UK government proposes to block all Internet porn as standard

BunnyKillBot said:
Interestingly, the first generation of children to be around when internet pornography started are soon starting to have children. I wonder what the effects would be on parenting styles between a parent who was exposed to internet pornography as a child and one who was not exposed as a child is.
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why would it be any different to the porn we all watched on telly as teenagers?

.
 
BunnyKillBot said:
For anybody skimming the threat not wanting to partake in this back and forth, it comes down to this:

The evidence is inconclusive. Is it right, therefore, to take a preventative measure on the chance that there is a problem, without conclusive evidence.

A similar question as to mobile phones. Should we be wary about the long term affects of exposure to radiation given off by mobile phones, without conclusive evidence.
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Well we had better ban that big ol' star in the sky we like to cal the Sun. It gives of far more radiation than phones (or even power lines!) and it causes cancer!

Oh and let's make sure that cars are banned to "protect the children" as they cause lots and lots of danger (and death) to children.

Oh and whilst we're at it we'd better band parents. They can be a danger to children.

...and dogs.

...and cats.

...and water (very dangerous)

...and electricity (don't mix with the above)

...and trousers.

...wardrobes.

...vending machines.

...walking.

...cycling.


Hopefully you now get how silly attempting to ban porn is? Especially if used to "protect the children"
 
Update:

The UK government appears to be pressing ahead with plans to filter the internet to prevent the great unwashed from filesharing.

According to the Guardian there are plans to waste taxpayer money building a quango similar to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). This would scour the net for illegal images of children, obscene adult content and "non-photographic child sexual abuse hosted in the UK" and er filesharing.

It is worthwhile pointing out that for a long time people have advocated filtering to "protect children" and the great unwashed from terrorists. In some ways it is refreshing that the government is being upfront and saying that they are really using it to filter the net for their chums in the content industry.

According to the Guardian there is a "plan b" which involves having a judge rule whether a site should be blocked after an industry agreed voluntary code has been satisfied.
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http://www.techeye.net/security/british-government-presses-ahead-with-web-filter-plans

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/apr/19/web-blocking-illegal-filesharing
 
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What happened to the big society?

If these are serious musings, surely the responsibility is on the parents to provide a safe / stable environment and not for the state to set up a superflous quango in order continue the nanny state.

It in effect gives the state a user register for porn, and while I'm not exactly a massive consumer myself I don't like the inverse implications.
 
This isn't just about porn, though. It's about blocking sites like Rapidshare, Megaupload, Mediafire etc altogether.
 
Lysander said:
This isn't just about porn, though. It's about blocking sites like Rapidshare, Megaupload, Mediafire etc altogether.
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Haven't read the whole thread/links either!

How has this been interjected, seperate proposals?

The Digital economy act kind of set the tone for what is to come to me to be honest.
 
Pixel said:
It's no surprise that this comes shortly after the US government gets the power to shut off torrent sites at the source.

What's important isn't the nature of the sites they say they're going to cut off (torrents, pornography) but rather the infrastructure they will put in place that will allow them to stop public viewing of any site they choose, at any time.

Wikileaks has got them running scared, and they're desperately trying to grab some kind of control over what the people see and hear over the internet. Today it's porn sites, tomorrow it's sites that they deem are acting illegally (Wikileaks).
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That's it in a nutshell.

I'm not surprised that these people will stoop low enough to use children as a tool for concealing what would be a very unpopular political move if it was done honestly. Saddened, but not surprised.

It'll be opt-in to begin with, during which time they will acquire and retain data on who opts in, but it would be naive to believe it will remain available. More and more will be blocked regardless of whether or not you put your name on the watchlist and they won't even need to tell anyone when they add some more to the banned for everyone list. In addition, many completely unrelated sites will be blocked anyway by accident - that always happens with automated censorship. Or maybe by a convenient "accident" at first to test how much complaining there will be.

Maybe they should block all religious content as well. Some of that might be harmful to children. Political content too, for the same reason. In fact, why not block all access to the internet and allow only a intranet controlled by the ministry of approved information? Vote for that or you hate children!
 
Just imagine. All those people who spend so much time fapping, suddenly don't have that outlet. They'd form a terrorist group that would make Al-Qaeda look like Playbus in their campaign to have the porn turned back on.
 
I confess I am not really that interested in viewing porn so blocking it would not really affect me other than if it was too draconian as to block legitimate sites like this or legitimate photographic sites.
However, it really angers me that once again, people's freedom is being eroded on the pretext of protecting children when in fact it's invariably parental failure that exposes children to such things as pornography and governments are using this as a ruse to restrict what we can and cannot watch as adults so, even though it may not affect me personally, I can't see any valid reason for blocking porn to adults - it's parents who should be supervising their children in a way that doesn't affect adults...not the other way around!

I've always been against unsupervised children using the internet as it was bound to end like this. Back in the early 1980's when CB radio became legal, the first thing parents did was to purchase their kids a CB radio for the following Christmas...low and behold, as soon as young girls started meeting older guys off the airwaves, parents started calling for restrictions etc and eventually, the kids ruined it for the adults with their behaviour and the same is going to happen with the internet if irresponsible parents are not made responsible for the protection of their own kids! As long as unsupervised kids are using the internet, there will always be paedophiles lurking to groom and lure them away and it is almost inevitable that unsupervised kids will find access to porn at some point.

The internet is not a babysitter or a game-toy to keep children amused - it was originally thought up as a fast way of transferring data and information for adults - if it had remained the preserve of adults, then this situation may not have arisen but there again, with governments overseeing everything we do these days, it probably still would.
Once they go down that path...where does it end?
 
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