
Questions about Cameron’s ‘new’ porn-blocking - justincormack
http://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/10-questions-about-camerons-new-porn-blocking/
======
Camillo
> Some of this is welcome – the statement about making it a criminal offence
> to possess images depicting rape sounds a good idea on the face of it, for
> example, for such material is deeply offensive

Are you fucking kidding me? What's with this pseudo-shamanistic idea that
viewing a picture of an act makes you a participant in it? Has everybody lost
their mind?

A _criminal offence_. Stop making up thought crimes, you authoritarian
zealots!

~~~
mattstocum
If the law made it illegal to posses images or video of an ACTUAL rape, I'd
agree with it 100% (I hope this already is illegal). If it's a simulation made
by two consenting adults, where's the harm? I find Justin Bieber to be "deeply
offensive", why can't he be outlawed?

~~~
hahainternet
The harm is in convincing people that this is normal or reasonable. It's
extremely easy online to find an echo chamber where virtually every post will
agree with you. These exist for mens rights groups, anorexics, conspiracy
theorists, practically every topic.

Rape porn is one of those areas where the lines between reality and fiction
are blurred. It's highly unlikely someone accessing rape porn is doing it
because they are aroused by the idea of simulated rape. By providing or
permitting a similar echo chamber it is much easier for people to convince
themselves their actions are perfectly acceptable.

That is the danger of almost any media that depicts this sort of behaviour.
It's not exclusive to the Internet, but it's the diversity and complete
freedom on the Internet which permits these echo chambers to form.

~~~
king_jester
> The harm is in convincing people that this is normal or reasonable. It's
> extremely easy online to find an echo chamber where virtually every post
> will agree with you. These exist for mens rights groups, anorexics,
> conspiracy theorists, practically every topic.

This is true as you say for a wide of variety of topics, but criminalizing
those kinds of echo chambers is absolutely useless. Giving a person or agency
the ability to criminalize those echo chambers in general creates a method of
censorship backed by the law for any group of people.

> Rape porn is one of those areas where the lines between reality and fiction
> are blurred. It's highly unlikely someone accessing rape porn is doing it
> because they are aroused by the idea of simulated rape. By providing or
> permitting a similar echo chamber it is much easier for people to convince
> themselves their actions are perfectly acceptable.

This flies in the face of all statistical evidence we have. Violent crime
rates are generally lowering even as violent media, including rape porn, is
more accessible.

> That is the danger of almost any media that depicts this sort of behaviour.
> It's not exclusive to the Internet, but it's the diversity and complete
> freedom on the Internet which permits these echo chambers to form.

I don't disagree. The media we watch and consume affects us as a society, but
banning media because of the fact that it does so isn't a solution. Stopping
rape won't happen just because you banned legal depictions of it.

~~~
hahainternet
> This is true as you say for a wide of variety of topics, but criminalizing
> those kinds of echo chambers is absolutely useless. Giving a person or
> agency the ability to criminalize those echo chambers in general creates a
> method of censorship backed by the law for any group of people.

In this case it's not the echo chambers that would be criminalised, but the
intention is to block the media that may influence people to seek out these
echo chambers. I'm not convinced it will work but that is at least the logic
used.

> This flies in the face of all statistical evidence we have. Violent crime
> rates are generally lowering even as violent media, including rape porn, is
> more accessible.

There are many theories on this but I am aware of no well controlled study
into violent pornography. If the research exists I would love to read it.

> I don't disagree. The media we watch and consume affects us as a society,
> but banning media because of the fact that it does so isn't a solution.
> Stopping rape won't happen just because you banned legal depictions of it.

I don't claim that it's a complete solution, but to deny it could solve
problems at all requires evidence. I can understand the logic behind
prohibiting it, and have seen some (relatively weak) evidence to support the
idea that pornography can alter a young person's behaviour significantly based
on them trying to emulate what they see as desirable.

~~~
mattstocum
> but to deny it could solve problems at all requires evidence

No, to make something illegal, you should have to prove that it is harmful.
There is no proof that rape porn is harmful. You can't just throw out a
hypothesis and then say "prove me wrong". That's not how science works, and
it's not how law should either.

------
venomsnake
_1 Who will decide what counts as ‘pornography’, and how?_

Pornography is everything that gives a politician, cleric or judge a boner.

 _2 Do you understand and acknowledge the difference between pornography,
child abuse images and images depicting rape?_

See number one.

 _3 Are you planning to make all pornography illegal?_

Only until people find joy in it. When the junior anti sex league is ready we
will unban it.

 _4 What about Page 3?_

Don't mess with the freedom of the press to make and break politicians. Yet.

 _5 What else do you want to censor?_

Everything but the truth. There will be special government agency to decide
what the truth is today.

 _6 What happens when people ‘opt-in’?_

I will ask daily mail to kindly label them child rapists. Also will suspend
the UK libel law for the Daily mail. Then I will offer a ritual sacrifice to
the daily mail shrine in my office so the deity will bring more votes to me.

 _7 What was that letter to the ISPs about?_

[Redacted for national security concerns]

 _8 Are you going to get the ISPs to block Facebook?_

Facebook? Book with faces. We hadn't had such things in 1695, haven't kept up
with the recent trends.

 _9 How do you think your plans will go down with US internet companies?_

I will delay the tax pressure and they will cave. Too much PITA to chase the
money to fund health and education anyway.

 _10 Do you really think these plans will stop the ‘corrosion’ of childhood?_

No but it will give is critical tools in being able to delay or outright
prevent developing of critical thinking and free thoughts.

On a serious note - if the kid is able to learn about the Holocaust, WW2,
Gulag,Wikipedia pages on torture or Greek mythology with pictures at age of 8
(they won't be censored) and not be scarred for ever, his/her mind is probably
strong enough to bear the sight of a consenting women and men having sex few
years later. Even if it is in a bit weirder ways.

~~~
madaxe
>1 Who will decide what counts as ‘pornography’, and how? >Pornography is
everything that gives a politician, cleric or judge a boner.

So, everything then. The ruling classes have the most profound and perverse
paraphilias one can imagine. A friend who is a PPS (Parliamentary Private
Secretary) to a Tory MP reports that he is a horse fancier, however prefers to
be ridden than to ride.

BAN HORSES!

~~~
venomsnake
Just ban industrial strength lubricants ... it will be much more funnier.

------
beaker52
Through one method or another, sex is still taboo. We can't talk openly about
it. It's something that generally happens behind closed doors.

Making this filtering opt-out is a "soft ban". People will have to take that
"uncomfortable", "shameful" step of "unbanning" it. If someone watches porn,
they've gone to the trouble of getting it unbanned to feed their "filthy"
minds.

That's the narrative behind the psychology of this ban being enforced.

The govt. will have a big list of people they can spy on to make sure they're
not looking at anything they shouldn't be, and I hazard a guess that the govt.
will change their mind on what's acceptable more rapidly now they have a
handle on it.

People may find these links interesting:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisexualism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisexualism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_repression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_repression)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libido_(Psychoanalysis)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libido_\(Psychoanalysis\))

"It is this need to conform to society and control the libido that leads to
tension and disturbance in the individual, prompting the use of ego defenses
to dissipate the psychic energy of these unmet and mostly unconscious needs
into other forms."

Say... consuming material goods?

~~~
bifrost
IMHO its a clear invasion of privacy.

~~~
hahainternet
I don't understand how this could possibly be an invasion of privacy. By that
logic my locked door is an invasion of your privacy.

~~~
bifrost
Your locked door is your protection of privacy. This is akin to requiring
people to register to look at your door to decide if they want to open it.

We all know how wonderful government registries are, because nobody has ever
been unfairly prosecuted for sexual preferences and/or orientations, religion,
race, etc...

------
DanBC
He gave an interview on Woman's Hour where he sounded functionally illiterate.
He sounded really confused about the idea of "where the filtering actually
occurs", saying that all new computers (by the end of the year) would have to
have this filter on, "ticked off by default" (meaning, I think, 'on' by
default).

It's just bafflingly bad.
([http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03757cr](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03757cr))

~~~
venomsnake
So ... linux is outlawed in UK then?

~~~
ihsw
Since PCs are falling out of favor, you can bet that all locked-down non-PC
devices will be gradually implementing "lawful and compliant" restrictions on
user activity, and hefty surveillance "just in case."

Android devices will be no exception, and families/businesses will be
encouraged to install "lawful and compliant" software on all new computers.
Any vendors looking to get a foothold in the UK will be jumping on this
bandwagon, and I wouldn't be surprised if Canonical tries to get in on the
action too.

~~~
venomsnake
I hoped that I was not the only one that had that vision of the future. Seems
like we need some more open hardware urgent.

~~~
Zigurd
It would be good to see Google take steps, beyond publishing the AOSP repos,
to build trust in their systems and services:

1\. Publish build-able Android source code for as many products as possible
and incentivize OEMs to publish their source code.

2\. Support strong encryption for storage and communications, including
friendly key exchange and key-signing features. E.g. NFC-enabled key signing
in Android devices.

3\. Open source client software, e.g. an open source GMail client for Android
and desktop, to build trust in their crypto implementations.

------
josteink
Step 1: Introduce a system and infrastucture for handling online censorship.
In the name of "think of the children".

Step 2: Promise with your hand on your heart that this new censorship-machine
will never be used for antidemocratic or subsidiary reasons, like saving the
governments ass next time we have some of those pesky leaks showing massive
government violations going on.

There is no step 3.

~~~
ihsw
There is no step 2 either, since they made no such claim. It's an
inevitability that it will be used for nefarious purposes, so we can also
expect Tor to receive quite a bit of attention since VPN services have lately
been on the receiving end of unpleasant attention.

~~~
hahainternet
> It's an inevitability that it will be used for nefarious purposes

Is it? There's a system in place already for child porn images and while
they've made some mistakes, they have yet to block anything political as far
as I am aware.

Can you prove this is inevitable?

~~~
DuskStar
Well, it's now being used to block access to thepiratebay and other torrent
sites if I recall correctly. And of course it's now being expanded to ALL porn
(though that part has an opt-out) and rape porn.

I'd call that a very clear example of mission creep.

~~~
hahainternet
The blocking of Newzbin was a court order, not an action taken by the
Government.

It does seem that they want to regulate material 'advocating terrorism'
though, which could easily be a slippery slope. Still, without evidence such
an argument is fallacious.

~~~
DuskStar
I'd call a court order "action taken by the Government". It might not be
action taken by the legislature, but it is still government mandated filtering
using systems originally intended for child pornography.

~~~
hahainternet
I'm not sure it's really fair to say that any system which gets used by the
courts is 'the Government'. Almost any system is open to abuse if it's not
perfectly constructed, and the blame can lie nowhere else but 'the Government'
in this case. It kinda ruins the ability to determine where the actual fault
lies. Was it faulty ruling or was it badly drafted law?

~~~
jlgreco
Scroll to the top of the page. Click the link. There is your mission creep.

------
singular
I want to see the detailed metastudies that clearly suggest exposure to
internet porn does significant damage to kids.

I also want to know why this has to be _enforced_ by the nanny state, rather
than provided for by already available software? Do the parents have no
responsibility?

Actually, since this government likes to full-on lie about evidence [0] let's
just wait until we have a chance to throw these demagogue idiots out.

[0]:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/15/conserva...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/15/conservative-
claims-about-benefits-not-spin)

~~~
whyleyc
Well, here's a link [0] to a recent report by the Children's commissioner for
England which found:

\- Access and exposure to pornography affect children and young people’s
sexual beliefs

\- Access and exposure to pornography are linked to children and young
people’s engagement in “risky behaviours”

\- Exposure to sexualised and violent imagery led to violent attitudes

[0]:
[http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/content/publications...](http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/content/publications/content_681)

~~~
singular
I'm no expert, but that seems to be a _report_ by a probably biased
organisation, rather than a scientific metastudy looking at sufficient sample
sizes and eliminating confounding factors. Please correct me if the report is
of equivalent quality.

I'd be amazed if there was actual evidence that violence in the media actually
contributed to real world violence even in children, as I thought this had
already been covered at length with the various computer game scares.

~~~
hahainternet
Why didn't you just read the report instead of jumping to conclusions? In fact
the evidence portion of this is based off over 100 different sources and
appears to have been produced by 3 universities.

~~~
singular
It seems like you didn't read my comment...

    
    
        >  Please correct me if the report is of equivalent quality.
    

Like I said, I'm no expert, so even if I had time to read the report (I don't)
it _isn 't_ a scientific metastudy. It's a report, by a quite possibly
(probably) biased organisation. So unless I had some special knowledge about
the area (I don't) or time to review it in detail (nope) I don't know whether
to trust it or not vs. a scentific metastudy.

A weary aside (I am not interested in arguing on the internet cf.
[http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/))

Your rudeness is totally uncalled for. If you excise that rude first sentence
your post loses no value (in fact gains some.) I have a healthy skepticism
when it comes to politically useful 'facts' like these and thus don't take
government-commissioned reports even with many citations on face value. That
doesn't deserve condescension.

~~~
tptacek
When someone says "why don't you read XXX instead of jumping to conclusions",
and it turns out you not only haven't read XXX but refuse to, the claim that
their statement is rude becomes a little hollow.

~~~
anon1385
He pointed out that the study did not appear to be a peer reviewed scientific
study, and asked if this was really the case. He was told to read it himself,
but reading the report yourself doesn't necessarily tell you anything about
the review/publishing process for the report. (Of course since it's not in a
scientific journal the chance it received peer review is pretty low.) Telling
somebody to read something themselves may or may not be rude, but it certainly
wasn't an answer to the question.

I know everybody on HN likes to think they are an expert in everything, but
reading 'reports' by think tanks or other political institutions, even ones
that cite scientific studies, is a good way to confirm your own biases, but
not a necessarily a good way to educate yourself about contentious issues. If
you are not familiar with the area of research you won't know what has been
missed or ignored or proven unrepeatable or flawed. A peer reviewed meta-study
would be much more likely to include the full cross section of available
research.

~~~
tptacek
You're probably right, but I think your point is orthogonal to mine. Being
told to read something is insulting and rude if the presumption should be that
you'd already read it before commenting, but that presumption vanishes when
you militantly declaim that you shouldn't have to read things.

I'm biased because I sympathize with the "rude" commenter, in that I think
discussions would be better on HN if people took more time to read linked
sources and spent less time promoting their own preconceptions.

Also, if this community is as smart as it likes to think it is (no comment),
it should be able to extract credible content from think-tank reports without
succumbing to their intended conclusions.

~~~
singular
You assume the rudeness is in being told to read it, rather than the tone of
that. Actually it was the way he went about it, like I said, without that
preface to his comment it loses no content and gains civility. There was no
need, and my point stood as the kind parent suggests without my having read
it. So I disagree, your point is _not_ orthogonal.

I'm not as smart as many in this community think they are (the majority are
also almost certainly _actually_ much smarter than me), so I don't trust my
ability to assess the scientific quality of the report.

I'm happy to have my preconceptions changed by the way, but I want to have
some certainty - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the
claim that pornography harms children in any significant way seems to me to be
quite extraordinary, and very clearly full of confounding factors, so I want
to see an extensive metastudy.

Surely it's sensible for somebody to be able to critique very strong
_scientific_ claims that come not from a scientific journal but a government
sponsored report by a committee which might reasonably be suspected of bias?
Or do I have to read all the literature every time to be able to question
that?

~~~
tptacek
Yes, I'm sorry to say, you'll generally have to read things in order to
discount them entirely.

~~~
singular
Clearly here on hacker news criticising the blessed points of a high karma
user like yourself is not permitted (it's costing me karma) so I ought to
stop.

It's obviously true you can say things about a publication without reading it
e.g. a paper expounding cold fusion in some obscure journal. Knowing something
about the circumstances of publication and difficulty of the problem gives you
a priori knowledge that hey - it's probably questionable. But hey - in tptacek
world, you'd have to read the whole thing before being able to say anything
about it (even though you'd get nothing out of it unless you were a
physicist.)

I think you've erected a straw man because you're pissed off about somebody
not reading something.

Anyway, this whole line is just starting to annoy me and it's quite depressing
to see a high karma user be so obtuse, so let's leave it at that. Arguing on
the internet is such a waste of time.

------
moocowduckquack
Is probably just an attempt to get back some of his core voters that he
managed to annoy with the whole gay marriage thing.

If/when it fails he can then point fingers at the ISPs and say that it is
their fault it didn't happen, which is probably why he is claiming that he is
fighting them from the outset as it fits the later narrative better and means
he can scapegoat them when the time comes to minimise the splashback.

------
Dogamondo
Where I'm more concerned on this topic is the inevitable presence of a non-
curated list of those who voluntarily 'opted in' to having the porn faucet
unplumbed.

The character assassinations and prospective employment undoings we've all
read about over the past few years, due to (reasonably) tame publicly
available information now may pale in comparison to the damage that could
ensue if one were to be labelled a 'voluntary pornographer'.

I fear that what has historically been a 'right of passage' may in future be
used to retrospectively punish those that can be traced back to such a
compelling opt-in.

For those of us that can remember when porn wasn't a series of 0's and 1's, we
took great delight in sneaking a peak at the 'forbidden' shows on pay-TV after
Mom and Dad had gone to bed. We willingly exchanged a tasty sandwich during
recess for a roughly torn page from the Hustler mag that little Johnny had
smuggled from his older brother. And later, (0's and 1's) delighted in seeing
that lush SERP, born from a 4 letter search phrase and the final 14.4k nod of
KRSSHHHHHHH, Go for it, You're in!"

My right of passage was in the school music room, after hours with Drew
Barrymore in 1994 - Lusciously posing for me on the cover December's
Penthouse.

If Cameron had his way, that memory may now be a piece of data, just waiting
to be exploited by a "hacker" collective who do it "for the lulz", or worse, a
1984 style release of public disclosure outing those who were once impure.

Who knows what may come now. (pun intended)

------
Aqueous
_Scene opens in PM David Cameron 's 10 Downing St. office._

PM: Shall we have tea first, or shall we look at the list? Have you fetched me
the list?

Aide: What list?

PM: You know, _the list._ The list of people that was created when we made
pornography filtering opt-out instead of opt-in, and those who opted in to
pornography automatically registered themselves in our database in the act of
doing so.

Aide: Oh, yes, sir, I have it right, here. It's this volume right here. It is,
ahem, quite long.

PM: How long?

Aide: Quite.

PM: (more sternly) _How long?_

Aide: It is several thousand pages, sir.

PM: Ah. Ok. How very disappointing. Have you scanned the list?

Aide: I have.

PM: And who, might I ask, is it comprised of? Degenerates, criminals, ne'er-
do-wells, perverts, thugs, know-nothings, liberals?

Aide: Sir, well...sir....

PM: Spit it out.

Aide: It seems _everyone_ is on the list, sir.

PM: Everyone?

Aide: Yes. Everyone.

PM: Do you mean everyone in _Liverpool?_

Aide: I'm afraid I mean everyone in the UK, sir.

PM: That's 60 million people.

Aide: Indeed.

PM: That's nonsense. The Britons are more decent than that! Next you'll be
telling me that the Queen herself is on the list!

 _Aide looks down at his feet._

Aide: Um.

PM: Oh for God's sake, sir. Don't tell me that the Queen is on the list!

Aide: I'm afraid she is.

PM: Wait. So you're telling me that, when I turned pornography filtering on by
default nation-wide, that _every single natural born citizen_ of the UK,
including the Queen, chose to get to their computers, logged into the
filtering system, and _opted in_ to pornography?

Aide: That's what it seems like, sir. Er, well...there is one who is not on
the list. UK tennis player and Wimbledon champion Andy Murray is not on the
list. He is as pure as new-fallen snow.

PM: National treasure, that chap.

Aide. Indeed. But everyone else is on the list.

PM: Ballocks. Ah well, I tried. It was for the children, you see. Now if
you'll excuse me I have some porn I mean, er, ahem, important _reading_ I have
to get to, privately.

~~~
DanI-S
Interestingly, I hope we'll be able to see the actual numbers via a Freedom of
Information Act request.

~~~
DuskStar
Of course, someone will try and get the list of "opt-ins" with a FOIA request.
And if they succeed, the Daily Mail will have an absolute field day...

------
spdy
It will be interesting to observe if this gets into law without being
challenged.

UK public did not really care about "Tempora" etc. as far as i could see it.
(i hope i am wrong) And systems like these are just the front door approval to
cover the other systems.

They tried to implement a system like this in Germany and failed miserable but
every society acts differently we are still up in arms against the spying
programs. But in most countries this topic already vanished from mainstream
media.

~~~
DanBC
A government mandated crude filter applied by the ISPs by default,
controllable by the account owner, would probably be acceptable to enough
people in England for it to go through without much fuss.

But even with that there are obvious problems. Ann wants to turn the filter
off, but Bob is the account owner, and Ann doesn't want Bob to know. Chas is
their 15 year old child and he finds it trivially easy to bypass the filter.

And now Cameron has announced much wider plans, with many more flaws.

I'm annoyed and disturbed that Cameron is mixing in some measures against
images of child sexual abuse and measures against normal pornography. They are
very different problems[1] and should be dealt with very differently.

It would be great if image search engines could make reporting images to the
Internet Watch Foundation[2] easier. That might go someway to appeasing the
politicians. I doubt it would get much use. I search for a lot of images,
every day, and I go down the long tail of the search, and I have never seen
any images of child sexual abuse.

Perhaps search engines could provide some statistics of searches for certain
words associated with child sexual abuse. This would have to be done
carefully, but I'm not thinking of normal terms that every day people might
use (someone doing research, or a child who has been abused) but some very
specific terms that only people involved in trading images of child sexual
abuse would know. I'm sure they have their own lingo.

[1] I say problem because that's the word they use, not because I think
regular pornography is a problem.

[2] IWF are the regulators in the UK for this kind of thing and they
coordinate with law enforcement world wide.
[http://www.iwf.org.uk/](http://www.iwf.org.uk/)

------
alan_cx
_One_ of the biggest abuses of children is the use of them to enforce a
judgmental sense of morality on adults.

------
oleganza
As I always note in threads like this, this is not a problem of censorship or
defining what is "pornography". These are all distractions from the real
problem: a legalized violence employed by people calling themselves
"government" to achieve their ends.

"Anti-porn law" in plain words means this: if you happen to provide an
internet connection to some people, you will have to do what we say, or we
will bring people with guns to make you to or give up your property (and maybe
put you in jail too). We may ask for suggestions in form of "petitions" and
"voting", but only within the imposed framework which you are not allowed to
bypass. E.g. you are not allowed to vote for not sponsoring this whole mess by
not paying your taxes. And even if you can, there's a mob rule: 50%+1 will
overrule you.

When Apple censors porn on App Store, no one really cares because Apple does
not point guns at people. You may use any other device, any other distribution
platform. You can build one on your own. Apple only tries to be nice to people
and attract customers _voluntarily_. This 180º opposite from how government
operates. Government does not really try to please people, that's only for
decoration. Underlying principle is to force everyone to obey.

~~~
reader5000
Yeah. It's called "the free-rider" problem.

Luckily in the US at least, any inbred retard has a gun and can impose
themselves on anybody. It's much better.

------
xedarius
'Family filter', what a crock of shit, similar to the crock of shit verdict
that GCHQ's use of PRISM was deemed legal (by whom exactly?). We know you want
to spy on us, don't use the bleeding hearts at mum's net to get your agenda
passed.

~~~
inthewind
Exactly. I thought we'd had the intelligent debates about censorship and the
Internet over ten years ago!

Same old crap, wrapped in some slightly different packaging.

You could call a referendum on this one and get it through, just by asking a
thinly veiled question like: 'Do you think our children should be protected
from pornography?'. Just flash a picture of Jimmy Saville visiting a hospital
while you ask it.

I feel this country is getting less and less progressive at every turn and
u-turn.

Some furore over some phone hacking - remember that? Remember that
eavesdropping is a bad, bad thing? Then a few months later, happily talk about
eavesdropping/filtering the nation. Sickens me, even more than Mandy's
mutterings.

Boxed into a corner - will be wiping ballot paper on arse at next election.

------
drostie
11\. Did you know that there's this thing called HTTPS?

Blocking pornography can only be haphazardly done at the ISP level, because
porn sites like most sites do not encrypt traffic by default. (I'm still not
sure why this is, but it makes it much easier to find out if people are
browsing porn at work.) When you make this decision, some porn sites will use
HTTPS and the ISP won't know what content is being transmitted. Are you
planning on creating a database of IP addresses which will be censored? What
will you do about the likely false positives, or the generous number of IPv6
addresses now available?

~~~
learc83
I'm betting that the filtering will be at the DNS level. So all you'll have to
do is use an alternate DNS server.

------
Nursie
He's not the only politician to have spouted off loudly about this stuff
lately.

Each one of them seems to think that Google _is_ the internet, and that if
they don/t index something it doesn't exist. Each one of them also
(intentionally?) conflates images of child abuse with images of consenting
adults.

They come across as extremely ignorant. Unfortunately this isn't confined to a
single party.

------
infinita740
> 10 Do you really think these plans will stop the ‘corrosion’ of childhood?

question 10 is indeed the most important one, IMHO blocking porn on the
internet is not going to stop kids to have access to adult content so it's
really pointless unless you want to have a start point for something bigger
(censorship)

~~~
nicktelford
With regards to "corrosion of childhood", I believe "access to adult content"
is a bit of a red herring. More worryingly, kids are spending more time
indoors, isolated (often on the Internet/games consoles, though that's missing
the point).

As little as ten years ago, you'd generally see kids playing outdoors, in the
parks and in the streets, often unsupervised. Now, thanks (I can only assume)
to paedo-paranoia, parents are unwilling to allow their children to play
outdoors at all, let alone unsupervised. I'd consider this to contribute more
to the corrosion of childhood than "access to adult content" \- especially
since they'd likely have less of the latter if they spent more time being
kids.

~~~
smackay
I think the delay in starting a family is also a big factor. Anecdotal
evidence (including personal experience) suggests that older parents are more
anxious about their kids since, from a purely biological perspective,
replacing a lost one is no longer possible. That makes people paranoid about
the dangers to the kids they have. The paedo-paranoia and (my pet peeve)
endless stories of dead children in the media only go fuel parental anxiety
further.

So if Cameron want to stop the "corrosion of childhood", a crackdown on media
outlets eliciting emotional responses to boost readership would be a better
place to start.

------
nottrobin
This article doesn't make the distinction between "porn" and "illegal content"
half clear enough. Porn is _not illegal_ (and in my view not necessarily
immoral) to make or to watch. Using child abuse arguments to legitimise
legislation about porn is just disgusting.

------
speeder
So, Cameron decided to block something that about 60% of women like?

He forgot to research about it or something?

[http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-
sex/201001/wom...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-
sex/201001/womens-rape-fantasies-how-common-what-do-they-mean)

(I know psychology today has some issues... but the article cite its sources)

~~~
toyg
If the other 40% is Mumsnet, then it's not a problem.

------
mikemoka
This totally looks like a way to justify government snooping and limit any
protests in case they get discovered again.

------
smegel
What's next, Empire reborn?

Seriously, a pubic morals campaign under the banner of "think of the children"
looks antiquated in the 21st century.

And if anything it will make abuse harder to identify and track down - instead
of sharing online it will be shady deals out of the boot of a car. The NSA
can't intercept that (or can they??).

Only in Great Britain. A stuffy, red faced PM whipping up a righteous moral
panic because images of this awfully taboo and horrendous thing called human
sexuality are freely available to all.

Is this the beginning of a return to the Victorian era, with it's forceful
sexual repression and the insidious forms of abuse that came with it?

Sad. Not the actions of an enlightened, open society.

~~~
toyg
Tony Blair and friends had already kickstarted an attempt at restoring
Victorian values. Didn't get very far, but bad ideas never die. I can
understand how this sort of thing looks good to a politician, tbh.

Cost: zero.

Support from press: great (the Daily Mail has been campaigning on it for
months already).

Support from senior citizens (i.e. people who actually get their ass to the
ballot box every time): good.

Possibility of blowback in polite society: none (who's ever gonna discuss porn
at dinner parties?).

Negatively affected in a direct way: nerds (don't move votes), kids (don't
move votes -- in fact, if they protest, senior citizens will support it even
more, so it's a win-win).

Economic benefit: likely net positive, since _somebody_ will have to maintain
these filters, these captive portals, these opt-in/opt-out forms, right?

What is not to like ? Ah yes, that "open society" thing. You see, this
government is run by _old money_ people; they were running the show when "open
society" didn't even exist, and will likely keep running it for the
foreseeable future. Openness and freedom were a necessary evil to win the Cold
War. Now that XX century utopias have been dealt with, we can all go back to
the old way of doing things, what what?

~~~
tomjen3
I think they have miscalculated completely. Everybody in the internet
generation looks at porn, not only is it normal joking about it is and while
one might not want to discuss this over the dinner table much politics have
started in bars or over alcohol - here attempts to ban porn would be discussed
_and laughed over_.

------
gravedave
I find this article overly critical. Leaving the feasibility issues aside, I
don't think most parents will just rely on this measure and totally forget
about their own responsibilities. What, do people not teach their kids against
taking drugs, just because they're illegal? Also, assuming that the NSA will
use the list to find terrorists or child pornographers is also ridiculous. If
there's a porn site the ISP's keep track of (so they can "opt" it in the
program), chances are that the site does not have illegal porn on it, so why
the fuck would they care? Even if it could be used for public shaming, who the
hell still cares about who watches and who doesn't watch porn?

The only legitimate complaints are those regarding feasibility, like what
counts as porn (do sites that allow it, but are not really about it, count,
like reddit? or to a lesser extent, as already mentioned in the article,
facebook) but hell, might as well just ask why all politicians make promises
they can't keep. The article would have been way more credible if it kept to
sane arguments, rather than trying to throw around random criticisms like #2,
which makes references to porn that is already illegal, or #3 and #4, which
would obviously never come to fruition. As for #10, which is a legitimate
question, definitely not, but it's an aid towards it, with a significance in
the long term that is yet to be discovered.

------
xupybd
There are some of us the would love an ability to opt-out of certain parts of
the internet. I understand the problem with censorship. But I would love the
option to opt-out. Especially when children are involved.

The internet is an amazing source of information. But currently it is not safe
to leave a child alone on the internet. Is there a way to keep every one
happy?

~~~
zimpenfish
Then, uh, don't leave a child alone on the internet...?

Or install your own filtering software / proxy / whatnot.

(At which point someone normally says "but those don't work" and the sane
people go "and you expect a nationwide one to work instead?")

~~~
noarchy
Particularly, filters run by _government_. If private companies struggle to do
this, imagine how poorly a team of bureaucrats will be at this.

------
drblast
You'll be able to trivially circumvent this, and the first people to figure
that out will be teenage boys.

And then what? Well hey, we can try to block the encryption and tunneling
protocols they use and make those opt-in too.

Inevitably someone who "opts in to use encryption" will have to answer for it
in a criminal trial.

------
acd
This is going the slippery slope rabbit hole of censorship. They start with
this "noble cause", then other things will also be censored that the
politicians consider bad.

Why doesn't the ex politicians explain why they are on consultant payroll
salaries from the big banks, why are they going to undemocratic Bilderberg
group meetings with no public meeting agenda notes, why is CFR setting the
agenda. What is the Trilateral commission planning, why are the members hand
picked. Is it democratic? Why are new political leaders flown there on private
jets? Why do we have central banks that central plan interest rates and ever
increasing debts that make the bank owners richer for every round that goes
around?

Why are we ordinary people being mass surveillanced in Stasi 2.0 fashion in
the name of terror hunting?

------
vog
This debate strongly reminds me of the "Zensursula" debate we had in Germany
some time ago:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen#Blocking_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen#Blocking_internet_child_pornography)

The result was one of the biggest protests in Germany and a huge anti-
censorship petition (signed by about 130,000 people). The law passed
legislation nevertheless, but remained in a strange state between legislative
and executive, because nobody dared to enforce this crappy law anymore. Some
months later, the law was repealed - mostly unnoticed by press:

[http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.7/germany-internet-
bloc...](http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.7/germany-internet-blocking-law)

------
bifrost
I think another question that we should be asking -> "When will the US
administration try this?"

~~~
merlincorey
Did you read that part about the First Amendment Lobby? They're backed up by
The Second Amendment Lobby.

~~~
reader5000
Haha. The Second Amendment lobby would throw the 1a overboard in a heartbeat
if it would help them get more guns into the grocery store.

~~~
merlincorey
I sense someone who does not like guns...

I'm sure it was hyperbole, but how many guns do you really need at the grocery
store? If it's not a zombie apocalypse, my vote is on a maximum of one,
assuming you are licensed to carry it, of course.

~~~
anaptdemise
>my vote is on a maximum of one

Depends on who has it. Might need two.

------
awjr
So I'm guessing Twitter will be blocked. You won't believe the amount of porn
on there.

------
SolarUpNote
My sister's family computer has a porn filter on it. Seems like a great idea
because they have small children. But here are some of the sites it blocked:

* Amazon * YouTube * Reddit * GitHub!

------
bane
For brits, a petition!

[http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746](http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746)

~~~
mmcnickle
Don't sign an e-petition, write to your MP [1]. If nearly 8000 people got in
touch with their MP about this, it woukd be the singular topic of the next
Prime Minister's questions.

[1] [http://www.writetothem.com](http://www.writetothem.com)

------
gadders
It is worth mentioning that the ban on images of rape is to bring the rest of
the UK in line with an existing Scottish law.

Therefore anyone who sees this as a right-wing thing is clearly wrong as
(people are frequently fond of saying) there are actually more Pandas in
Scotland than Tory MPs. The Scottish Parliament is currently dominated by a
left-wing nationalist party that wants to remove Scotland from the UK.

------
n0mad01
everybody knows that this is just a first step toward filtering and censoring
the net, blocking whatever benefits someone powerful ...

------
dclowd9901
If ISPs in the UK have a shred of decency, I'm hoping they phrase the opt-in
as "would you like the internet you pay good money for to be unfiltered?" as
opposed to "would you like to be able to access pornography?". It gives the
subscriber plausible deniability, and changes the conversation to being an
empowerment versus a shame.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
There are another 20 good technical and legal questions on the issues here:
[https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/isp-filtering-
qs](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/isp-filtering-qs)

------
toyg
I'd support this two-tier scheme if, on the clean feed, we could do away with
the semi-secret blacklist and the stupid anti-p2p blocks. By all means help to
keep schools and libraries away from pr0n, but leave competent people alone.

------
yawniek
absolutely retarded idea, but if they do it:

make it IPv4 only, that would finally speed up IPv6 adoption.

------
pbowyer
Interesting read from a youthworker re Paul Bernal's point #10:
[http://youthwork-magazine.co.uk/main/blogs/internetporn](http://youthwork-
magazine.co.uk/main/blogs/internetporn)

------
neeee
>the statement about making it a criminal offence to possess images depicting
rape sounds a good idea on the face of it How does making images of consenting
adults doing something completely legal sound like a good idea in any way?

------
Torkild
"My position has always been that there's two types of people opposed to
pornography: those who don't know what they're talking about, and those who
don't know what they're missing." \- Larry Flynt

------
area51org
Stunning.

I'd love to be able to say that we'd never see this in the U.S., but there are
certain former presidential candidates (mostly Republican) who I can easily
imagine trying to implement something similar.

------
jwatte
If pictures of bad crime and abuse are undesirable, then shouldn't we start
with the worst crimes, like murder? And thus ban every depiction of murder?

------
ultim8k
I think that Cameron supports the idea of asexual reproduction :D Or maybe
that's another way to end internet freedom forever.

------
maerF0x0
In the end they wont be able to block TOR Browser/Vidalia . It will stop
amateurs, but I doubt you can stop (computer) pros.

------
tn13
I thought it was only beggars who used little kids as a means to optimize
their goals. Politicians seem to be doing much better.

------
rwmj
The big question is does this require primary legislation. And how's he going
to get that through?

~~~
alan_cx
By playing the "children" card. And on opposing will be said to support child
abuse.

------
eunice
Cam just wants to distract people from the Lynton Crosby scandal with this
silliness

~~~
MistahKoala
Hardly a scandal, although that won't stop the Guardianistas tilting at their
windmills. Besides, this censorship silliness has been going on for months.

------
Stubbs
Doesn't Google's "Safe Search already do this?

------
rorrr2
You forgot the most important question

0) How will you do it?

The internet is HUGE. Detecting porn is a non-trivial task, but even if you
solve it, you will still need insane infrastructure to crawl the internet and
apply your magical algorithm to every image on every website.

~~~
Nursie
Oh, that bit's simple, in two parts -

1\. You draw up a blocklist of offending domain names and IP addresses for
child porn websites and get ISPs to block them

2\. Force google not to return results for people searching for child porn.

Because politicians and their advisers really do seem to think it's that easy
and that if it's not listed on google it's not on the internet. It's
stunningly ignorant.

~~~
seabee
They've already done that bit:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_%28content_blocking_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_%28content_blocking_system%29)

This move is to please middle England since they read all the headlines about
'1/3 of kids addicted to porn' and stories about teenage rapists heavily
implying porn made them that way.

~~~
Nursie
Oh I know about cleanfeed, ever since the wikipedia debacle. The issue is that
they think it actually solves anything!

I wish it was only one side of the house that was into this rubbish, but
various Labour front-benchers have come out with very similar nonsense. Also
the last labour government seemed to be full of "All Porn is Rape" style
feminists * .

( * please note, I consider myself a feminist in as much as believe in
absolute equality and free self determination for all humans, I just disagree
with some aspects of some feminist philosophy. As do a lot of prominent
feminists AFAICT)

