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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?
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.