenty of people that could do with the money, yet they don't steal it from you.

  37. More importantly.... by MagickalMyst · · Score: 1

    We should focus on child pornography manufactured by the ruling elite.

    Kiddy porn is the fabric of the web that binds the corrupt establishment together.

    John DeCamp's expose The Franklin Cover-Up is an incredible read on the subject.

    Also, Conspiracy of Silence is a (banned) documentary on the subject.

    --
    Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
  38. Skewed by BitZtream · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A recent Childline poll found nearly 10% of 12-13-year-olds were worried they were addicted to pornography

    Because you told them that because they looked at one image in a magazine that they were addicted. You set them up to answer that way, likely by saying 'Are you addicted to porn' while shaking your head yes at them suggestively.

    A 12-13 year old has no fucking clue what addiction is, even if they were. I'm fairly certain based on its usage here that no one involved in the study or conversation about the study knows what addiction actually is to.

    Infatuation is not addiction morons.

    18% had seen shocking or upsetting images.

    Actually its 100%, but the other 82% were smart enough not to mention the shit they've seen mommy and daddy do. The real world sucks, if they can't cope with 'upsetting images' then porn is the least of your concern and hiding the kid in a card board box for the rest of his/her life so they don't have to survive on their own might be your best bet.

    As a result of our work with industry, more than 90% of UK consumers are offered the choice to easily configure their internet service through family-friendly filters

    And 0% Use it because the parents aren't the ones that are freaked out about their kids looking at porn.

    How sad is your world view when you think see two people do something entirely natural and REQUIRED FOR THE SURVIVAL OF OUR SPECIES and it offends you. And then to top it off, you have to freak out and project your personal issues with seeing boobies on to 12-13 year olds and convince them they are 'addicted' to something. 12-14 year olds are addicted to EVERYTHING THATS TABOO. If you told them it was dirty and sexual to brush their teeth 4 times a day, England would suddenly have the worlds healthiest teeth in the 12-13 year old group.

    This kind of ignorance is spewed from some jack ass who doesn't have a kid (or isn't actually a parent to the kid) and doesn't realize that it will actually make MORE kids look at MORE porn.

    How the fuck do people get old and totally forget what being a kid was like. It blows me away.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    1. Re:Skewed by tompaulco · · Score: 1

      Because you told them that because they looked at one image in a magazine that they were addicted. You set them up to answer that way, likely by saying 'Are you addicted to porn' while shaking your head yes at them suggestively.

      Well, 10% were worried that they were addicted, and the other 90% weren't worried about it all, because they are smart enough to know that puberty is puberty.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    2. Re:Skewed by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 1

      How sad is your world view when you think see two people do something entirely natural and REQUIRED FOR THE SURVIVAL OF OUR SPECIES and it offends you.

      You mean "two girls one cup"?

  39. I got yer age-verification right here, ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... Bubba!

    It's called "parenthood."

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  40. They forgot one by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

    They should also put checks to see if you are narrow minded. That should catch some of the politicians.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  41. Their elites are pissed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They are finding the young boys they molest insufficiently innocent for their liking.

  42. The World is Scary, Film at 11... by clonehappy · · Score: 2

    If this wasn't more blatant political pandering and yet another attempt to censor the Internet by the fucking Brits, I would ask whether or not anyone is smart enough to realize that the world is a scary place. We don't let kids wander around aimlessly in real life, we have designated areas, usually our own homes, the homes of trusted friends and neighbors, schools, etc. where children are allowed to be and operate with minimal controls.

    When we take children to the city, or the store, or anywhere else that Bad Things Can Happen(tm), they are closely supervised and monitored. Now, I realize that that's impossible on the Internet. So, instead of trying to get some kind of verification method, tld, or whatever not-gonna-work flavor of the week they can come up with, why not just have a ".kids" tld or something that only has approved kiddy-friendly bullshit then set up your connections so that's all the kids can get to? All the big sites could set up .kids friendly pages, so there wouldn't be a need for anyone under, say, 12, to go anywhere else. And 13+, they're practically adults anyway and can handle the unfettered internet.

    It would be so much easier to set up a whitelist than any of these half-cocked identity schemes for political brownie points, but again this is all about pandering and censorship, not protecting children, so no real solution will ever be put in place as the regulators don't want their favorite bogeyman to disappear.

    1. Re:The World is Scary, Film at 11... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No everyone agrees about what is kiddy-friendly.

  43. MPs accessing porn? Surely not! by richardkettle4 · · Score: 0

    Good job those MPs don't access porn... oh wait!!! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

  44. Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the Saville controversy and pedophilia seemingly woven into the fabric of the upper class I find it hard to believe.

  45. Re:And yet sites have no trouble putting up paywal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Self-entitlement is self-entitlement

  46. Those who can, Manage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Those who can't micro-manage.

  47. Anglo-Saxon society is too prude by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It always amazed me how prude the Anglo-Saxon society as a whole is, while they also are biggest creators of pornography. This has led to a society who is so afraid to talk about sexuality that growing up children have to find out themselves. This used to be magazines or movies that some of the friends found in the basement, or by sneaking around peaking at woman taking a sunbath, but today in the age of the internet? Well, they peak around at the internet.

    So millions of kids get their sexual education from the internet, and this is not the sexual education you want your children to have: from pornographers.

    In my country the schools start sexual education on a very young age and also show pornographic content and how it is made behind the scenes to learn children that it is all fake and that sexuality is something completely different than what the internet/television shows them. English or Americans visitors are often upset when they hear about this barbaric practice in a befriended western nation, but we on the other hand are upset about the large amount of child mothers in a Western country that has so many abilities to spread knowledge (mandatory schools and mass media).

    Most of the new grown ups don't even care about pornography, because they got this kind of sexual education. They know it is all fake and that reality is something completely different. They have been encouraged to talk to family or to speaks to persons in the youth centers when they have questions about sexuality, when they start dating, ... This has also lead to a knew kind of pornography, more a technical guidance to how to do it properly. Several magazines are oriented towards teenagers, where explicit sexual content is described and shown in pictures, and always with the warning to do it save and only to do it when you and your partner are ready. And to not do it when one of the partners is doubting. It is not perfect, but at least better than the complete ignorance and secrecy that goes around across the pond.

    1. Re:Anglo-Saxon society is too prude by tompaulco · · Score: 1

      In my country the schools start sexual education on a very young age and also show pornographic content and how it is made behind the scenes to learn children that it is all fake

      Pornography in the studio is all (well 99%) fake, but there is plenty of pornography on the internet that is just people filming themselves having sex.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
  48. Cameron should just suck cock instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You know he wants to because only a cocksucker would even think that
    the web could be controlled.

  49. BS statistics by sjbe · · Score: 1

    A recent Childline poll found nearly 10% of 12-13-year-olds were worried they were addicted to pornography and 18% had seen shocking or upsetting images.

    Kids going through puberty find porn interesting. News at 11.

    I'd say the percentage of kids that have seen "shocking or upsetting images" is a good approximation of 100%. The other 82% are merely lying about it. It's impossible to even turn on the evening news without seeing shocking or upsetting images. I welcome the day when I no longer have to hear any more ads for boner pills. Try explaining that one to a 6 year old.

  50. So many comments, and you do not get it, do you? by ruir · · Score: 1

    This is attempting to put another nail on the anonymity of the Internet. The most obvious answer to verifying age (and identity), is coincidentally using a CC that will identify you (and no, back in my country we do not have any anonymous equivalent). Between that, and talking about abolishing encryption, we all know where this is heading. An heavily controlled and censored, sanitised version of Internet, at least on the uk. Soon they will put a CCTV on top of your computer, which you are not allowed to cover. And your mobile camera will not allow you to turn it off, and the bits will not flow if you cover your face.

  51. OMG Think of the Children! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the prudish UK government truly wants to "think of the children" they would outlaw; internet tracking by advertisers, inappropriate ads by advertisers, and government sponsored malware. Otherwise this is just another non-issue being pushed by a corrupt government agency to divert people's attentions from the real issues of illegal government surveillance.

  52. We need a new slogan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Governments need a new catchphrase to create "bread and circuses" for the public. I propose "Think of the Boobies!"

    1. Re:We need a new slogan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "boobs and tuckuses"

  53. Occam's Razor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some of Cameron's friends of pornographers of one sort of another. From soft-porn in "newspapers" to "lad's mags" to soft child porn (e.g. the Daily Mail).

    Some of Cameron's friends are feminists. He himself is a feminist.

    At least compared to the competition he is.

  54. In other news... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

    ... The UK porn industry has relocated to... I went through a list in my head to see if I could come up with a european country that hasn't done batshit crazy things with the internet lately... I'm coming up a blank... they're going to Los Angeles then.

    Welcome to the international porn capital of the world!

    Now open wide.

    --
    I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
    1. Re:In other news... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Why stick to European? This is the internet age. I can live in London, host my site in Russia and take my payment through a grey-market intermediary in India, all done using developers from Bangladesh and registered (for tax purposes) in Gurnsey.

    2. Re:In other news... by Karmashock · · Score: 1

      This has been talked about before... the legal reality is that if they can get their slimy hands around your neck... then you're probably fucked... and not for money.

      A court could very easily rule that your various jurisdictional shenanigans were put in place to evade local laws... which... honestly they are/were... and thus they could just nullify all that, declare you a UK company, and bring out their large collection of judicial dildos to proceed.

      The whole thing you have to keep in mind is de jure and de facto law. What the law says is "de jure" how things are actually going to play out is "de facto".

      All that is going to matter to you in the end is what ACTUALLY happens to you. And that means de facto.

      Now here you might say "but but... the LAAAAAW"... to which the legal system will say:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      here is the problem with being a porn company... you have no political pull. None. No one likes you or will admit to jerking off to you furiously. So politicians will shit all over you because it gets the family values and female vote on your side. And defending you... will be fucking no one.

      All things being equal, the porn people can only rely on the law to defend them and that's a terrible place to be because the legal systems of pretty much every country I've ever looked at are highly susceptible to politics, money, influence. None of them that I've ever seen actually just execute the law.

      Basically what you want to be is adorable, wholesome, attractive, rich, popular, and somehow a victim.

      Now what do the porn people have?

      Adorable? Nope.

      Wholesome? Not even remotely.

      Attractive... I've never seen they try that angle in these cases but maybe that is a mistake on their part. Have the porn stars front for you in the most provocative clothing possible. Couldn't possibly hurt given points 1 and 2.

      Rich? Not really. The porn industry is so competitive and so full of freebies that this is more of a "job" than anything.

      Popular? Only matters if people will admit to jerking off furiously to you and they won't.

      And somehow the victim... anyone that claims to be the victim against children always loses. Even if the kids skinned alive the other people and ate them. Children are always innocent... even when they're not. So the porn people lose again.

      See the problem? Sure... de jure they might be able to play those games but the courts can make that up as they go along especially if the politicians and the jury cooperate with it.

      --
      I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
    3. Re:In other news... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      I counter with another industry: Piracy. Look at the pirate bay. Tracker sites are illegal in almost every country, yet they routinely operate for years on end before the law can finish cutting through the tangle and actually get anything done about them.

      You could even combine them - put your porn up on the Pirate Bay for distribution and collect money through included advertising in the videos or bitcoin donations.

  55. misplaced values by jsepeta · · Score: 1

    If you want to keep kids out of porn sites, that's their parents' responsibility. Cameron is an ass looking to score points with his political base, but this is clearly an unworkable plan.

    --
    Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
  56. Parenting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is like telling drivers they can't drive fast enough in a city that a collision with a kid will hurt them because a kid could step on to the road at any time. If parents were throwing their children on to the street without holding their hand to cross like they do the internet there would be dead kids everywhere.

    Obviously if parents can't be arsed to do due diligence then they don't think the consequence of their kid seeing a porn site is worth the effort. Maybe the government should stop telling parents how to raise their kids.

  57. Parents? by xenotransplant · · Score: 1

    Parents are no longer responsible for the actions of their children? Are these just rogue children?

  58. Operation Ore all over again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With say the UK wanting credit card information just to be able to view porn sites, I picture a repeat of Operation Ore.

    Operation Ore was a US-UK joint task force operation in which they shut down a child pornography website.

    While the Americans actually took the time and effort to investigate each American user one by one, the British didn't, because they thought that was too much of a hassle.

    Instead, they outed thousands of people as child molesters and people who possed photos and recorded footage of abuse.

    Turns out they'd outed thousands of innocent people (54,000 people iirc) who had their credit card information stolen. Some of them committed suicide as a result. (After all, "Where there's smoke, there's fire.")

    So, yeah, I wouldn't trust any UK porn operators with my credit card information to save my life.

  59. Kids theese days by ACE209 · · Score: 1

    Only 10% of pubescent kids addicted to porn? Whats wrong with the rest?

    --
    "we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
  60. A Better Solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let's just ban children from the Internet.

  61. Larry by elgatozorbas · · Score: 2

    30 years ago, the game Larry, about a guy's romantic endeavours, used a list of questions only adults were supposed to be able to answer. The result of the test determined the X-ratedness of the game. Something like that might work here too. It would not be perfect, though, and horny adults may not be in the mood for answering questions like "what president succeeded Nixon?" etc.

  62. I call B.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really? 10% of all 13 years are addicted to porn?

    Where are the parents?

  63. Trying to save children from being human? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What 12 year old is "harmed" by porn? We let 5 year olds watch bloody gore on tv shows and movies.

  64. Something to keep in mind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is brought to you by the people who feel that bringing charges against pedophiles in their own organization would jeopardize the public well being.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/07/a-big-political-cover-up-of-1980s-pedophile-ring-in-u-k-parliament/

  65. what about violence promoting news sites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like CNN, BBC etc. No warning whatsoever, shocking videos & news all the time. Bombings, people killings, embedded journalists actually reporting on live shootings etc. Any plans to stop minors' access to those? I would argue these are far more detrimental than anything legal in the sexual realm (notice the *legal* part in there). For heaven's sake, sex is the pre-requisite to our existence, while shooting and killing is not. It is really hard to see how sexual content can actually harm anybody, except those moralists and fundamentalists among use. Who, however, usually develop their stern views as adults and not because they were exposed to said material in their childhood, rather because of a misguided enthusiasm in telling others what to do and not to do.

  66. Today I'm seeing results about Gehrig's by tepples · · Score: 0

    I did a search for "ALS" one time, the top link wasn't a website about Lou Gehrig's Disease.

    When, on what search engine, and from what country? I did a search today on Google from the United States, and the top 10 results were about Gehrig's: ALS Association (3 results), the US National Institutes of Health, Wikipedia, Mayo Clinic, Discover magazine, The Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, ALS Therapy Development Foundation, and the ALS Association Greater New York. News results included ESPN and FOX News, both about Gehrig's. Seven of eight "Searches related to als" were also related to Gehrig's, with the exception being Al's Auto.

    1. Re:Today I'm seeing results about Gehrig's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Search history also effects their results - especially with Google though I understand Microsoft does the same thing at Bing.

      KGIII - stupid 50 post count limit

  67. Is porn linked to teen pregnancy? by tepples · · Score: 1

    I imagine that it's to give parents and licensed teachers the exclusive right to educate children about sex, under the assumption that they'll be more responsible at preventing STDs and pregnancy among teens who cannot yet afford to raise an infant than some for-profit company exploiting the public's prurient interest.

  68. Authorization without an actual charge by tepples · · Score: 1

    Let's assume credit card, that means that free sites will die or be forced overseas.

    Or they'll put a ten-pound authorization on the card and release it after a week.

  69. Auth it by tepples · · Score: 1

    Even if that number passes the checksum, will it pass placing a ten-pound authorization on the card?

  70. Chargeback by tepples · · Score: 1

    [Credit card payment is] a form of age verification that can be charged.

    And a customer on the site's free tier can have his bank apply a chargeback against a site that fails to uphold its written promise to release the authorization after a few days. Chargebacks are very expensive to process, and too many could cost a site its merchant account.

    1. Re:Chargeback by khallow · · Score: 1

      What site? What merchant account? What written promise? One doesn't need any of those to profitably exploit credit card numbers say by creating fake websites and harvesting numbers.

    2. Re:Chargeback by tepples · · Score: 1

      Then this requires some way to prove that the owner of a website is also the owner of a valid merchant account. This is a service that the credit card companies can in theory offer.

    3. Re:Chargeback by khallow · · Score: 1

      Then this requires some way to prove that the owner of a website is also the owner of a valid merchant account. This is a service that the credit card companies can in theory offer.

      And a service that a fraudster can fake.

    4. Re:Chargeback by tepples · · Score: 1

      How is a fraudster going to fake https://usa.visa.com?

    5. Re:Chargeback by khallow · · Score: 1

      How many customers will look?

  71. Does your bank have your DOB on file? by tepples · · Score: 1

    Aren't banks required to store each account holder's date of birth and taxpayer identification number for tax purposes? The payment processor could start returning an age class field in the authorization result, grouped into bins for 13-17, 18-20, 21-64, and 65+.

    1. Re:Does your bank have your DOB on file? by Cramer · · Score: 1

      What f'ing "tax purposes"??? You are SPENDING money, not making it. And it's not the bank's job to collect taxes on your transactions. (interest they pay you, sure.)

    2. Re: Does your bank have your DOB on file? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends on local legal requirements. Australian banks don't track age

  72. Cameron by koan · · Score: 1

    * All Britons' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept.

    * Any firms within reach of the UK government must be banned from producing secure software.

    * All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked.

    * Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software.

    * Virtually all academic security work in the UK must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services.

    * All packets in and out of the country, and within the country, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped.

    * Existing walled gardens (like IOs and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software.

    * Anyone visiting the country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave.

    * Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons.

    * Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright.
    https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  73. STV vs. approval by tepples · · Score: 1

    What advantage does single transferable vote have over approval voting, which is easier to count?

    1. Re:STV vs. approval by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      STV produces a more representative government, if you group regions together so that votes are for a number of MPs rather than just one.

      https://youtu.be/l8XOZJkozfI

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  74. Life Peerages Act 1958 and Peerage Act 1963 by tepples · · Score: 1

    I mean, when members of the House of Lords make selfies in womens underwear

    Women have held peerages in the House of Lords for over half a century. So I don't see the problem unless there is some other reason making it improper for members of the House of Lords to model underwear.

  75. Sex prior to independence by tepples · · Score: 1

    How sad is your world view when you think see two people do something entirely natural and REQUIRED FOR THE SURVIVAL OF OUR SPECIES and it offends you.

    Sex prior to the age when a mother can support herself and her child is not required. Are children exposed to porn more sexually active?

    1. Re:Sex prior to independence by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Such sex is not required, but it's sure going to happen, and it's happened as far back as we know. IIRC, abstinence-based sex education has worse teen pregnancy rates than none at all.

      As far as exposure to porn and sexual activity goes, that's an empirical question, and I don't remember seeing much about it, particularly with children. I see no validity in attempting an a priori answer.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  76. Promisses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is easy to keep promise for the elections. "I will do anything in my power to close/stop/shutdown ..." So he needs do expel some hot gas about.

  77. I support this motion by Snufu · · Score: 1

    to remove British porn from the internet.

    Wait... that's not what they are proposing?

  78. Britian never had LEGAL hardcore porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unlike the rest of the Western World, Island Britain kept VANILLA hardcore porn strictly ILLEGAL- and had an active prosecution regime up until the floodgates burst with the Internet. It is the goal of the FABIAN masters of the UK (who control each of the main political parties) to return to this situation as soon as possible. As conservative Muslims rise in influence in Britain, they are recruited to the puritan cause- but they are puppets, NOT leaders as many racist anti-Muslim voices claim.

    Britain leads the world in the regulatory war on Internet freedoms. Regimes punishing people for various forms of free expression on the Internet use BRITISH LEGISLATION as their legal excuse. While Britain punishes relatively few people for internet 'crimes', Britain has crafted a raft of new laws (and re-use of old ones) to make most activities on the web illegal in theory. Britain is the home of selective prosecution, where highly abusively laws are mostly used to take out high profile targets or persecute unloved minorities.

    Following Britain's "mean speech online is illegal" stance, Spain, with its new British style FABIAN government, has just successfully prosecuted a boy for calling his local police-force "lazy". A Brit in the Middle East was successfully prosecuted using laws copied from Britain for publishing a photo of a local Muslim strongman parking illegally in a disability spot.

    However, GCHQ ( VASTLY more effective planetary spy machine than the NSA) is against Internet censorship and restrictions, seeing the free form communication of the Internet as the greatest Intelligence Asset imaginable. It is GCHQ's goal to gather 'DIRT' on every living Human "just in case", and the Internet is a spy-master's dream.

    Cameron is just another brain-dead Tony Blair puppet. He is 100% concerned with meeting the needs of the 'chattering classes' that the Daily Mail and BBC troll on a regular basis. His puppet masters have greater concern- especially their expectation of a war with Iran on behalf of Israel and Saudi Arabia when the next US president is elected. Their concern with the Internet is with eliminating anti-war voices and movements to clear the path the the US War Machine to be fully unleashed on the Earth.

    1. Re:Britian never had LEGAL hardcore porn by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Dirty books please...

      Read to me now from Shakespeare's newest work...'Gay boys in bondage'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  79. Porn Addiction ???? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Porn Addiction??? Look it up, No such thing!
    I agree that 12 YRO's should not be seeing questionable materials.
    But......
    This is all about human sexuallity and the free expression of this. Something the religious use to control us. (Read "The God Virus")
    We as a society need to realize that humans are sexual beings, This is why we are here.
    12 year old boys are starting to notice girls and are curious about sex.
    Maybe we need to be a little more open about sex and sexuality?
    Teach this to our children? Then "PORN" becomes much less of a problem.
    Because, the more you try to keep it away from people, the more they will seek it out!

  80. Wanker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How a somebody so opposed to pornography as this guy can be such a wanker

    One of the universe mysteries for sure

  81. Put the onus where is belongs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about a fine for parents that don't prevent their children from accessing pornographic websites?

  82. Space to aggregate popular votes by tepples · · Score: 1

    Aggregating ballots for n candidates across precincts within a region requires O(n) space in plurality, approval, Borda, or other subsets of range voting. It requires O(n^2) space in Condorcet because Condorcet decomposes to a set of pairwise races. But in STV, it requires O(n!) space, as you have to track all possible orderings when transferring votes.

  83. Shrek is life by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shrek is life.

    I rest my case.

  84. DVD Comparison by naris · · Score: 1

    whilst DVDs containing explicit pornographic content are subject to age controls for purchase in licensed sex shops

    How many of those DVDs are subject to age controls to play them, that would be a more appropriate comparison!

  85. Money Laundering Regulations 2007 by tepples · · Score: 1

    interest they pay you, sure.

    Holding a savings account is one reason why the bank has your tax info. The other reason is "know your customer" regulations against money laundering, such as Great Britain's Money Laundering Regulations 2007.

  86. Obligatory Robert A. Heinlein quote by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everybody lies about sex.

  87. "risks and dangers that young people face online" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Risks and dangers, described in what peer-reviewed studies? Why does it seem that nobody's ever heard of evidence-based policy making?

  88. Two kinds of porn sites by radarskiy · · Score: 1

    There are two kinds of porn sites. One kind is porn sites run as law-abiding legitimate businesses. They are already incentivized to keep kids out because kids don't make any money.

    The other kind is fronts for some kind of fraud, whether it be money laundering or direct theft or something else. They don't care about this threat since they are already breaking more stringent laws.

  89. Know Your Customer in New Zealand by tepples · · Score: 1

    Even if Australia hasn't implemented Know Your Customer yet, its neighbor New Zealand has.

  90. Perfect is enemy of the good by tepples · · Score: 1

    It's still a lot more reliable than asking "are you 18?". Sometimes it's wise to accept incremental improvements to avoid the Nirvana fallacy.

    1. Re:Perfect is enemy of the good by khallow · · Score: 1

      It's still a lot more reliable than asking "are you 18?".

      To who? Legitimate businesses can get a lot more failures to conduct business, since customers would not always have the card ID ready at hand. While on the other hand, anyone can click "Yes". And as I noted earlier, just asking the question above does not create a bunch of opportunity for credit card fraud.

  91. "Have ID ready" by tepples · · Score: 1

    Legitimate businesses can get a lot more failures to conduct business, since customers would not always have the card ID ready at hand.

    That can be handled with an awareness campaign analogous to the We Card program, building an expectation among citizens that if you're going to subscribe to porn, you're going to need to have handy a means of age verification.

    just asking the question above does not create a bunch of opportunity for credit card fraud.

    But it does create a bunch of opportunity for the government to shut down your business on grounds of not taking legally sufficient precautions against underage access. It's a balancing act of liability for credit card fraud vs. liability for fines for noncompliance.

  92. I'm surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm surprised that governments don't just legislate to put all of these sites in the .xxx domain and then blocking would be very easy.

  93. Community Standards by MakersDirector · · Score: 0

    Sounds like someone needs a dose of reality.