Slashdot Mirror
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.”
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.