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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.”
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.
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
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?
> 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?
"Block underage access or get a facial", Cameron ejaculates on porn industry.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
Once you turn our internet into something resembling China's, maybe will people finally realise what a moron you are and vote you out.
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.
I don't think Cameron understands how this whole "internet" thing works.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
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).
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
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
.. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
... Bubba!
It's called "parenthood."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
They should also put checks to see if you are narrow minded. That should catch some of the politicians.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
Parents are no longer responsible for the actions of their children? Are these just rogue children?
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."
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.
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.
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.
Even if that number passes the checksum, will it pass placing a ten-pound authorization on the card?
[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.
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+.
* 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."
What advantage does single transferable vote have over approval voting, which is easier to count?
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.
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?
to remove British porn from the internet.
Wait... that's not what they are proposing?
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.
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!
> 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...
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.
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'
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.
Even if Australia hasn't implemented Know Your Customer yet, its neighbor New Zealand has.
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.
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.