Blocking Porn - Censorship or Child Protection?

[Jimbob]

When you take a phone contract out, they have the options available there to impose the restrictions. When i took out my latest contract, i saw the option on the form which was passed to the phone company who sorted things out. Not that i watch adult material on my phone. I know Vodafone, O2 and Orange impose these restrictions.

 

But as phone contracts are under the parents name, these restrictions don't apply. Which is another factor which needs sorting.

[Jonnas]

It's hard to be mad at this measure when it's still an option, even if the default one.

[MoogleViper]

We need a name for the future of this. China has the Great Firewall of China, we need something cool sounding too.

I wish I could think of some funny name, that would make this post so much better.

 

Cameron's cock block?

 

The Tory porn scorn?

[Rowan]

It's hard to be mad at this measure when it's still an option, even if the default one.

 

Well it opens the doors to allow the government to ban any site they want. For instance, they could ban Mega(upload) & Rapidshare because it is known to host copyrighted content even though there will be users who use the site for legal reasons. Similarly, sites like Tumblr and Reddit could have complete bans because of the content on certain sections.

 

If that happens then people won't feel comfortable having to sign up their details to a government database porn list indicating that they want unblocked internet.

 

My internet should cost cheaper if it's censored.

[pratty]

So apparently kids have computers and internet, but they don't have parents?

 

If it comes to it that I have to opt in, I probably won't. UNLESS more than actualy hardcore porn is blocked.

 

My concern isn't so much porn but just risque or "adult" (as in only suitable for adults) stuff being banned too, e.g. somebody sends me a link to a funny NSFW type video that might contain a bit of nudity or extremly harsh language, and it will censored by some computer programme that can't tell the difference between pronography and other potentially unsuitable or offensive material. And who deicdes what porn is, is a woman just in a bikini pornography?

 

Even more worrying if there's blanket censorship that intentionally includes more than porn sites. The gov might say to protect kids from 'hate' sites, we're censoring legitimate discussion forums. Even alternative news sites the government might not approve of. And even if you do opt in just to have a free internet experience, you'll probably be put on some secret government pevert list.

 

I do hope this isn't the start of a slipperly slope.

Edited July 22, 2013 by pratty

[Jamba]

I think writing to our respective MPs could help sort this out, or at least give them reason to consider changing to opt-in rather than opt-out

 

My company is meeting with Tony Baldry, our local MP, tomorrow to talk about the travesty that is the rural broadband initiative.

 

Hopefully if he works with us a bit more, then I can bend his ear about this issue. I can't explain how much it upsets me when governments interfere to create societies that encourage us not to think, not to make our own decisions and simply take all of the accountability away from the individual. It's like they're saying: "You can't look after yourself cos you're thick as shit. Let me do this for you".

 

The internet is possibly the most exquisite creation of the last 50 years and it's getting poisoned by the fucking though police.

[Ashley]

We need a name for the future of this. China has the Great Firewall of China, we need something cool sounding too.

I wish I could think of some funny name, that would make this post so much better.

 

Maybe we can call Cameron United King's Dom?

 

Anyway I believe a while ago I read that this was sent to all of the big ISPs and they all responded back with "what the fuck? This is crazy and won't work for a number of reasons" (but probably phrased better).

 

Not that I'm surprised that he's not listening to them. It's a cheap vote ploy. "We stopped kids from seeing porn! AREN'T WE GREAT?"

[Guy]

I speak to parents every day and even the ones who actively monitor their children have absolutely NO IDEA what their kids are up to online. I understand the need to protect them, but the way this is being handled will mean something that should be good is going to backlash hard. BDSM hard.

 

I think making the public more aware is a better option than punishing everyone. New laws should force ISPs to implement a decent blocking system and force them to make all current/new customers aware of it. Run some adverts on TV etc, letters home from school.

 

The Internet is going to change a lot in the next 10 years, unfortunately this stuff is only the beginning so they should really get it right as soon as possible to keep one of our greatest modern resources great.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Guy

[Serebii]

I speak to parents every day and even the ones who actively monitor their children have absolutely NO IDEA what their kids are up to online. I understand the need to protect them, but the way this is being handled will mean something that should be good is going to backlash hard. BDSM hard.

 

I think making the public more aware is a better option than punishing everyone. New laws should force ISPs to implement a decent blocking system and force them to make all current/new customers aware of it. Run some adverts on TV etc, letters home from school.

 

The Internet is going to change a lot in the next 10 years, unfortunately this stuff is only the beginning so they should really get it right as soon as possible to keep one of our greatest modern resources great.

I'm not against the censor. It should just be automatically off, not automatically on

[Guy]

I'm not against the censor. It should just be automatically off, not automatically on

 

Completely agree. It should be optional and heavily advertised. An ISP marketing itself as "totally safe, nothing to configure" would appeal to lots of the parents I speak with.

 

The real problem here are parents who use the Internet as a babysitting tool and have no real involvement in their children's online lives.

[MoogleViper]

I'm not against the censor. It should just be automatically off, not automatically on

 

That's not a censor, that's a firewall.

[Serebii]

That's not a censor, that's a firewall.

Then so be it.

[Jimbob]

Well, best get to downloading as much as i possibly can. Will be selling DVD's under the cover of "Gardening for beginners".

[jayseven]

A friend of mine runs a minor-league comic and he's had years of issue with ISPs somehow automatically deeming many of his pages to be unsuitible for children. This kind of law would certainly affect a lot of art if an ISP's algorithm has deemed the content to be pornographic.

 

Equally, as people have said, there are already standards in place on the internet to make it act akin to a highstreet store; content can only be accessed if you pass a RIGOROUS TEST... ok so access to porn is ridiculously easy, and parents are ridiculously stupid when it comes to "safeguarding" their children...

 

But to veil this whole issue with the idea that the government wants to make it harder for child porn to be accessed? The seriously creepy fucks out there that may prove a danger to society, that may add to the stock of shit out there are going to be operating on 'secure' networks anyway.

 

This is a typical nanny-state situation where the government's easiest and cheapest option is to blanket-ban rather than address the fact that most parents need educating in how to manage the media their children can access. If such a precedent were set then who knows how other laws could roll out afterwards.

 

I wouldn't have a problem with contacting my ISP to say "I WANT PORN FFS" but I'm sure many shrewd dudes would. But what if you have no direct control over your ISP? I'm currently a lodger and I'd have to ask them if it was ok if we could have porn please... I mean that's definitely a position I'd not want to be in. Sure, let's encourage a black market!

[Cookyman]

Well, best get to downloading as much as i possibly can. Will be selling DVD's under the cover of "Gardening for beginners".

 

Gives a whole new meaning to bush trimming!

[Jimbob]

Gives a whole new meaning to bush trimming!

 

Free clippers included with every DVD

 

I wrote to my MP regarding this issue and said many other things which are a lot worse than porn is readily available on the internet and needs to be addressed. I quote, and not limiting to the following

 

Bomb Making

Shooting*

Beheading

Knive purchasing

Promoting Jihad

 

*Available on Youtube right now

 

Thats a few of the things that are available online right now.

[Ramar]

Well, best get to downloading as much as i possibly can. Will be selling DVD's under the cover of "Gardening for beginners".

 

I've all of sudden become very green fingered. Got anything with a good set of marrows?

[Cookyman]

I wrote to my MP regarding this issue and said many other things which are a lot worse than porn is readily available on the internet and needs to be addressed. I quote, and not limiting to the following

 

Bomb Making

Shooting*

Beheading

Knive purchasing

Promoting Jihad

 

*Available on Youtube right now

 

Thats a few of the things that are available online right now.

 

Your right I just checked absolutley shocking! :wink:

 

[Clownferret]

This plan has one very simple flaw - adults want to watch porn. Probably males moreso than females, and porn has always had an element of privacy and secrecy about it so this is bound to create conflict amongst parents. Say the husband who likes porn is responsible for the ISP, he gets the phone call to opt out - somehow I think he will be doing exactly that. Then what? They have the awkward conversation with their wife why their kid can still access porn sites? Or maybe the wife is responsible for the ISP, what then? The husband has to confess and convince her to opt out? Of course, this works both ways, the wives could be the ones who like porn and not the husbands, but regardless, unless they both agree this has social nightmare written all over it. I would imagine most will avoid this awkwardness, get on with it and find alternatives should they have to so mobile sites, magazines and chat lines are going to have one hell of a sales boost!

 

I agree with what they're trying to do but they really havn't thought it through. As others have said, best solution would be education - advising parents of how to put the restrictions in place themselves, by device, and not at ISP level.

 

very good post. Why can't you just have a kids pc which is blocked and an adult pc which is not. blocking at isp level seems very draconian

[Jimbob]

I've all of sudden become very green fingered. Got anything with a good set of marrows?

 

Well, i have a nice selection of marrows in storage to choose from.

[Beast]

It is censorship and it is kind of an outdated attitude towards sex (obviously depending on the type of porn you watch). I had sex education when I was about eight or nine and had to sit through a video of this middle-aged couple (who were so hairy, they could have been Chewbacca's distant relative) doing it and I saw porn for the first time when I was 11 or 12 but I'm not, in any way, corrupt. It would desensitise, which would happen if you watch things that aren't in your age bracket anyway, but not corrupt. There are things out there that are much more responsible in "corroding children" than porn and one way or another, they'll watch it. There used to be a kid in secondary school who used to sell porn DVDs for a fiver and he used to sell quite a few. I'm not saying that kids should be watching porn but the feature to ban adult content unless said otherwise is a stupid idea and what's worse, he said that the ones that will be banned will be the ones who have children living in the AREA. Not in the house but the actual area!

 

Sex is natural but half of the stuff kids are exposed to today are not. For instance, some of the media involved today would play more of a part in messing children up than anything. So a man and a woman do it and apparently porn is 'corroding' them but what if they watch a movie such as SAW or Hostel or play a game like Dead Space or even Grand Theft Auto? Obviously I'm not saying they are to blame because it should be the parents but still, the point remains. You can't just blame one thing without looking at the other. The only people to blame would be parents for being lazy and not checking any of the age restrictions. I've heard little kids play Gears of War before which, I'm sure everyone may know, includes actions such as stamping on heads and chainsawing. Obviously a lot of kids may not even have violent tendencies playing these kind of games or watching these movies (I didn't and still don't) and if the parents trust them playing it, okay, but if it's pure laziness and the kid goes out and does damage to somebody, the roots wouldn't start with porn, it'd be because of bad parenting. God's honest truth: the other day, I heard an eight-year-old tell an adult man to "shut up otherwise I'll stab you". Now, I don't know what made him say it because the adult was just walking by but I bet you that porn wasn't responsible for that kind of behaviour. I'm thinking more along the lines of films like Kidulthood or 1Day or something or just plain bad parenting in itself.

 

What's ridiculous is the fact that, as some of you have already mentioned, it seems they blame one thing when it isn't and what's ridiculous is how easily and readily accessible violent videos are on YouTube and Veoh and even Facebook and Twitter. To me, they fuck up children way more than porn but I do agree with the whole rapey-porn stuff, that shit's just messed up and I can understand banning that. But as normal porn goes, no way should it be banned if only adults live in the household just because kids live in that area.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Animal

[Fierce_LiNk]

I've deleted the troll post and the ones following it. This isn't a zoo, so let us not feed these bridge-dwelling creatures.

 

This is great. An ISP's response to these changes.

 

Censorship

 

It is not our role to try and censor what you do with the internet. We do not try and log or limit what you are accessing. It is your responsibility to stick to the laws that apply to you. We have no intention of putting in place any censorship systems or using censored transit feeds.

 

Censorship systems are usually introduced under the guise of some emotive topic such as stopping child abuse which nobody could argue with. Such systems are very very unlikely to have any actual impact at all on the actual problem they claim to solve. Such systems often break or hinder the normal working of the internet, as seen by wikipedia recently. They are usually easy to circumvent. If they work at all then they just drive the offensive use underground and using encryption so making it harder to find and deal with. They are also the thin end of the wedge as once a system is in place then adding more is easy. Bear in mind most ISPs using such systems then have no control over what is censored or why. If we accept censorship for child abuse, then we have to accept it for terrorism, and then maybe political extremist views, and then maybe not so extreme views, and maybe wrong thinking or pictures of policeman (oh wait, they just tried to make that illegal too!)... "then they came for me and there was no-one left to speak out".

 

When you signed up for our service you specifically ask for an uncensored and unfiltered internet access. We have no plans to add adult content filters or other stupidity. You are, of course, welcome to run your own filtering on your network and have parental controls configured on PCs on your network. If you have children for which you allow unsupervised Internet access (is that wise) then we would encourage you look in to such parental control systems.

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

That is great (bar the slippery slope fallacy); censorship, ironically enough, only pushes what you intend to control even further beyond your control.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Dannyboy-the-Dane

[Ashley]

Also, the person who kicked all this off doesn't know how the Internet works

 

Here’s what happened: a couple of days ago, someone hacked Perry’s website to display offensive images. Paul Staines, a right-wing political blogger who writes as “Guido Fawkes”, duly reported on the incident, complete with a screenshot of one of the more tame images displaying on Perry’s site. Perry took to Twitter to accuse Staines of “hosting a link that distributed porn via my website”; Staines replied that Perry was “confused by technology”; Perry didn’t back down, and repeated her reference to “the hacking of my website sponsored by @GuidoFawkes.”

 

Now, don’t forget that the UK has very strict libel laws. While Staines is usually on the defensive rather than offensive side of such issues, he polled his readers to see whether they thought he should sue. Eighty six percent said he should, so late on Wednesday Staines wrote that he was “reluctantly” instructing his lawyers.

[Beast]

I've deleted the troll post and the ones following it. This isn't a zoo, so let us not feed these bridge-dwelling creatures.

 

This is great. An ISP's response to these changes.

 

I'm glad you deleted the troll's post but I did make a point that it wasn't porn messing kids' heads. Is there any way you can put my one back on and I can edit the parts including the troll out?