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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.
British kids have had Page 3 girls forever. Why weren't people blaming that for the collapse of society?
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.
We get it. The new rulers of /. are Republicans and hate us.
You do realize that Republicans (at least publicly) are generally the ones that are the most against porn right?
I swear I wish I could found the "Hands off" party with the simple goal of not messing with people.
Guns? It's a constitutional right - don't mess with them.
Porn? Same. Leave it alone.
Video games? It's not turning kids into murderers. Leave them alone too.
Weed? Doesn't harm anyone else. Legalize it.
Prostitution? As long as its between consenting adults (and if it's not its rape, not prostitution anyways), then legalize it too.
Each party is pandering to their respective bases trying to ban whatever that group doesn't like - I just want politicians to leave things alone for once.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I believe what the AC is talking about is the propaganda photos where they forget to remove the metadata from the picture where it has coordinates from the phone's GPS, thereby giving the Air Force a target for a bomb. This has happened a couple of times, and it is pretty funny when ISIS's main recruiting tactic is being used to target them for some energetic gifts.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Perhaps if that is your feeling, you should call a constitutional convention to have the constitution amended to correct the error of our forefathers. Either that or shut the fuck up and stop trying to take other's rights away from them because you don't agree with them.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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
So ISIS just need to upload a photo with the appropriate GPS co-ordinates inserted, and they can get the British government to bomb the opposition for them?
Sounds like a great money-saver for them.
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.
When the text of the amendment reads as such:
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
it really makes you wonder when people then try to claim it is perfectly acceptable to infringe on the rights of gun owners. How would you feel if I was campegning to take away the right of everyone to speak out against the federal government? After all, many countries today feel it is perfectly acceptable to take this right from their people, so it must be the one and only path to true enlightenment.
Feel free to call the constitutional convention, just don't be surprised when your amendments fail.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/179...
Less than half of Americans feel the laws need to be stricter. Last I checked, it requires a 2/3 majority to amend the constitution.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
You have to understand my reasoning - I'm against laws against things because of potential domino effects.
For example, a lot of people "justify" outlawing drugs or prostitution because if it's legal it will "cause other crimes" just by their very nature.
My viewpoint is always that only things that are already bad - in and of themselves - should be illegal. Rape? Already bad. Illegal. Murder? Same. Theft? Yep, that's bad, it should be illegal.
HOWEVER, simply owning a gun does not harm anyone. Even if you completely set the constitutional angle aside, guns are only "bad" to people worrying about ancillary crimes that they might "cause". That's a line of reasoning I will never accept, because it leads to a nanny state.
If you seek to prevent murder, then outlaw murder, not guns. If you seek to prevent rape, then outlaw rape, not prostitution. If you seek to outlaw theft, then outlaw theft, don't impose curfews.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I don't get your point. For one, thanks to people who fought for our rights, we're allowed to possess weapons that are a lot more formidable than a revolver. The second point is that the only thing that keeps us from having any of those weapons would be a law-- and that kind of proves the point, that allowing citizens those weapons keeps the government honest, while banning them protects tyranny. FWIW, only the nukes are actually illegal-- and frankly, such weapons are mere tools of destruction and not useful for the purpose.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The right to have a car isn't in the constitution either.
No, it's not. Probably because cars, or even the internal combustion engine, wouldn't be invented for another 100+ years. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that citizens do have the freedom of movement.
file:
At a guess : Murdoch.
Porn produced by small producers and sold independently over the internet is media he doesn't control. That both gives money to people other than Murdoch, and draws eyes away from his media networks.
He doesn't like that. So he has his cronies in government oppose it.
And here I thought the UK had had the good sense of shipping all the Puritans to the New World.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.