All Internet porn will be blocked by default under UK government plan

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/all-internet-porn-will-be-blocked-to-protect-children-under-uk-government-plan/story-e6frfkui-1225973481287

by gasull • 16 years ago

29 47 16 years ago

DjDarkman• 16 years ago

This is disturbing, and I can't really imagine how they want the ISPs to pull this off.

What counts as a porn site? Who will evaluate it? If I have a photo sharing site and some douche uploads a picture of a naked lady, does that count?

I'm ok with the child protection and all that crap, that should be parent's responsibility to begin with, but I think this is not the answer. They should at least ask everyone about this.

I really feel this is heading towards internet censorship in the UK.

chubs• 16 years ago

I'm all for child protection too. It can't be the parents responsibility though, for purely pragmatic reasons - i mean are there really any parents in the world who are able to put a filter on their net connection their kids can't get past? I'm 99% sure by the time i have a teen son, he'll be more tech savvy than me... Now if they could do this in a way that's open and honest, to allay concerns such as your point above about photo sharing sites. But i worry that it'll be a black box, and people with legit sites will one day discover that they've been blacklisted with no recourse.

te_platt• 16 years ago

Parental protection means a lot more than a filter on the internet connection. I know full well my kids can find a way to get what they really want to get whether porn, drugs, or whatever. My wife even found candy hidden away in my five year old's bed the other day (no candy after brushing teeth). Much more important is instilling values and helping them understand the reasons behind the rules. It is almost 100% the parents responsibility to do that.

sorbus• 16 years ago

You seem to think that the filter that the ISPs come up with is going to be impossible - or even difficult - to get past. I'm extremely doubtful about that.

stoney2• 16 years ago

> i mean are there really any parents in the world who are able to put a filter on their net connection their kids can't get past

No there aren't, which doesn't really give me any confidence that an ISP could do it either. Presumably all it takes is an encrypted connection to a server outside of the ISP's filter and you've bypassed the filter.

lsd5you5• 16 years ago

Perhaps instead of an opt-in for pornography, they could present it as a mandatory opt one way or the other.

pyre3• 16 years ago

All sites must register to be accessible inside the Great Firewall of Britain?

samstokes• 16 years ago

They just need a simple HTTP proxy that checks for the presence of the X-Is-Pornographic header.

wlievens2• 16 years ago

It's the X-Is-XXX header, actually.

RK• 16 years ago

Wouldn't it be simpler to just ban children from using the internet? They could just point those CCTV cameras at every computer to keep an eye out for violators. Pretty straight forward actually.

</sarcasm>

lsd5you5• 16 years ago

Probably a contraversial opinion here, but I think it is a good idea. Parents are often behind their kids on this one, and the current status quo is massively out of kilter with the state of, say, TV censorship - which people are reasonably happy with.

As for the, this is the start of censorship debate... it's not groundless, but I don't really buy it. If anything, 'letting' something like this through could be considered appeasement, and become considered as the only grounds for censorship. It works in other mediums, newspapers can be as critical of the government as they want, but cannot be obscene.

FreeKill2• 16 years ago

Yeah, but who gets to decide what the cutoff for "porn" is? Any movie with a naked person in it? What if it's just a bare ass? What if it's a painting or sculpture?

Just like television ratings don't stop kids from watching violent tv, movie ratings don't stop kids from watching certain movies, and video game ratings certainly don't stop kids from violent/adult games, this would accomplish nothing...

It all comes down to the parents. They need to be on top of what their kids are doing online and the last thing we need is more useless censorship that protects nothing.

lsd5you5• 16 years ago

Yeah, but who gets to decide what the cutoff for "porn" is?

Somebody, using consensual guidelines. You are perhaps mistaking the UK for America. It isn't a battle between constitutional rights and puritanical religous nuts. People are generally more moderate, and as such any introduced change is likely to remain moderate. (Not that the UK hasn't got its own major problems).

Many people rely on ratings for guidance, they make life a lot easier. For games they do admittedly have less effect, but that is perhaps to do with inertia in society, and the starting point of initial feelings towards games as unrealistic (which in some cases is not so true any more).

If it won't accomplish anything then I don't really see what the objection is. In reality it could well be quite effective. Obviously teenage boys of a certain disposition will circumvent any controls, via private networking, encrypted email attachments ... etc. This has always been true and people aren't that bothered about it. What is more half the fun is in the act of circumvention.

elblanco• 16 years ago

good luck with that....seriously there's always page 3 girls

acangiano• 16 years ago

What about sites that deal with violence or dangerous political ideas? Are we going to censor them by default as well? What about violence in movies which is probably far more damaging to children? Are we going to block that too on the telly? Where do we draw the line?

On a practical note, I can only imagine how many arguments this new legislation would lead to. Typical scenario: Husband openly or secretly wants porn, wife doesn't.

lsd5you5• 16 years ago

I suppose you should define damaging. Presumably you're relating violence to homicide and other violent crime. I can think of an equally plausible (and equally unverified) analysis. Depicted violence is clearly fantasy and generally bears no resemblance to reality (of life in the UK), whereas the relationship with reality of the typically pretty appalling sexual behaviour depicted in pornography is much more ambiguous (especially to young people) and as such more deleterious to behaviour.

In any case movies (or films rather) in the UK are censored for violence on the telly, and generally not shown before 9pm. Although the restrictions are much laxer than previously.

Back to the original point, is depicted violence more damaging? Is that even true, and how much do people value it? Is it something you want for your children or more other people's children? At risk of demagogy, it might be best to think about what people desire. Many people, perhaps most people, fundamentally don't want their children to be exposed to large quantities of pornography - just on the grounds of the potential for awkwardness - and perhaps don't care so much about an unquantifiable increase in violence in society.

pyre3• 16 years ago

Teens are currently making their own porn and texting it to themselves. How is censoring the internet supposed to change this? So now they can't get access to porn on the internet, but they can get access to nude photos of the girl in the next classroom. What have we really 'won' here?

Jach• 16 years ago

As much as I love that argument (and similar e.g. in the US being allowed to kill people in the army but not consuming alcohol), and as much a knockdown argument it should be, it doesn't seem to be having much effect. How do you reason with unreasonable people who hold the power?

cabalamat• 16 years ago

> How do you reason with unreasonable people who hold the power?

You don't, you fight against them: http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/

_flag• 16 years ago

There are two very big assumptions being made here. One is that this is even possible to do, and two that porn is harmful to children. I doubt either of those are true.

bergie2• 16 years ago

Probably they will pass the law and then insist ISPs figure out how to do it, or otherwise lose license to operate.

Anyway, scary thought. Blocking everything by default based on what some conservatives think of as immoral or harmful.

pyre3• 16 years ago

I doubt that viewing sex is harmful to children, but most porn is not in the realm of reality. As long as children are able to realize that porn is not reality, there should be no issue, but if children are introduced to sex through pornography, then pornography becomes what they believe reality is.

(I should note that, though I am not in the UK, I do not support this action. "Nanny State" indeed.)

{edit=expanding} I think it's all about how children relate to others. Violence definitely has an effect on children, but I think it may have less of an effect on them than viewing pornography does. Why? (well, let me answer that question that I brilliantly asked myself!) Because most of the elements of the violence that you see (I'm not talking about sexual violence here) in media are elements of relationships with other people that most children have already experienced by the time that one would think that they are able to view violent media. Basically they have experienced the reality of relating to people in such a manner, and can easily distinguish the fantasy (e.g. getting angry at someone, vs getting angry at them and then beating them with a baseball bat).

On the other hand, pornography is all about relating to others sexually. Children have no experience with this, so the viewing experience becomes not just entertainment, but education, and I don't think that most porn has life lessons in it that we want to teach children.

Note that this is a very general argument. Even the word 'children' is almost too general to mean anything. A high-schooler and a 3 year old are on very different levels with respect to how they can handle these things.

callumjones• 16 years ago

I wonder if will be easy to opt-out, imagine being old enough to view pornography but then awkwardly asking your parents to enable the 'adult's internet'.

angrycoder• 16 years ago

The funny part is that kids will be the first ones to figure out how to bypass this. Then daddy is going to have to go ask little Timmy how to turn on the real internet whenever he wants to look at some bewbs

wlievens2• 16 years ago

Maybe this will lead to improved father-son bonding?

Or just lots of akwardness.

meatsock• 16 years ago

as someone who became interested in the topic when it was difficult or time-consuming, i support making it slightly more difficult.

soneil2• 16 years ago

It's not a "government plan". One MP raised the idea. And was quickly put down.

"Devizes Tory MP Claire Perry raised the issue at a special Commons debate, because as a mother-of-three she knew how difficult it was to keep youngsters from seeing inappropriate material.

But Mr Vaizey made it clear ministers will not take any steps to force internet service providers (ISPs) to tackle the problem.

He said: "We believe in an open, lightly regulated internet. The internet is by and large a force for good, it is central to our lives and to our economy and Government has to be wary about regulating or passing legislation."

The minister suggested it was for parents to take responsibility for what their children see online, rather than the ISPs that make money from pornography."

http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/news/Request-net-porn-refuse...

grav1tas• 16 years ago

It may not be a government plan, but the article sure makes it sound like the government is using the threat of legislation to force the ISPs to move. So instead it's some kind of threat maneuver?

soneil2• 16 years ago

It was just a debate, and one that seemed fairly well-reasoned to me. A back-bencher (represents a local constituency and nothing more) put the quest forward, and was told "We believe in an open lightly regulated internet. [...] Government have to be wary about regulating or passing legislation".

If you're interested, you can read the transcript verbatim, free of tabloid scandal, at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2010-11-23c.235.0

acconrad• 16 years ago

And this is exactly why I read the comments before I read the articles themselves.

pan69• 16 years ago

If we're going to make legislation that way maybe we can make everyone a organ donor unless you opt-out? And while where busy changing laws anyway, maybe from now on if you're suspected of a crime you're guilty unless proven innocent. There's to many criminals walking the streets who actually should be in jail...

wisty• 16 years ago

I'm a fan of opt-out organ donors. Unless you have strong feelings (possibly religious beliefs), there's no reason to take it all with you.

Porn, on the other hand, has very few externalities.

muuh-gnu• 16 years ago

> there's no reason to take it all with you

Theres no reason to force people to "donate" without bothering to talk to them or their families even once about it. The only reason is to trick them into donating by not telling them they'll be donating, knowing that a large part of them wouldn't donate if they had a fair choice. I think many people _do_ have strong feelings about their physical integrity and the physical integrity of their loved ones, especially in the case of not even being asked.

A silent, deadhearted, mandatory opt-in would be for me a major reason to immediately opt-out without any chance of reconsideration.

tomjen33• 16 years ago

Yeah, let's force people to risk being carved up and having their bodies given to strangers (whom they may very well hate if they had a chance to get to know them) without their consent.

And if you think it's an overblown fear, consider what happened to the guy they tried to autopsy in South America about a year ago: he woke up on the table.

bergie2• 16 years ago

In Finland organ donations have been opt-out for a while now

OoTheNigerian• 16 years ago

First they came for the porn industry...

petercooper3• 16 years ago

I disagree with this but do agree that there's a problem to be seriously discussed.

The Sunday Times ran a big and rather non-judgmental feature on "Generation XXX" today. The stat quoted in the Commons was that 80% of 14-16 year old children "frequently" use Internet pornography. They also interviewed some various teenagers and discovered both that anal sex is now "normalized" (their word, not mine) and almost everyone's shaving their "lady garden" (again, their term) merely because that's what they're seeing in porn.

Without being judgmental about it myself, I find it rather amusing but I can see why people are getting upset.

tomjen33• 16 years ago

Personally I find it deeply disturbing that anybody has a problem with 14 year olds watching sex. At that age they have already been told what it is and some may have tried it, no doubt many more wish they had.

They shave their private parts? Horror, I say why it may grow back in a few months or, god forbid, they may feel itching. If youre children attacks others in the manner described in the article, it's not because of the pornography, but because you failed at being a parent. If you had any shame left you would have killed you self, but it is no doubt easier to blame porn than for once in your life taking responsibility for the monster you have created.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

The people whose strawman you're attacking aren't likely to be reading HN, alas (it has "hacker" in the title!)

I suspect that the people getting in a moral outrage aren't doing so over "vanilla" sex. The LSE study quoted in the Times' article (UK Children Go Online, 2005) found that 31% of 9- to 19-year olds were using "violent or gruesome material."

I haven't expressed any judgments here, nor can I get as excited about it as you, but I contest it's not as simple as people who have a "problem with 14 year olds watching sex" - that's a strawman.

sixtofour• 16 years ago

Is porn illegal in the UK? I assume not.

Would a UK parent be arrested if their kid found a parent's porn magazine? I assume/hope not.

Finally, where is the evidence/research that this change will have the desired effect, or even that the current state harms kids?

petercooper3• 16 years ago

On your last point, a key report being cited around this story is "the Witherspoon report": http://www.winst.org/family_marriage_and_democracy/social_co...

Maybe it's just me, but there's something overly slick about the promotional site for the report and its various media: http://www.socialcostsofpornography.org/

finemann• 16 years ago

The poor guys at Torproject will suffer!