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.”

Comments

How?

[Todd Knarr]

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.

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:How?

[MrL0G1C]

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.

Re:How?

[Joce640k]

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.

Re:How?

[dcollins117]

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.

Re:How?

[mister_playboy]

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

Re:How?

[Chris Mattern]

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.

Parenting

[toxygeneb]

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?

Re:Parenting

[Xest]

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.

Just try it

[Gaygirlie]

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.

No, no, no

[Cafe Alpha]

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.