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UK Gov't Launches Public Consultation On Porn-Site Age Checks (bbc.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes with news from the BBC that the UK government has launched a publc consultation regarding plans to mandate age checks on pornographic websites. According to the article, The proposals follow a Conservative Party manifesto commitment that "all sites containing pornographic material" must check that users are over 18. Internet providers, charities, academics and others will be asked to contribute to the consultation. ... In the consultation document, the government proposes that the checks should apply to content that would receive — if formally classified — an 18 or R18 rating from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). "We are keen to hear from parents, schools, child protection experts, the pornography industry, internet service providers and online platforms that provide access to pornographic content," the consultation document explained. As part of the plans, the government intends to establish a new regulatory framework to enforce compliance with any rules that are made law.
How about this... Watch your own damn kids and quit trying to child proof my world.
The internet was created by the US defense department as a decentralized, fault tolerant network to ensure that in the event of a nuclear war, American soldiers would have continued access to pornography.
Hey Wipsplash,
Can we finally do away with these stupid British stories that Timothy posts every single night?
Thanks, AC.
You don't think they will try to force American Porn sites to comply? You really believe they will ignore PornHub?
My experience is that those who are interested in looking at porn are old enough to look at it.
Play Command HQ online
The "payment processors" part will work in the UK.
The "force internet service providers to block sites that did not perform effective age checks" will be a ban list of sites? Or a cleared list of UK users accounts that have given ID to the UK provider and get unfiltered internet? A licence to "internet" in the UK.
VPN services will see a lot more interest if providers start to ban "the internet" until classified accessible in the UK.
When getting a VPN service ensure it has support to not leak your normal IP when it fails. Some routers and flashed routers have support for that if the network goes down.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"The internet is everywhere" do these people not understand? How are you going to get a provider of content in another country to assent to this?
Let the computer check fingerprints of user. Based on a global fingerprint database, age is easily deduced. To this end, you'd need:
- fingerprint reading hardware on each end-user device (check, nearly there)
- tamper-proof software module on end-user hardware (check: either TPM or Intel Management Engine or however AMD's version of this abo^H^H^H technology is called)
- a central database of fingerprint signatures to be consulted by some REST service.
When the system hasn't the above capabilities, no porn for you.
Come to think of it, the whole thing has a lot of other advantages: you can fight TARRISM, place precise personalised ADVMENTs and other things.
Yay!
(captcha was "delirium").
Have they finally infiltrated the uk government?
Eh?!
Parents should just deny their kids internet access.
Simplest solution.
Above the age of 12 it really doesn't matter any more.
They are going to find porn.
Does this mean that UK law now applies to the rest of the world?
And if that's the case, does that mean that U.S, Japanese, French, Spanish, Danish, etc law now applies to the UK?
Or is this another attempt of trying to have their cake and eat it too?
Just control you computers at the endpoint if only there were some sort of free solution... Maybe charge the parents with neglect because this is getting ridiculous what's next violent video games, offensive videos...
It's not the Internet's responsibility to watch your children for you!
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Wow let me list the ways age verification is a bad idea:
*Loss of anonymity for visitors. Someone will be collecting data on what actual people are visiting what actual sites. Yes, if you pay for site access with a credit/debit card you're giving up your (pseudo)anonymity, but payment with bitcoin/burner cards is possible, as well as access to free sites. If the verification has to be done through a central authority, who wants to bet the govt. will have access to that list, and it will be a huge target for black hats.
*Porn website companies based outside of the UK don't have to bother complying with this law. I imagine that's the vast majority, and the few that are in the UK will quickly move shop.
*Sites will likely use IP geofencing to only ask UK visitors for verification. A VPN or proxy would get around this; I imagine many Britons already use VPNs to access Netflix USA, or the BBC viewer when on vacation.
*Overbroad 'verification' definition will lead to "click here if you're over 18" clickthroughs which are pointless (unless the pages capture visitors who don't have a cookie set, then they might catch accidental/blind link clicks).
*Attempting to DNS block sites that don't comply with the UK law is doomed to fail. Attempting to get Google et al, and Chillingeffects, to redact mention of these sites, is futile as they will miss other search engines.
*18 is the age of majority in the UK, but too high of a requirement. Why not set it to be the same as the age of consent (16 there)? Watching porn is more akin to having sex than signing a legal contract (insert witty retort here).
*How is compliance judged? The vague "would receive an R-18 classification if it were reviewed" allows the simple excuse: "PROVE that it would receive an R-18 classification" for an accused. One could simply say that in their opinion, it wouldn't have received such a classification, and assuming the material is unclassified, it would be difficult to prove it would unless the rules of classification are concrete and publicly-known (unlike the MPAA's classification rules).
*There is some evidence that access to porn reduces the incidence of rape. This really ought to be the end of the discussion, although it needs more research before it can be considered incontrovertible. I consider it compelling enough that I think govt. shouldn't restrict access to porn. Surely there are some teens under 18 who commit rape, and allowing them to see porn may prevent some of it.
*Theoretically, if porn is 'bad information about sex', then the proper solution in a democracy should be to solve it via the marketplace of ideas: to outshout it with 'good information about sex'. If the elite are too sex-negative to think of any compelling 'good information about sex' maybe they should let the people figure it out. :)
Ya know, Invisible Hand theory
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
In other news the UK government announced that it was banning the effects of global warming from the territories of Her Majesty.
Disagree. A parent can't always hover over their children- heck, a parent shouldn't.
It is your responsibility to parent your child, nobody else's. If your lack of supervision allows your child to subject him or her to danger, then it is you who should pay the price. I'd say a year in jail for you if they see a teat, two if they see a pussy, three if they see a dick, and ten if they see a pussy with a dick in it. The important thing here is it is you who, through your lack of supervision, that allowed them to view such aberrations and it is you who, through your lack of supervision, allowed such aberration to happen.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Look here, contrary to what some Americans believe the world is a revolving globe and /. tries to be a 24/7 experience.
So it's only natural that depending on where the sun is out, Asia and Australia, Europe, the America's, we get localised content, plus, you don't need to read it!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
...that your child will see something on the internet that you don't like, don't allow your child on the internet. It is not society's job to enforce your views, it is society's job to present alternative views.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Poor Cameron, chased up by that troll Nigel Farage and UKIP to chance the greatest economic disaster (Brexit) the nation has faced in 50 years he has found a new priority.
They've already overplayed their hand at a mandatory opt-out porn filter at ISP level and now he wants to go one step up on this stupidity.
Anything will do for him to avoid the voter to see how he's only shrouding real issues by populist rhetoric.
Poor Albion.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Let the Brits, Aussies, and Canadians have their stories. It is useful if for no other reason to see who they are so you can calibrate for the bullshit when they post on US stories, especially political ones. Too few of them make their perspective clear when posting. (As a Canadian ...) That tends to distort things around here. I *love* it when the Euro-nutter Leftists (this goes for you too, Canada) state that "all of the Republicans are loons" or "turd sandwiches." Multiple sitting governors and senators. Fuck. American politics doesn't tend to the extremes that Europe does and most of them think that is a "defect"! Heaven help us and save us from that idiocy! Well, some of them are about to get a meaningful education with this wave of immigrants coming in.
I used to work for a UK porn firm - successive governments have been discussing this for as long as I can remember. The problem is that if you ask for verifiable information, you'll lose so many customers that you'll go out of business.
This is likely to flare up and disappear just as quickly
To put things in context:
1) The UK Government has a TERRIBLE track record in terms of IT projects; the chances of this initiative going beyond blowing a few million on starting up another failed project are slim
2) This is part of a manifesto promise by the Tories. They have to be seen to discuss it. They can then decide it's too difficult and blame "Johnny Foreigner" for the problems.
It's part of the "something must be done!" - we've done 'something' - job done! syndrome. Whether the 'something' done has any effect or not doesn't matter; the box has been ticked.
3) It's in reaction to certain areas of the news media [though to call the Daily Mail and Daily Express newspapers stretches way beyond credulity]. Certain parts of the UK establishment have fixed, knee jerk reactions against anything post 1950.
Before others get too smug, this is more or less the sort of behaviour that would result in other countries where their particular sensitivities were challenged (e.g. wake me up when an atheist has a serious chance of running for US president)
4) Look at it as an opportunity for certain sections of society to vent feelings and then move on. Rather like a letting a child get a tantrum out of their system and then learning that the world hasn't changed to suit them after all. Actually this is true of a lot of issues - they are very rarely as extreme as some folks on Slashdot would like to believe.
Finally, as for the comments that people should take responsibility for what they/their children view - I agree. That said, there are far worse things on line [in my world view] such as severe violence that I would consider much more deserving of concern.
Very few websites, services or media targets children. It's insanely complex to meet the demands of COPPA or similiar legislation. As a developer who works with software for children the outcome of this consultation is very interresting. Using the system in reverse to verify the person is actually a kid is very interresting. Currently we have to resort to parents paying $1, scanning passports, doing ackward skype calls or some combination of those. I hope they end up with something really cool and usable. Not to save kids from porn, but to open the internet more up for kids.
It's not too late to cut the submarine cables that connect the UK to the rest of the world.
This is the real point of the RFC: How to establish and enforce compliance, not the impracticality or inefficacy of their regulations. It's like a woman asking which dress to wear.
“Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice.” Bill Cosby
( . )( . )
Who decides what is or isn't porn?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
1990's USA NeoCons called and want their rhetoric back.
Seriously you guys are copying some of that stupid ass shit we did in the 1990's pretty hardcore lately.
Thank god the government is doing this. Because it will end or at least greatly reduce the incidence of minors getting access to p0rn, that's for sure. Of course there will always be the troubling borderline cases of people linking to the metric tons of p0rn in all kinds of chat rooms and in all types of contexts, including political ones like, famously, Goatse:
http://gawker.com/finding-goat...
but we can spend more time and money going after those sites and individuals later.
This is a great way for the government to appear to be doing something about something without incurring the statistical risks associated with taking political risks. It's awesomely futile but tailor-made for people for whom the world's real problems just seem overwhelming and intractable. You know things like global warming which may, even now, be on an unstoppable trajectory to wipe human civilization from the Earth, and then they're the refugee crisis and that damn thing *making* all those refugees, what's that place called? Syrianna.. no wait that was a George Clooney movie about something or other... camels and shit like that right? Oh wiat...Syria, ...right?
Then there's the grotesque economic disparities which pose a real threat to the perceived legitimacy of the lawmaking process itself and then there's that whole thing with EU...
Fuck it. Gentlemen, man up. We're going after adult p0rn.
We may have grown up with *exactly* the same access to *exactly* the same images (there's a very limited number of positions the human body can assume and and only so many props which can be meaningfully included) and, truthfully our parents did too and, well, yes, our grandparents and so on in an unbroken chain going back at least to antiquity, in all cultures too, but dammit, we're going to stomp it out.... on the internet.
First dialog box asks if you're over 18.
Second one asks if you're SURE you're 18.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
A bored, intoxicated biologist says:
Chemical castration has a distressing way of becoming permanent in a non-deterministic way. IE, sometimes you stop the pills/injections/implants/spice, and your endocrine system doesn't restart. Bodybuilders use a drug - nandralone? Fuck it's gone from late to early - to kick their system back into functioning after a while on the steroids, but it's not all that reliable, not all that legal, not all that available, and generally unpleasant. If you're going to castrate your kids, it's best to do it before puberty. That way, they don't suffer withdrawal effects, DNA methylation and acetylation patterns won't change to become dependent on sex hormones, and will tend to live 12 years longer than their un-neutered classmates.
Science, bitches! You'd be fucking amazed what it'll justify if misused, and I haven't even said anything that's technically incorrect.
The average age of first exposure to porn is around 8.
You're sick.
Just another attempt of religious fanatics to control (restrict) sexuality. Who will give up his/her identity for proof of age and open itself for blackmail? That's the real reaon behind that kind of stuff. Kids get it anyway- one way or another: Hey - wanna see those pictures I got...
News for Nerds. Not all nerds are in the USA.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Damn, I can't believe people exist who are so lazy they can't even be bothered to censor for themselves.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Best way to do Porn-Site Age Checks.
I certainly don’t want to show porn to my kids. Actually, that would be really creepy. I would feel only slightly less awkward if they found it on their own, but before that happens, I want them to not be completely unaware of what some of those seedier things in the world. Anyhow, I have some dumb questions about what it is the authorities are so afraid of.
- Are they worried that adults will show porn to kids? (They can just use the adult credentials.)
- Are they worried that kids will find it on their own?
- How easy is it to totally accidentally stumble on hard-core porn? (Probably easy.)
- How do you check someone’s age when they visit the free parts of a website? (At least half the adult users want to visit anonymously.)
- Instead of restricting, why do they not consider educating people? (Although the tone of the materials will surely be of excessively negative bias.)
1) I know how to get porn.
2) I've always known how to get porn.
3) I know better than you how to get porn.
4) Your stupid laws won't stop me getting porn.
5) You also browse porn.
6) I know this proposal has nothing to do with porn.
7) You know I know it.
8) Actually, you know that this is more likely to drive searches for porn to genuinely nasty parts of the Internet.
9) Which will in turn encourage abuse of vulnerable people rather than production and consumption in the open.
10) Which is what you want, because members of the government have historically been a hive of sexually abusive bastards.
11) Would still be useful to record which sites your opposition like to visit, though, eh?
More often than not the most obnoxious prudes are the biggest, most offensive perverts. Authority and punishment make them very horny.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There is a silly obsession with sex. At the same time they ignore things that can really harm a developing mind, eg:
* films of people killing each other; I would rather that my kids watched people fucking each other than shooting/stabbing/... each other
* religion. How much damage does religious indoctrination do to kids. Gets them believing all sorts of whacky ideas, eg: that sex is bad; that people of a different religion or sect are bad; that you must waste a lot of your time going to church/synagogue/mosque/...; that you give lots of money to religious people in fancy robes; other things sect dependent: evolution is rubbish, etc; oh, and that cloud faeries exist - on the basis of no evidence
First a lot of fraud could be stopped if it was a crime to ask for a charge card for age verification. That being said, just how can age be verified at this point in time? Our world is awash in fraud. One dangerous fraud is the so-called safety sites for online dating. How easily can a violent person use another person's credentials to lure a girl to her death? When those supposed background checks take place all it takes is exposure to a stolen wallet to provide credentials. Those sites collect and sell information to businesses or they suddenly use those credentials to rob you blind. And who the heck decided that porn was so bad for kids anyway. Would any 13- year- old be healthy if they did not want to see some porn at times? Running about with starry- eyed innocence is not a blessing. It is a prescription for disaster.
British chicks are all sluts and easy to win, they are the blacks of Europe: They fuck anybody. Why does any kid needs a porn site to jack off?
Because that's what I always enter when a website asks for my age.
Talk about fucked up priorities.
How about leaving the whole child-raising thing to parents and worrying about real problems like trying to decouple yourselves from the US war machine.
Sex and masturbation promote health and well-being. This is very, very well researched and documented within the medical community.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to restrict children's access to religion?
It would be easier for such sites to require a special meta-tag or other "marker", and push to make it easier for parents to indicate a user account is a minor's account.
Those selling devices would be required to either make setting such account info easier, or provide easy-to-find instructions. (Current such options tend to bury it under layers of obscure config menus.)
You still have to deal with out-of-country sites, but that's going to be a problem either way.
Table-ized A.I.
Any particular reason why you chose to add exactly one wrong apostrophe to the bit you copied?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seriously, unless they start asking for a scan of your ID as well as video proof that it really is you on that ID.... It ain't gonna work.
It will just be as simple as "are you 18 or older : yes / no" and that's it. Your age check will do nothing against those who say Yes even if they aren't.
Any site operating in the UK which doesn't comply with this will be fined £250,000, and most likely shut down.
Sites operating from outside the UK (E.g. in U.S.) will be blocked, like they do with filesharing websites.