
Claire Perry forces porn filter, then her page is blocked due to naughty words - appleflaxen
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/25/the-best-story-yet-about-the-uks-online-porn-filters/
======
hawkharris
Defending freedom of speech feels - and should feel - very painful. If you
haven't felt like screaming, you haven't truly defended your rights to speech
in a democratic nation.

Why? Because defending this freedom forces us to grapple with uncomfortable
contradictions. I don't want to see Neo-Nazis protesting in a public area of
my city, but I allow their right to speech because I don't want courts to set
a precedent for banning speech about political issues.

I don't want underage children to view pictures of sexual violence, but I have
to consider how blanket restrictions on sexual content will make it harder for
adolescents to access information about safe sex and for adults to view legal
pornography.

I think too many people expect speech-related issues to be simple and easy.
They take a hard position because they feel uncomfortable with the ambiguity
that comes with balancing our emotions with larger legal precedents.

The blanket bans on sexual content in the U.K. epitomize this: emotional
concerns about "shielding" children from sexual content seem to have
overshadowed more nuanced conversations about education and adults' freedom to
access information.

~~~
Swizec
As a former 12 year old boy, I don't understand why people are so adamant to
protect children from sexual content. When you're old enough to know what
you're looking at, it is all you want to look at and you will seek it out no
matter what. Personally I used to browse between channels on the telly to get
super grainy glimpses of porn. When that wasn't available and after our phone
got blocked from calling hotlines, I would simply draw naked women for myself
to look at.

When you aren't old enough to know what you're looking at, you won't really
care about what you see and won't think twice about it. But really if you're
older than, say, 6 or 7 you should know what sex is and how it works.
Intellectually speaking at least. You won't really care for seeing porn
because, well, LEGOs are far more interesting.

So really, I think all this "shield children omg" isn't so much about
shielding children as it is about certain adults being obnoxious prudes and
using children as an excuse to get their way.

~~~
DanBC
> Personally I used to browse between channels on the telly to get super
> grainy glimpses of porn. When that wasn't available and after our phone got
> blocked from calling hotlines, I would simply draw naked women for myself to
> look at.

You can't see a difference between grainy glimpses of softcore porn or hand
drawn images, and high definition easily available images of heavy duty porn?

~~~
dkuntz2
Personally, not particularly. Sure they're different, but it's not for the
government to decide that they should be blocked, especially if it's legal for
a portion of the populace to view them.

If a parent doesn't want a child to view material of that nature (or any
nature) it should be up to the parent, not the state, to make sure their child
doesn't view it or have access to it. There's commercially available software
out there that can make the same blocks, but it's opt-in.

The issue isn't that "kids should be able to see what kids want to see", it's
"the state shouldn't dictate people can or can't see in the privacy of their
home".

~~~
DanBC
You realise that the state isn't dictating what people can or can't see -
these filters are optional? And that for existing customers they default to
opt-in?

It's frustrating that the reason the government forced ISP filtering is
because i) no-one uses parental filtering and ii) parental filtering is
hopeless.

~~~
summerdown2
The filters aren't optional.

Setting them to "on" or "off" is currently optional, but the traffic of
everyone in the country will soon pass through these filtering machines.

------
sheetjs
Other cases of internet hypocrisy:

After pushing for anti-piracy legislation, French President Sarkozy caught
pirating music: [http://torrentfreak.com/french-presidents-residence-
busted-f...](http://torrentfreak.com/french-presidents-residence-busted-for-
bittorrent-piracy-111215/)

RIAA and Homeland Security Caught Downloading Torrents:
[http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-and-homeland-security-caught-
do...](http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-and-homeland-security-caught-downloading-
torrents-111217/)

Fox Entertainment pirating competitors' movies:
[https://torrentfreak.com/busted-bittorrent-pirates-at-
sony-u...](https://torrentfreak.com/busted-bittorrent-pirates-at-sony-
universal-and-fox-111213/)

------
DanBC
She discusses adult topics, and rightly is blocked by the filters she has
campaigned for.

I hope that companies do not make any special effort to unblock her, and that
they ask her to jump through the same hoops as any other blocked user.

This filter system is just clearly idiotic, and clueless idiot MPs forcing it
onto the public need to dogfood the results.

~~~
a3n
People should write to her, letting her know that they can't access her
official site, because it's blocked.

On postcards.

Everybody.

~~~
DanBC
I certainly think that her constituents and anyone with a relevant interest
should write her very simple messages explaining just why her idea is so
_stupid_.

Some of what she says seems reasonable - "Why can't Google help with the
problem of images of child sexual abuse" \- but they're ignorant of what
Google does to help, and what offenders do to find images of child sexual
abuse.

It'd be great if she could educate herself about what the problems are, what
people are doing to fix those problems, and what things still need to be
pushed.

I'm not sure that would work though.

~~~
alan_cx
If you do that she will accuse you are being a bully and a troll, and you
become her reason for censorship. This "person" is beyond reason and logic.

Make no mistake, she and her ilk are not about saving the children. She wants
to make adults have her values and force it on them if she thinks its
necessary.

Look, we all know that all that needs to happen is that all UK ISPs put an on
off tick box on all their routers in people's homes. Parents could easily
decide this for themselves, in private, with out humiliation and interference.
But no. It has to be the hard way, it has to be the way that coerces adult to
her way of thinking. What does that tell you?

~~~
DanBC
> Look, we all know that all that needs to happen is that all UK ISPs put an
> on off tick box on all their routers in people's homes.

Wait, this is pretty much what has happened. Except it's not on the user's
router, but on the user's settings page at the ISP.

~~~
LoganCale
And that's the important distinction. Because it's not on the router, it's not
kept as private information. And it's on by default, so if you want to see any
blocked things you have to announce to your ISP, "I want to look at…"

~~~
DanBC
A tiny number of people use proxies or vpns or somesuch. Other than those
people:

How are you keeping your internet habits secret from your internet service
provider?

> "I want to look at…"

...all the perfectly normal non-porn content that has been blocked by your
piss-poor filters. Like that politician's website, for example.

------
ama729
> The UK has decided that all ISPs must deploy opt-in pornography filters

Wait, wasn't the big problem being that this filter is _opt-out_? Then why is
everyone being so upset about it? Such filters existed for years after all.

~~~
Brakenshire
I agree that is the most important distinction. The filter which is just
coming into force, on BT (what was British Telecom, and one of the largest
ISPs) is what's called an 'unavoidable question', where you have to make a
choice when you first go online, to be filtered or not (and if so, at which
level) so effectively opt-in or out. I don't really understand why people
complain about that on free speech grounds. There has been government pressure
to set up decent filters, but these are ultimately just private sector ISP-
level parental controls. I would personally expect such features to be
standard.

------
coldcode
The greatest disease in the world is Political Stupidity.

------
ChristianMarks
So much for the use-mention distinction. Filters so far seem unable to
maintain it.

~~~
jere
I've never heard the use-mention distinction, but its interesting:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction)

However, the distinction doesn't seem to be relevant here. When Claire Perry
is discussing "porn" on her site, she'd be _using_ it, unless she's referring
to the word itself. Example: [http://www.claireperry.org.uk/my-news/previous-
stories/clair...](http://www.claireperry.org.uk/my-news/previous-
stories/claire-perry-todays-announcement-on-internet/233)

>Given that 83 per cent of people say that the easy availability of _internet
porn_ is damaging to children, shouldn't this be rolled out more quickly?

Unless there is a different meaining of use-mention not described on
wikipedia.

~~~
ChristianMarks
I am using the phrase to refer to the distinction between 'discourse about X'
and 'X-discourse', rather than the more limited technical sense given to it in
the Wikipedia. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the better
reference:
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quotation/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quotation/).
More inclusive uses of the phrase 'use-mention distinction' are not uncommon.
See, for instance, this entry on the use-mention distinction and political
correctness in the Language Log:
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005349.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005349.html)
The Language Log concludes, "In sum, failure to distinguish between uses and
mentions poses a danger to freedom of speech and rational enquiry as well as
the danger of falsely accusing and condemning innocent people." The sense of
the use-mention distinction appearing here refers not only to individually
mentioned words, but phrases, sentences, paragraphs and entire bodies of
discourse.

