

Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria - freejack
http://domainincite.com/14058-the-uk-is-going-nuts-about-porn-and-go-daddy-and-nominet-are-helping

======
decasteve
My rant about the topic of UK Porn is that it is entirely analogous to what is
happening in Russia with the anti-Gay legislation.

Two forms of sexual expression, both states using the same logic in terms of
reasons for legislating against them, namely "Protect the children". Both with
social stigma and negative attitudes from the most ardent conservatives of the
population.

Though in Russia the bigotry extends a little deeper in terms of social
acceptance (or lack thereof), i.e. violence against porn watchers is pretty
much non-existent in the UK. But in terms of the law, what is to be codified
into law is very similar.

/endrant

Feel free to debate and correct my naive interpretation if you disagree.

~~~
peto123
Maybe my analogy would also by naive, but I consider the effects of porn to be
similar to effects of consuming alcohol - some enjoy it, some became addicted
to it, and some people's lives will get literally destroyed by it. Therefore,
alcohol is "opt-in" \- you have to reach certain age, and you also need to buy
it, there are not bottles of alcohol available anywhere for anybody to
consume.

Similar with porn, it should be opt-in, you should read certain age to be able
to access it, and then do some kind of opting for it.

~~~
Dylan16807
Going to a web site is already opt-in. Plus google has default safe search.
The only other path I can think of offhand is advertisements on torrent sites.
If you want to make those opt-in I won't complain.

~~~
jlgreco
And as surely as you could "accidentally" visit a porn website (does this
_really_ happen to anybody? I am convinced that this is a myth created by the
go-to excuse of every teenager and husband with a controlling spouse...), you
could accidentally visit a restaurant that serves alcohol.

If such an incident disturbs you to the core, then turn around and find the
door.

------
DanBC
> As a related part of this move, the government has already arranged with the
> six largest Wi-Fi hot-spot operators in the country to have porn filters
> turned on by default.

> I haven’t personally tested these networks, but they’re apparently using the
> kind of lazy keyword filters that are already blocking access to newspaper
> reports about Cameron’s speech.

That's a good thing, it'll demonstrate just how lousy the idea is.

> Censorship, in the name of “protecting the children” is already happening
> here in the UK.

Is it really censorship if it doesn't stop anything from being published or
read? At the moment it's an optional filter.

We already have stricter controls over what children can see in the form of
film ratings. Except even then parents can rent / buy films and allow their
children to watch them.

I don't want to say "It's not censorship unless you're being beaten up by
police" (see, eg, Egypt ([http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-
net/2012/egypt)](http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2012/egypt\)))
but, well, I'm not bothered by poor quality filters that I can turn off being
put on my Internet. There's plenty of stupid things that ISPs do already that
are more annoying.

~~~
Historiopode
On technical counts, I agree. The scenario of a poorly implemented filter
reminds me of "porn before the Internet": young people learning the basic
tricks to gain access to forbidden material and then spreading them within
their groups. Even with physical pornography, doing this was neither complex
nor particularly time-consuming.

However, I maintain that there's reason for concern when a government elects
to make sexuality a matter of policy. Steering public opinion in a certain
direction (making the filter opt-out sounds more like a "you shouldn't be
doing it, perv" rather than a "it's entirely up to you, my well-adjusted
friend!") and exerting control over exposure at the infrastructure level might
not be censorship proper, but I wouldn't consider it harmless from a cultural
perspective. Generally, I'm indeed bothered when my government wields morality
to crusade against something of dubious consequence.

Granted, this comes from someone who considers the most common stances on
pornography and sexual education largely detrimental.

------
smutticus
This whole story would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. I can just imagine a
whole generation of young brits teaching each other how to avoid this idiotic
pornography filter. Just like every other ineffective pornography filter has
been worked around by every other group of adolescents in internet history.

The people who think it works get placated, the kids work around it, and it
has absolutely no effect on violence, rape or abuse whatsoever. Efficaciously
a win win.

~~~
sunglasses
The adolescents teaching each other how to get around filters - that is
exactly what ends up happening. A few years back, Turkey had a pretty long ban
on Youtube. Countless sites for tweaking browser settings specifically geared
for Turkish Youtubers emerged. There was even a cartoon by a prominent artist
that depicted the PM declaring his agenda: "We won't lift the ban until we
have 70 million DNS experts."

------
nakedrobot2
Stay classy, Godaddy - you are the poster child for corporate sleaze and
amorality.

------
Osiris
I work at GoDaddy, though not in the domains group. I heard this story from a
co-worker that does work directly on domains and was involved in the the
deployment.

Within the last week, a UK news agency published a report that it was was
possible to buy the domain name 'rapeher.co.uk'. I don't know the exact
article but I believe it was this one [1]

The rumor is that someone from the Prime Minister's office called the GoDaddy
CEO to express the PM's displeasure with the idea that you could buy that
domain name.

An emergency deployment was made to blacklist that one domain name. No
additional filtering was added. As GoDaddy states in the article, "We are
withdrawing the name while we carry out a review. We have not done this
before."

The discussion with my co-worker was clear that it would be impossible to add
in a word filter without having a large number of false positives given that
domains don't have spaces and it would be hard to know if a blocked term was a
word or part of another word.

So, yes, GoDaddy did block a domain, but it's not as nefarious as some people
are making it out to be.

(Ironically, that article about getting rid of porn has a full column of ads
on the right side filled with half-naked women)

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384629/Britain-
home...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384629/Britain-home-half-
million-porn-websites-UK-hosts-biggest-volume-adult-content.html)

~~~
milliams
> (Ironically, that article about getting rid of porn has a full column of ads
> on the right side filled with half-naked women)

That's the Daily Mail for you. Ironic.

------
darkchasma
I have not used GoDaddy in years, and will never do so again. However, in a
world where the governments seem to be in a war against their electronic
citizens rights and privacy, then there is no better countermeasure than to
train an entire generation to circumvent security from the age of 13.

------
peto123
I might be a minority here, but I honestly think that making internet porn
opt-in is a good idea, I am not from UK, but I support it.

As a reader of /r/nofap subreddit, I have learned that porn have had a very
negative impact on a lot of people, and it is certainly not healthy for very
young people (or even kids) to have easy access to it (as the situation is
now).

I am just not sure if I would support other categories to block (like
"esoteric material"), but regarding porn - good idea. You can opt-in if you
want, can't you? The only problem is that if there are more adults in a
household, and only some of them wants to opt-in.

~~~
darxius
Why does government or industry have to intervene in your personal life? If
you don't want to view pornographic material, don't search for it. Stay away
from sites where you might see something like it. If you're a parent, educate
your kid.

This is a waste of time and money. Plain and simple.

~~~
peto123
If you are a parent yourself, you will know that suggesting education is not
enough. By your logic, why is there an age limit to alcohol consumption? Your
whole reasoning could be used for that as well - and enforcing alcohol age
limit also costs time and money...

~~~
potatolicious
The comparison to alcohol is actually very useful: in the US where the
drinking age is high (and fairly strictly enforced), binge drinking and
alcohol abuse is extremely common in the teenaged population.

Compare with other countries where alcohol usage is not taboo, where the
drinking age is low (and/or unenforced), where teen alcohol abuse is a far,
far lesser problem.

It turns out that making something taboo and setting up some rudimentary
roadblocks to its acquisition does not have the effect on consumption that you
think it does...

Speaking anecdotally, growing up in Canada there was _no one_ under the
drinking age who couldn't get alcohol if they wanted it. Hell, half of us
didn't even _like_ drinking, and we did it for the taboo-ness of it all.

------
ktzar
Instead of having ISPs and governments with databases detailing which one of
us wants to enjoy online porn, there should be a standard on how to provide
adult material on the internet. If this was to be implemented it'd be easy to
create simple technologies that users could use for filtering out this kind of
material themselves. The use case that most people would find this good is
blocking porn in kids' phones and computer accounts. The easiest solution
being having a .xxx domain.

~~~
ds9
So, in your scheme, existing websites are deprived of their domains if someone
in government decides they belong in .xxx? And new sites are forced to the
likely-to-be-blocked tld if someone deems them pornographic? What definition
do you propose should be used? Can you imagine any conflicts over definitions
of "adult material"? How would you imagine them being resolved? Would you have
have site owners forced to self-apply labels they disagree with? What about
foreign sites not subject to the law?

Try reading up on the many criticisms made of the .xxx concept when it was
proposed.

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tuturumayushi
Porn is a escape from people's sexual frustration. UK is just going to
increase the number of rapes by banning porn.

