
UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites - jamesbowman
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/porn-passes-newsagents-shops-online-pornography-website-id-uk-government-a8349281.html
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hex12648430
Who decides what is or isn't an X-rated website? Are the authorities going to
block tumblr or twitter because of all the porn on there? If not then what is
the purpose of this law?

How are websites going to get blocked? DNS filtering? Asking the sites
operators to block all traffic from the UK by default?

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bitL
I can write a scalable webservice that is able to detect such content with
90%-95% accuracy including locations of offending areas; based on some very
recent (2 months old) Deep Learning research. I presume they can do that as
well and take 5-10% failure rate as acceptable. If I were running my own
social network and wanted to keep it clean, I'd use it without any hesitation.
But those are technical means, this is a political issue.

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lainga
Does it handle literotica? (Could the UK under the new law?)

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bitL
No, just images. But it might be doable as well - look at a recent post from
fast.ai for text classification.

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Digit-Al
So do we now look forward to teenagers hanging around newsagents asking people
to get them a porn pass along with the beer and fags?

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noir_lord
Hah.

If you want to raise a generation of people capable of hiding their online
activity more effectively trying to get between a teenager and smut is
basically the way to do it.

I'm pretty sure that VPN's and Tor will explode in popularity if they ever
manage to enforce this in any way beyond the most silly methods.

Also hello escalating arms race.

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andrei_says_
Maybe someone could also turn them onto voting.

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WiseWeasel
And thus the porn star party came to rule Britain for the next hundred years.

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plouffy
"Some 56 per cent of British adults admitted to watching pornography in a 2014
study carried out by The Observer." Looks like 44% of British adults are
liars.

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ytwySXpMbS
I know you're joking, but you raise an interesting point. I honestly think
porn is potentially harmful, and having stopped watching it myself, understand
why 44% would too. It's brutally extreme depiction of sex almost desensitises
the brain to the actual experience, at least in my experience. Especially with
the endorphins reinforcing the behaviour, it can get close to an addiction.

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verroq
Can someone explain to me, what exactly is wrong with the UK? Where did it all
go so wrong?

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pjc50
The UK has always been this bad. It's Mary Whitehouse or the Lady Chatterly
trial all over again. Public discourse is a hypocrisy-ridden disaster. The
Daily Mail has been a big driver for this, while they profit from an endless
stream of prurient bikini pictures.

The few million middle-class voters in marginal constituencies whose votes
actually matter are easily convinced by the papers that the Internet is out to
corrupt their children (and frankly they have a point), and therefore go along
with bureaucratic-authoritarian "solutions" for it.

~~~
hippich
I am really curious about "frankly they have a point". Could you expand more
on it?

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zimbatm
Nicely done. Next step, remove cash to trace all the porn pass purchases.
Although I suspect most people don't even care and will use their debit card
already.

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spuz
How long will the 16 digit code last for? How truly anonymous are those codes?
If my code is leaked will it be possible to view all of my porn viewing
activity?

Why is reporting on this so terrible? I actually don't have a problem with
requiring age restrictions on certain content online I just have no confidence
that it will be implemented securely and anonymously when there are no
competent journalists to hold politicians to a high standard.

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crtasm
[https://www.blocked.org.uk/](https://www.blocked.org.uk/) lists blocked sites
and can test URLs of your choice on most(all?) of the major ISPs.

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codedokode
Is not it better to block access to porn sites by parents' request? So that
people without children don't have to bother.

Also there are many things that affect children much worse than online porn.
For example, if a single woman is raising a child there is high probability
that every weekend she comes home drunk with some unfamiliar poorly educated
low cultured drunk man. The child has to listen to their drunk talking. This
kid will probably soon become alcohol or drug addict or even a criminal. Porn
obviously won't do so much harm.

So my suggestion is to ban drinking and inviting men home for single mothers
before you ban porn. Or maybe ban alcohol for everyone who has children.

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trothamel
I'm really wondering why anyone thinks that this will do anything more than
disadvantaging local business while sending traffic elsewhere.

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peterkelly
MPs have only voted in favour of this due to extensive lobbying and under-the-
table payments from the major VPN providers.

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mseebach
It's a good thing that this scheme is 100% secure against someone reselling
these online for bitcoin.

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wetpaws
Obligatory 4chan greentext joke

