
Online pornography age checks for UK web users [video] - Blackstone4
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-47706818/online-pornography-age-checks-for-uk-web-users
======
zpeti
I find it hard to comprehend how anyone would actually support this other than
a stupid government bureaucrat, anyone with any real world experience of
privacy and practicality would laugh at this idea.

Yet it gets voted in. Well done UK government.

~~~
Waterluvian
Well... Brexit is also happening. I wonder if the U.K. is going through a
"forest fire" stage where in order for new culture/government/society to
flourish, the old has to first go into decline. Both Brexit and these Porn
laws are things that seem incompatible with reality and seem to force the U.K.
onto a collision course.

~~~
raxxorrax
I don't know. The EU hasn't really been an enrichment lately... Especially in
the last days. Maybe it is the better way to get rid of something old.

~~~
sveme
So the EU has fucked up, hence we abolish it completely? As the UK has fucked
up the porn stuff, should we abolish it as well?

~~~
raxxorrax
It has fucked up so many times I stopped counting to be honest. They are very
valid advantages and goals that are worth to defend and indeed some very good
policies. But it just doesn't seem to work as a vehicle of democratic
formation of will.

Lacking any form of real opposition withing its organs, it should be reduced
in scope to a large degree.

~~~
derefr
Honestly, _every_ government is going to “fuck up so many times” that most
people stop counting. The pragmatic reality is that you have to keep counting
anyway, because it turns out that a million fuck-ups in a term of office
really is better than a billion fuck-ups, and if every other
party/multilateral org is making a billion fuck-ups per year while the one
you’ve got is only making a million, you should vote to keep them, because
voting them out would just mean voting to hand their decision-making power to
a sibling or to a higher/lower level where _more_ fuck-ups would happen.

(At least, this is true in an elected democracy, because of the required
elements of politicking and bureaucracy that make democracies go. For the same
reasons dictatorships can be worse than democracy, they could
also—presumably—be better: a benevolent dictator _could_ exactly express the
will of a united people with no politicking or bureaucracy fucking things up.
Though I don’t think that we’ve ever actually had an historical example of
this.)

~~~
zpeti
I think the more local the government, the less likely the fuck ups. The more
the government actually knows what people wants and can align with them. This
is why the EU is cracking, power is more and more centralised, which is
creating more and more bad rules, which might work for a small part of the EU
but not for everyone else.

~~~
timrichard
I agree with you. In the UK at least, 'U-Turn' is a classic part of the
political lexicon.

Sometimes focus groups will indicate that a policy direction might be a non-
starter. Or something will be perceived to be so unpalatable to the public
that it wouldn't even make the manifesto and be campaigned on. Sometimes,
proposed government legislation makes it a bit further and it comes under the
scrutiny of the media. Backlashes from the media can amplify blacklashes in
the populace, leading to the proposed laws being toned down or abandoned
completely. Not always, not even frequently, but enough. In one particular
case, the public backlash was enough to depose a PM with a reputation for an
iron grip on power (Thatcher and the Poll Tax).

I think this contrasts with legislation proposed by the EU Commission
(motivation: unknown, perhaps in a significant part to the 300,000 paid
lobbyists in Brussels), which seems at the public level to come out of nowhere
and inevitably be approved by an obedient EU Parliament as a formality.

This particular instance might be used as an example of resistance being
futile anyway, but I think it's a slightly different case. You're not going to
get 500,000 people being photographed marching past Parliament with placards
displaying "hands off my filth".

------
ThrowawayI11I1
All I heard is more people are going to be using high-speed VPN services.

Also, how the hell do they think that they're going to be able to enforce
this? They do seem to be doing this for the right reasons, but I have no clue
how in the world they think that they're going to be able to A) enforce it,
and B) do so without breaking into user's _priva_ cy.

~~~
magnamerc
What are the right reasons? I'm genuinely curious. I can't really think of any
reasons why censoring porn is a good idea.

~~~
hutzlibu
Protecting children.

But while I agree that the average porn is not how children should get sexual
education ... I doubt this is the way to change that.

~~~
tomjen3
Provide them with an actual sex education?

I don't mean talking about how the penis works and how to wrap a condom on a
cucumber, because I think the UK does that already.

I mean actually talking about how to have great sex, what works, how to please
a partner, etc. Feel free to have a final where students have to review some
porn and point out the parts that doesn't work in reality.

Of course that would horrify parents and teachers, but the reality in 2019 is
that you can no longer _not_ talk about the subject, you can only leave the
discussion up to the porn producers and mind geeks search engines or get into
the fray yourself.

~~~
hutzlibu
"Feel free to have a final where students have to review some porn and point
out the parts that doesn't work in reality."

You mean like in Monthy Pythons the Meaning of Life?

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7lRGIkLEYoA&has_verified=1](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7lRGIkLEYoA&has_verified=1)

Seriously, please don't.

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dTal
£4.99 _per device_?

Whatever this is about, it's blatantly nothing to do with age checks.

(Obviously, for that you'd certify the person, not the device. People do share
computers!)

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
I'm not sure people share computers explicitly (or even implicitly) for that
purpose.

~~~
dTal
The purpose is ostensibly to prevent underage people from "illegally" seeing
porn. You don't think teenagers would seek out "porn-enabled" computers?

"Computer == identity" is simply broken.

(It's also broken the other way - there's absolutely no reason to charge per-
device merely to authenticate age.)

------
petercooper
The example I keep coming back to is how are they going to enforce this on,
say, Google? If you do a Google search for any sort of physical characteristic
followed by nude/naked/porn and hit the Images tab, you get thousands of
pornographic images back. I can't see Google enforcing such a block and ID
scheme merely for its image search engine, tbh.

~~~
etatoby
If they can identify individual human _faces_ through algorithms, they (=
technology companies with deep pockets) can surely recognize most porn
pictures, given the right incentive (regulation.)

~~~
johnjac
Hah Hah, no.

~~~
etatoby
If you haven't been following the deep learning trend, a "Cat vs. Dog" picture
classifier, or variations of such, are now taught in introductory AI classes.
Applying the techniques taught in the courses, you can easily reach 99%
accuracy yourself, on your own run-of-the-mill hardware. If you extrapolate
that to Google / Microsoft's resources, it's a clear yes.

------
quadcore
I've always wondered: what's wrong with a child watching porn? (real question)
Is it bad psychologically? Do we have study to back this up? I've been exposed
to porn at quite a young age, say 10, never though it'd armed me.

edit: Thinking about it, I've found one reason: porn tend to be misogynistic
hence makes a poor education. But then, blocking porn doesn't solve the root
of the problem. Also, we all know what prohibition do when it comes to kids:
makes it even more desirable.

~~~
PUSH_AX
You got me thinking about this, assuming good sexual education relating to
safety and age of consent, fundamentally, I can't see an issue with allowing
someone to see how healthy sexual encounters play out in a video format. So
we're talking about a very specific wholesome type of porn. The taboo and
embarrassment are social constructs we could get past.

Would you stop your child from watching another species have sex in say a zoo?
What reason would you give if so? I think we could separate observation of the
act from participation in the minds of our youth, probably not in my lifetime
but I think it could be done.

------
tragomaskhalos
As a child of the 60's growing up in the UK, there are compelling parallels to
what has gone before:

1\. As cinema became more overtly sexual in the 70's, films would occasionally
make it onto TV with a minor amount of censorship; repeat showings would then
'correct' this by censoring more heavily.

2\. As VCRs arrived in the 80's, porn and video nasties accompanied them. But
again, there was a clampdown on these as the technology became widely adopted.

3\. It is trivial to access pornography on the internet, and has become
increasingly so in the last few years. This initiative is just the latest
reaction.

It is a tough one: like most people, I abhor any form of censorship or
government interference into its citizens' private doings. OTOH the
availability of internet porn to minors, and its current nature, has to be a
concern: there are studies showing the desensitizing and distorting effect it
has on those too young to apply their own experience and filters. Nor is
asserting that it's the parents' responsibility to monitor or control access
particularly useful unless there is the technology to support that in an
accessibly low-tech form. But we do have the makings of a less intrusive and
privacy-violating mechanism - ISPs could block certain websites unless you as
a customer specifically allow access to them: BT do this, for example
(although bizarrely various porn sites seem to be unaffected, whereas
oglaf.com needs to be whitelisted!). The fact that such routes have not been
pursued make me suspicious of the whole enterprise.

------
no1youknowz
Like in China, the UK and EU will be banning VPNs and asking ISPs to block
their usage.

It may not be tomorrow but it will be here nonetheless.

~~~
enriquto
but how can it be done effectively without banning also ssh (which is quite
unlikely) ?

~~~
darn2heck
It can't be fully banned. I could envisage an authoritarian government
demanding that you register to use ssh for work or whatever purposes.
Obviously that doesn't actually prevent a determined individual with some
know-how but it can be done effectively enough to bar most users and enable
mass-surveillance.

They know you can't stop all encryption. One time pads will always work when
used correctly.

That doesn't matter because they aren't targetting criminals, black-hats, or
terrorists. They aren't targetting people that actually have to hide.

They are targetting the technologically unaware.

I always tell people that this isn't aimed at stopping people that really want
to hide, it is about monitoring the majority of the population.

------
blunte
People in general are largely incapable or unwilling to think. If they were
willing to actually think through these laws, they would never write them nor
support them.

I would ask the politicians and the supporters of this law to define "porn".
Who gets to decide what is considered porn? Will that take into account
religious beliefs? Will it consider regional norms? Which religion? Which
region?

~~~
DanBC
I mean, the law is stupid but your questions are trivially easy to answer and
are the kind of thing English courts are well used to dealing with.

Pornnis material designed to sexually titillate. This is why you can still buy
_American Beauty_ in England, even though it contains an image of a semi-naked
underage actress in it.

Your comments about religion at ebaffling and I have no idea what point you're
trying to make. If you're suggesting that religious minorities who dislike
ankles could somehow get websites showing ankles to be put behind an age wall,
well, no that's not going to happen.

------
LinuxBender
It seems odd that this was ever required in the first place.

To me, it would make a lot more sense to require any site that could contain
adult material (porn, anonymous file upload, file sharing, etc) to add the RTA
header [1] to all pages and then put the responsibility on parents to use
parental control software to check for the header.

It is trivial to add the header to all modern web servers and load balancers.

In Apache, it looks like this:

    
    
        Header always set rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"
    

In HAProxy, it looks like this:

    
    
        http-response set-header rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"
    

On a web page, it looks like this:

    
    
        <meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA" />
    

[1] -
[http://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq](http://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq)

~~~
jules-jules
This would be the sensible solution if the goal was to curb kids watching
porn. What this actually does is to lay the foundation to having control over
any kind of content on the internet.

~~~
LinuxBender
You are probably right. How does the UK enforce websites outside of the UK to
enable this verification? Are they going to nag my service providers?

------
deanalevitt
Oh good, government regulation of browsing habits. What could go wrong?

------
jacknews
While the immediate goal with this is understandable, it smacks of an
'approved content' voucher.

These kind of things are always ineffective and end up being a way for
government to insert itself into your life and charge for the privilege.

These sites could instead use re-capchas featuring trivia from the past which
only adults would get - select famous personalities etc.

Or ISPs and telcos could offer 'family' filters built into some of their
plans, etc.

So many ways to tackle this issue without the heavy-handed involvement of
government.

~~~
nbaksalyar

        > Or ISPs and telcos could offer 'family' filters built into some of their plans, etc.
    

And they already do this, it's switched on by default. Sometimes you can't
even visit innocuous websites because of these filters.

The 'trivia quiz' approach reminds me of the classic game Leisure Suit Larry,
you could crack it just by randomly trying different answers :)

------
Bantros
The state of this country. Have to admit I had to laugh, a fucking "porn
voucher"

~~~
nyberg
Wondering if they'll have deals such as "buy one get one free" for them.
Wouldn't be shocked if they've planned it already.

------
skywhopper
How is this going to even work? It sounds like it’s certifying particular
devices, but there’s no way to certify the age of the actual user.

~~~
KallDrexx
Hahahaha.

If you watch the video you have to enter your passport or government ID number
into porn websites that will verify your age. If you don't want to enter your
passport or id number in random porn websites then you will need to go to a
store and buy a "voucher", and you can enter the porn voucher number in the
website to access it.

This is going to be a phisher's paradise.

~~~
stevetrewick
Well, _somebody’s_ passport number.

------
aphexairlines
The parliament website's entry for this law at
[https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2016-17/digitaleconomy....](https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2016-17/digitaleconomy.html)
doesn't seem to list who voted for it. Is that information available anywhere?

------
defertoreptar
You're giving people a financial incentive to give sensitive information to
sketchy websites. Now all of your embarrassing, pervy interests can even more
easily be tracked to your personal identify.

------
tristanperry
Wait, what?

I'm a Brit and assumed this was just an early April Fools Day joke -
especially as a few articles said it was due to be implemented on 1st April
2018, but was delayed until 1st April 2019.

What a bizarre policy.

------
mruts
What’s the rationale for this? Is kids even looking up porn an issue anyone
cares about? If you’re old enough to search for porn (I had my first foray
into porn at 11 or 12), you’re probably old enough to watch it right? Maybe
girls look it up a latter, but boys start getting curious on the cusp of
puberty.

~~~
DanBC
The rationale (and I'm not saying I agree with this) is that pornography now
is different: it is pervasive; it's easily available; and it's far more
extreme than it used to be.

There's reasonably good evidence that this has changed sexual habits in young
people. There's also reasonably good evidence that people are reporting worse
experiences of first sexual encounters than in the past, because of the
expectations that porn creates in young people.

The industry has had years, over a decade, to self regulate and they chose not
to do so, so it's not surprising a right-wing government is implementing an
age-wall.

~~~
mruts
But no one is talking about this in America, in which The British rightwing
would be classified as undeniably liberal. Why is this happening in the UK vs
the US?

~~~
fao_
Different countries have different political atmospheres and histories.

------
gvand
It seems something out of a Monty Python sketch, well done UK government.

------
HNLurker2
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19345288](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19345288)

------
jules-jules
Just as a heads up, in case this ever gets implemented, Opera browser has
built in VPN for those who don't want to set up their own.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
Well I know what to get people for Christmas now anyway. I wonder if Groupon
will have any good deals.

~~~
tincholio
Grouporn might have some...

------
tyingq
UK VPN providers rejoice.

~~~
tommoor
Always best to use a VPN provider in another country ;)

~~~
tyingq
Ah, yes. s/UK/UK marketed/

