

Internet porn: Automatic block rejected (UK) - andrewaylett
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20738746

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tommorris
Here's what the filtering would mean: sexual health sites would also be
blocked. Whenever I visit a university or corporation that has filtered
Internet access, I always test out a few sexual health and LGBT support sites.
Inevitably, a few of them are blocked. (Hey, my alma mater used to filter
access to the Wikipedia article "Same-sex marriage" because it has the word
"sex" in the URL.)

For years, websites that offer a space for young people to talk about sex,
sexual orientation, relationships and so on have been blocked because too many
of the people making the censorware presume that sex == porn or that LGBT ==
porn.

That's the cost of our anti-porn prudery: that people can't access sites that
have advice on having healthy sex and relationships. Mandating a policy with
that kind of side effect by law is a really dumb idea.

I've yet to see a compelling case that teenagers are being harmed by porn. But
not having access to advice on how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases...
that's really harmful. Whether it's providing sexual health advice or
providing an anonymous shoulder to cry on for sexually confused teenagers, the
Internet has saved plenty of young people's lives and health. It's helped
people discover who they are, how to come out, how to have positive, healthy
relationships. Ensuring that the next generation can have access to the
enormous amount of good stuff that the Internet provides is precisely why we
need to ensure we do not have government-instituted web censorship.

~~~
DanBC
> Here's what the filtering would mean: sexual health sites would also be
> blocked

You list the result of bad filtering, and suggest that a national filter would
have the same problems.

While I disagree with a national filter it's easy to think it would have been
better than the lousy filters already existing.

Does the existing child porn filter prevent access to innocent sites?

~~~
tommorris
Yeah, but the policy wasn't to have one "national filter". It was to have the
government tell ISPs "you must have a filter". How the ISPs implement it would
be up to them. Which means they'd go buy the same crap that universities,
libraries and corporations are currently using and implement that.

Deciding what counts as "porn" is very difficult. Deciding what is illegal
child porn is, with the odd exception, pretty easy. But for legal non-child
porn, well, what about a 15-year-old girl writing erotic Harry Potter shags
Dracoy Malfoy fan fiction and sharing it in the fanfic community on
LiveJournal or whatever. Does that count as "porn" in the same way as
commercially produced videos does?

And it is trivially defeatable: one kind finds a stash of porn, puts it on USB
sticks and sneakernets it to all the other teenage boys in the neighbourhood.
Hell, sexting exists.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Or e-mails it to them, or uses Dropbox.

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andrewaylett
This is good news. I fear that the two sides of the debate have been talking
past each other -- it would obviously be a good idea to stop children from
viewing porn, but there are three problems with that requirement: it won't
stop all access, it won't magically just block for children and it won't only
block pornography, even by the conservative standards of what I'd prefer not
to see.

I have primary-school-age children, and to my mind the best way to protect
them is sensible supervision and a good ad-blocker.

~~~
tommorris
"it would obviously be a good idea to stop children from viewing porn"

Nonsense. I'm bloody glad I had access to porn as a closeted gay teenager.
Without access to Internet porn, my teenage years would have been far more
miserable and lonely.

It was only a decade ago when Section 28 was still the law of the land.
Internet porn was giving plenty of gay teenagers the sex education that
society and the education system was too prudish and/or fearful to give them.

~~~
tomjen3
To be a little nit-picker here, but he specifically said children, wereas you
said teenagers.

I too believe it is a good idea to make sure 6 years old don't stumple on a
inter-racial shemale anal-gangbang site before they are old enough to
understand what sex is.

Teenagers are an entirely different catagory.

~~~
tommorris
According to the law, they really aren't.

That said, I think the under 10s probably need parental supervision anyway.

~~~
tomjen3
The law may not discriminate between teenagers and children, but I would
question the parentalabilities on a parent who still treat their 14 year old
as if she was 6 or 9.

As, I imagine, would the child authorities.

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TamDenholm
If you as a parent have internet in your house, its your responsibility to
control your childrens access to it, not the governments. Same goes with porn
or non-porn mags and DVD's.

~~~
jiggy2011
I certainly agree in principle and am glad we don't have these measures.

OTOH I can understand why this might be a harder thing for parents than
perhaps is acknowledged.

There are so many internet capable devices in households nowadays, including
phones and games consoles etc. Sure you can try and implement some filtering
but no system is bulletproof, especially when you consider P2P networks,
anonymous proxies etc etc.

So I can understand the worries of parents who perhaps themselves barely
understand the internet (likely their kids are much more savvy) themselves but
want their children to have access to the internet as an education resource.

You might try and not allow any internet enabled device in bedrooms etc but
then these days everything is an internet device and they will likely want to
play games with always-on DRM etc.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
> The worries of the parents.

This is the part I don't understand, what are those worries? What do you think
it happens when a kid watchs porn? What negative consequences have been
demonstrated to happen? And is not like porn randomly plays itself in the
browser, you have to use explicit sexual words for Google to respond with
links to porn sites.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> This is the part I don't understand, what are those worries?

Not a parent, but I think the problem with kids watching pornography is that
you're basically letting a random person teach them what sex is. If a kid
who's just beginning to get curious about sex stumbles on hard-core BDSM/rape
fantasy sites, it's probably going to have some sort of impact. (I picked an
obvious bad-case scenario, I'm not saying it's always like this, or that it'll
certainly traumatize them, etc., etc. I just wouldn't want my kid's first
experience with sex to be a video of a gagged woman being whipped.)

> And is not like porn randomly plays itself in the browser, you have to use
> explicit sexual words for Google to respond with links to porn sites.

I was going to come up with an example where little Billy is searching for his
uncle Dick, but most of the results are about Dick Cheney, which is arguably
more frightening than pornography.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
> Not a parent, but I think the problem with kids watching pornography is that
> you're basically letting a random person teach them what sex.

That is certainly not the opinion of the masses because they don't want kids
to see porn even years after they have been educated about sex.

If you need to hide something is gore, sites like Reddit are full of it and
contrary as porn it can be a little bit traumatic.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I'd wager that the people who don't want 17 year olds having access to porn
are probably the same ones who don't really want sex education, either, aside
from the "On your wedding night, God will let you know what to do" speech.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
If your line of through were true there would be sites famous among parents
for their unexaggerated normal porn videos, so when you have the talk about
how normal sex is you would also mention that the desire for watching other
people doing it is also normal and you would mention those porn sites. Well,
that is never the case; they just teach you about sex and then they keep
pretending that you don't want to access stimulating content.

~~~
jiggy2011
I remember the BBC (or Ch4) made a set of documentaries a few years back that
showed people having actual sex for educational purposes. I can't remember the
name.

Most porn is certainly made for commercial rather than educational purposes
though and idealized stuff with giant penises and huge cumshots seems to be
more commercially successful.

Effectively it's more about fantasy and than reality.

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ollysb
Perhaps a sensible middle road would be to ask customers whether they want to
enable "child protection filters" when they sign up to an ISP. This way
parents have the best possible chance of protecting their children without the
danger of over-reaching censorship.

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drequivalent
Damn, govt, get off the internets. Porn is the very foudation of Internet's
Maslow pyramid. If you remove all porn from the 'net (which is near-impossible
and not worth an effort), there will be the only one website left. It will
read "Put the porn back". And what the funk with all this opt-out bullshit?
Why should I all of a sudden use the service I do not need and not even know
about? If I want to filter my or my kid's (or sister, or whoever the funk is
on my home network) browsing experience, I'd do that on my own gateway. I know
better what I should and should not browse. Which leads me to expect, that the
true target of filtering is not really porn.

