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The UK's War On Porn: Turning ISPs Into Parents
New submitter SMABSA writes: With British Prime Minister David Cameron announcing plans for porn users to be required to register their bank account/debit card as a means of age verification, Spiked-Online writer Stephen Beard explores the privacy implications, technical feasibility and motivations of such a plan. Here's an excerpt that gives a feel for Beard's take: Not only are the plans to regulate porn sites intrusive, they are also technically infeasible (as are many bright ideas that come from central government). In the amount of time, for example, it would take to identify a site not complying with the new rules, that site could be mirrored multiple times. Such ineffectiveness has been evident in the government’s futile attempts to censor torrent tracker Pirate Bay.
The posturing about protecting children is irksome, too. To pretend that children in decades past haven’t been sneaking a look at mucky images, albeit in magazines and newspapers, is naive at best.
The government knows damn well that ideas like this are unenforceable. It's not about banning porn anymore than it's about protecting children (as if the government gives a shit about your kids safety). It's about revenue. You can't keep kids from seeing porn - but you can fine the hell out of anyone you catch not following the law. The harder it is to follow the law, the better! If nobody can actually be compliant, then everyone pays a fine.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
The whole point of that farce is to always have a reason to charge or at least threaten to charge any citizen of something. The "think of the children" aspect of it is just an easy mean to get it through the legislative system.
British kids have had Page 3 girls forever. Why weren't people blaming that for the collapse of society?
As a Brit it never fails to amaze me how stupid our Government has become, now this crap about needing a CC or Debit card to provide proof of age, Like there isn't a teen with an IQ of 60 or over that will work out that dads CC works just fine while he sleeps, takes a bath or whatever. Seriously this is as stupid as looking for terrorists on social media. Idiots, the lot of them.
http://chimpbox.us
We get it. The new rulers of /. are Republicans and hate us. This sarcastic statement:
> that come from central government
Is so hateful. So hateful. Central planning is the only way to solve environmental problems. The only way. By being anti-central government, you represent the worst of the Republicans. The worst. You hate humanity and want us to suffer. To suffer.
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU PORNO COWS!!
VPN
It's definitely about money, not outcome -- but it's not the fines they're after. That's chump change to government. It's the adminstration costs, which will not only dwarf the revenue from fines, but set a precedent for the next round of government expansions.
I thought the UK had left the Mary Whitehouse times behind? Apparently the UK government needs another bogeyman to distract people from the issues it's not like they haven't forced UK ISPs to have a family friendly filter turned ON by default. Guessing that didn't work the way they wanted to but hey ... politicians wont admit failure.
A daily email of all the latest porn on rapidly changing and ip addresses, subscribe now!
The war on drugs was safe as it targets a subset on society the value drugs (as business) or drugs as lifestyle, over societal values.
The war on people "yankin' it like a monkey in a tree" is equally safe.
And the question remains, wouldn't people be better off drug free and not wanking themselves into oblivion?
Is this targetteding specifically at UK porn sites?
As we all know, porn is simply files: typically images and video.
There are perhaps a million websites, imageboards, newsgroups, ftps, IRC networks and countless other services that allow distribution of files (a large portion of which is porn).
Why would these dumbfucks go after a handful of UK porn sites, when the vast majority of the internet at large allows and celebrates files of a pornographic nature?
Are they trying to kill off the UK porn industry?
Has it ever been directly proven that porn *harms* children in some manner?
When I was a young kid I came across porn accidentally once, and I found it disgusting. It just didn't make any sense to me because I was too young.
By the time I was a teenager it certainly started to make sense, and like any teenage boy I wanted to acquire more of it.
I enjoyed porn! So do 99% of teenagers. Yet you don't see most people growing up to be deranged sexual predators or something.
What's the real harm in porn? PROVEN harm, not "oh durrr not for young eyes"?
The government knows damn well that ideas like this are unenforceable. It's not about banning porn anymore than it's about protecting children (as if the government gives a shit about your kids safety). It's about revenue.
No, it's about control.
This gives them the camel's nose into the tent on controlling content. Chipping away at some basic rightalways starts with going after some unpopular behavior - pornography, child molestation, incest, etc. - and setting a precedent that the right isn't absolute. Once this is done, and the right converted to a privilege, there is the matter of setting the line defining what behavior is still allowed - a subset that steadily shrinks. Anyone who calls them on it, of course, can be labelled a supporter of pornography, child molestation, incest, etc., helping them get the initial precedent set.
Meanwhile, when the "protective measures" don't work, the government will use the failure as an excuse to impose progressively more, and more draconian, interventions. So they both increase the amount of behavior they claim to "legitimately" prohibit and the tools they claim to "legitimately" use to enforce the prohibitions.
Of course it isn't the pornographers, child molesters, and such that they're after. Its their political opposition. (Money too, of course, and anyone doing anything that interferes with their wishes.)
The harder it is to follow the law, the better! If nobody can actually be compliant, then everyone pays a fine.
More importantly: When nobody can follow the law they can bust anybody at their whim. The rule of law is replaced by the rule of the police - the definition of a "police state".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
As others have noted, just about anything can be pushed through wrapped in a cloak of concern for kids. Is pornography too prevalent? Probably. Is it appropriate to circumvent basic freedoms and liberties to address what is, truly, a minor concern? No.
But for those losing their minds: Conservative thought is usually defensive, by definition. Further, it usually supports whatever is perceived as protection of property or home. The inexorable result of this focus is a moral police state based on knee-jerk reactions against any kind of positivity toward anything involving things running contrary to their tastes. The weird part is the focus on protecting children from sex (and the associated media), which is a part of a normal, healthy adult life, but not protecting them from images of violence, which is not a healthy part of life at any stage.
A very simple thing would be assign ratings to domains, pages, and posts. Build filtering based on these into browsers, and hold parents responsible for what they do/don't set up. I for one don't mind paying for public education of kids' programs or the like whether I have kids or not. However, let those who made the choice to have children be responsible for policing their kid's access to things.
I have retroshare. I have porn. I will share.
Why is it such a big deal in these countries? Is underage pornography that widespread?
I get the feeling that the governments of those countries seem to see porn = child porn...or something like that. Like they are trying to turn it into a taboo thing even though every red blooded male with an internet connection has viewed porn (if not daily, probably weekly)....I just don't get it..??
The majority of home computer users want the computer to work well without requiring them to learn much about it. They also love it when tech support can just remotely fix their problem without them having to do anything.
They are more than happy to give up a level of control (and privacy) that isn't valuable to them in order to get this higher level of ease of use.
And there are a lot more of them than there are of you. And they have their wallets out.
You are outvoted.
The whole point is that it shouldn't be a constitutional right to have guns.
So you're in favor of rape, armed robbery, assault, battery, murder, genocide, and war?
Not to mention totalitarianism (both despotism and other forms), which is why it IS a constitutional right.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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It is always taken as true that children need to be 'protected.' There is an assumption that seeing pornography is destructive - and if you ask many, supremely destructive, to the point that it is compared to cocaine. No-one dares even raise the possibility that this assumption is false for fear of bring branded a pedophile-enabler.
Yet I've never actually seem some good evidence to support this assumption - no dependable studies that link moderate levels of porn exposure or viewing by minors (either 18, or actual children) to any form of psychological harm. You can find plenty of anecdotes, yes, but those are worthless.
The young adults of today grew up with the internet. They had ready access to porn - they could see it any time they wanted, and most will have seen a bit unintentionally. If pornography was one-tenth as destructive as some people claim then the public health implications would be clear right now, possibly in the form of daily porn-fueled orgies in the street.
if you want some amusing reading, try the website for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. They used to be known as Morality in Media, but they rebranded a while ago because their previous name was a laughing stock and this new name sounds more respectable and politically-neutral. The name change is only superficial - the agenda and arguments haven't changed a bit, and they still spew a stream of hyperbole and scare tactics. Their current approach is to argue that viewing pornography fuels sex trafficking and violence against children. Somehow. They illustrate very nicely arguments of the modern anti-pornography movement.
No one has ever proven that porn is a problem for children
But, but its for the children. You can't possibly object because it's for the children. I mean why do you hate children so much? Oh you must be one of THOSE people..
Dying. See? It's 6ai8s market share or a public club,
In addition to raising issues of privacy and government overreach, shouldn't we be concerned that private, for-profit, and criminal banks have become de facto government agencies for age verification?
It is just laughable that porn industry seems to think it has right to distribute material unsuitable for children and teens to everybody on internet.
This is move to the right direction. Credit card checks etc. don't stop every teen but certainly protects most children who still has access to internet.
There have been some serious problems with members of Parliment and other high officials involved in paedophilia. Rather than engage in some introspection as to the linkage between power, leadership and sexual deviancy*, the British have gone on a campagin of, "Hur, dur. Porn made me diddle children."
*To their credit, at least the British collected some statistics. But both in the USA and UK, the investigations started out by looking at the Catholic Church (politically an outsider in both countries) and its institutions. Anecdotally, we have just as many problems with Protestant (particularly Evangelical) leaders. But in some cases, we couldn't even get the local police force to investigate and the victims had to go shopping for a nearby jurisdiction to take the case.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's the real problem. Politicians and their super-retarded bullshit is just one of the prime exemplars of that fact. We pollute the fuck out of the only planet we have to live on, to the point where it's probably going to end up looking like Venus or Mars; we, as a race of supposedly sentient beings, treat each other like absolute shit, waging war for the stupidest of reasons; 99.99% of everyone on the planet can't see past the needs of their stomachs and genitals, or a week down the road for that matter; and, finally, the Internet, which was (past tense) the one thing that had (again, past tense) the potential to educate everyone, connect everyone, and improve the quality of life for everyone, everywhere, is used for the most base, stupid, and greedy purposes. If there are actual alien civilizations out there who have solved the riddle of interstellar (or intergalactic, for that matter) travel, and if indeed they've come here and observed us, it's no wonder why they won't contact us openly: we've got to look like a bunch of dumb animals to them, barely above the level of the rest of the animals on this planet. I'm disappointed and disgusted by my own species; if I had the ability to overcome my own sense of self-preservation, I'd remove myself from the entire equation, and go sequester my own carbon in the ground instead. Maybe the whacko environmentalists are right: The best thing we can do for the Earth is to die.
When will people learn that the elites see you as mere 'tax slaves' ?
The political class tell you that you must do with less while they fly to the Davos circlejerk in ten thousand private jets.
The Government is the problem, and globally is greatest statistical hazard to your health (last century various flavors of Collectivists killed 100 million and oppressed hundreds of millions more; and with the new Energy Poverty agendas it looks like they might kill a Billion poor this century).
The Government is not your friend. It is a necessary evil, but it must be on a leash. And Government should be a small as required, and no bigger.
In the Internet Age citizens can (and do) organize themselves to solve many problems through voluntary charity. You don't need a bloated bureaucracy in the modern age - and increasing Sttate power necessarily decreases Individual Liberty.
There is no substitute for Liberty !
First, it's not because it's a right that it should be in the constitution. Second, it's not because some people wrote a text in the 18th century that its content is perfect and should not be modified.
just a new control mechanism for the capitalistic class.
When the voters repeatedly demand that the government protect them from the consequences of their own decisions, that's what the government will do. Insist that the government protect you from 'hate speech' or 'racism' or 'sexism' or anything that makes you sad, the government will then ask for tools to do so. If you give them these tools, you can hardly be surprised when they then use these tools to follow some other majority-agenda that you might not be comfortable with.
And governments have never been notoriously good at giving up power, once they have it.
-Styopa
I dislike censorship and I dislike that porn websites (especially those catering to women) are being targeting and forced off-line. So I asked around and it turns out there is a group called Blacklash which is providing legal support for porn websites and ISPs in an effort to push back the government's censorship laws.
If you want to help Internet free speech (and keep porn alive in the UK) then please consider donating: http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/donating/
Fixed line ISPs already know who the bill payer is and to where they deliver the service.
This nonsense is intended to remove anonymity from mobile Internet users. In the UK it is still possible to buy a prepay smartphone or data dongle without giving any identity information at the point of sale. Tying bank details or other identity information to an access device removes this degree of freedom, so that THEY (tm) know who you are.
And here I thought the UK had had the good sense of shipping all the Puritans to the New World.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
I see nothing that could possibly go wrong with this brilliant plan.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
If it passes, I will create a porn site just to collect debit/credit cards and bank account info. Guess what I could do with all that info.
porn is only a start because it is relatively easy to justify in light of the public outcry once someone is publicly identified as a porn consumer. the real target of course is free speech and the governments of this world only want to be sure they have the infrastructure in place once the proverbial shit hits the fan. since the Chinese approach of creating a Great Firewall wouldn't fly in most western countries they resort to otherwise thought to be legitimate ways and the already well trained sheep follow maeh maeh.
On a side note, of course, humanity in 2015 is no less hypocritical than it was 2000 years ago. It thrives on sex (literally, where else did the 7+ bn humans come from that have come to live on this planet on top of the 1 bn that was here at the beginning of the last century?), of which porn is the entertainment variant, but denies doing so in the public eye.
Ok. Guilty of Hitler absurdium. That said, Cameron is an authoritarian racist prick. Xenophobic and GCHQ pretty much sums him up.
I wonder how would the British politicians react if their would suddenly receive lots and lots of telephone calls from a little boy asking: "Are you my mommy?"
register their bank account/debit card
Because no child can copy (or photograph) the text written on a credit card.
Alas, demanding children be given more protection, while simultaneously running a government that denies such protection to known sexual assault victims, is a minor plank in the Tory platform:
Whole article
Sounds like one big epic fail for people to be hacked. Thanks UK! and your kids are still watching YOUR porn!
This is what happens aftr the government gets the guns out of your hands. They begin to conrol EVERYTHING, and that is not freedom.
Are the exclusive privilege of the House of Lords.
To let the peasantry access it as easily as we do the cocaine on a prostitute's titties is to demean the entire industry; to throw steak at a gang of wild pigs who know nothing better than to defecate all over themselves so everything will be as shitty as they.
Leave the whores to those whoa re in charge. We'll know what to do.
They just want to build universal censorship infrastructure, have someone else pay for it, and suppress any opposition/critique by presenting a strawman purpose that is impossible to disagree with. Think of the children!
Ahem,... Dare one raise one's voice in disagreement here? I think you are getting carried away by conspiracy theoretical silliness. There is no need to invoke fantasies, when reality will do.
First of all, the government doesn't have the power to do as they please - we have seen this time and again - but you seem to think that they can 'just go out and shut down this and that'. If it was that easy, why haven't they long ago wiped the world clean of political dissent? Why do they allow the press to keep embarrassing them over and over? I think the simple explanation is that they actually believe in the ideals of democratic government, however twisted their ideologies might otherwise be. By comparison, we have seen what a totalitarian government is capable of - Europe and America are both quite far from that.
No, I think this is just the old struggle between the two forms of prudishness: the ones that believe pornography is evil, and the ones that pornography has anything to do with real sex. You see, pornography expresses a very prudish view on sexuality - a kind "Berührungsangst" as the Germans call it. That is why pornography always seems so unrealistic - there are no emotions, the participants are usually waxed to look as asexual as possible etc. (And yes, I have actually watched porn - even the supposedly more rauchy kind; I'm sorry to say, I found it boring).
The Tories in UK know that a large part of their constituency long back to the good old days of Queen Victoria and the Empire, when the Colonies knew their place and decent people were rich and wore ten layers of wool, and only procreated because it was your duty to Queen and Country. So they pander to their voters, as all politicians do, and they have a reasonably well-founded suspicion that a lot of people in UK of all classes are rather worried about the complete lack of control with everything happening on the internet. These people would welcome a lot of the proposed measures to exert control over things, even if they don't really work, simply because it feels like somebody is doing something.
... are the sort of genderless, risk averse little shits who wouldn't have the balls (or female equivalent) to actually look at their parent's porn collection.
This is a multigeneration thing, possibly.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
To pretend that children in decades past haven’t been sneaking a look at mucky images, albeit in magazines and newspapers, is naive at best.
To compare the prevalence of pornography on the internet to what many of us grew up with is naive at best. I can get porn on the internet as fast as I can type "porn" into google.
I didn't even see "porn" until I was in 5th grade and a friend had a stash of Playboy magazines. Playboy back in those days would be considered softcore porn, by the way. Seriously, I looked for Victoria's Secret catalogs and even the Sears catalogs to look at women in underwear back then. These days I can find things so hardcore within seconds on the internet that they disgust even me and I consider myself somewhat of a pervert.
Once I even grabbed a copy of Penthouse off the magazine stand in either a Waldenbooks or a B. Dalton store at the mall and tried to buy it. The cashier took it back to the magazine rack and told me I couldn't buy it. I was probably about 13 at the time. No - you could not just get porn easily if you were 13 way back when. Now you just click, click, click.
I don't agree with this approach to what many consider a problem but to say that earlier generations could get porn as well is just stupid.
If I were a parent I'd definitely want to filter my children's internet access. I'd certainly at least try to monitor it. I see that as a parent's job though, not the government's. And no, you're never going to prevent your kid from seeing anything pornographic, but why let it be so easily accessible?
Back when I was a 13 year old kid seeing a woman in a bra meant something, dammit! wa