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Britain trying to ban home access to online porn
By Ray RahmanDecember 20th, 2010, 7:31 pmComments (13)
In his bid to become the most hated man in the U.K., Britain's minister of culture, communications, and creative industries is "asking the nation's Internet service providers to block porn from going to home Internet users."
And apparently it's not just him. According to MSNBC,
It's a move backed by the British government. The 3-C minister, Ed Vaizey, told the Sunday Times that according to the proposal, home Internet users would have to ask their ISPs for access to porn, which seems hugely embarrassing, demeaning and a violation of free speech.
Of course, the ISPs aren't exactly thrilled with it either, given the increased workload and decreased profits that such a plan would surely bring about.
The goal is to further protect children from porn. But The Next Web, which is kind of like a British Mashable, made the points that many will surely be making:
How do you define porn? Sure, some sites are obviously explicit but what about sites which cover the academic study of pornography? What about message boards like 4chan which cover a wide range of topics including porn? Where is the line?
If you do block sites which cover porn among other subjects, where do you stop? It’s potentially letting Internet censorship in through the back door.
Adults shouldn’t be stigmatised for viewing porn. Forcing them to contact their ISPs for “permission” does that.
You'd think that in a Big Brother-fearing place like the U.K., people would be going apeshit over the proposed ban — unless going apeshit's already been made illegal. Either way, if this thing happens, there'll probably be one big winner during the run-up to the ban: anyone who sells external hard drives, which will become tiny little bunkers for their owners' favorite porn.
Commentarium (13 Comments)
The UK is a Big-Brother fearing place? That seems a bit off in light of the fact that the ratio of surveillance cameras to people is higher there than any other nation on Earth. I'd argue they've embraced the "Orwellian nightmare" rather wholeheartedly. Not to say that anyone should be required to ask permission to watch lesbians puke in each other's hair either, mind you. And as any techie could explain, proxies and encryption would quickly defeat this approach.
"If you do block sites which cover porn among other subjects, where do you stop? It’s potentially letting Internet censorship in through the back door."
lol, back door
it is totally bizarre to see 4chan used as an argument against this kind of censorship in a mainstream way
Ban all the porn. Only allow religious porn through the tubes. And political porn. And maybe just a little bit of pretend news.
Really bad idea - although, I would have no trouble calling my ISP and asking for porn access. FSM knows, they already have access to information about my browsing habits if they want it and my shame died years ago.
As someone who stumbled across online porn at a far too early age I approve of this idea. An opt in service is a good idea.
Nice one Catherine. Embracing censorship, asking the government to take away our rights, all because you want to play the victim over viewing porn as a kid. Get the fuck over it. It happened, you can't change it. We all have stuff in our past we wish never happened. Moving on is a choice, one that hopefully people like you will make instead of using your "issues" to justify asking governments to play mommy and daddy for everyone. An adult is able to have shit go down, handle it, overcome it, move on and accept that freedom is too important to throw away over some misguided need for control or safety. Get a fucking clue.
I'm with you here. I'm a rape survivor, and porn helps my PTSD, especially the nervous and sexual symptoms. (See, sex doesn't have to be violent. It can be fun.)
As a parent, it is MY job to educate my kids. My parents banned everything, even the Simpsons. Thank FSM for "Friends' Houses." I chose to teach my kids that nudity is divine and sacred, and sex with other people is for grown-ups.
They could have made it mandatory for internet providers to provide internet which comprhensively blocked all porn for those concerned people who would like to opt in, like Catherine.
But they didn't do that. Instead they are making a large blanket ban for all people on viewing pornography.
Me thinks this has some other agenda than "protecting children."
Why don't we have an opt out service which would be far more manageable as only three people would be using it....oh and @tkm just because there are survelliance cameras do not think the UK has embraced anything.....no illegal wire tapping here....
LOL @ the UK fearing Big Brother. Methinks not.
Catherine, thank your parents for not supervising your online activities instead of blaming providers for not censoring them. cjt, the suggestion that ANY nation with wiretapping capabilities isn't illegally employing them is absurd on the face of it. People throw around terms like "in the interest of national security" but if all the facts came out, many people would go to jail, here, there, and everywhere for illegal wiretapping. Nice try at nationalism, but the per capita numbers on surveillance cameras in the UK vs everywhere else speak for themselves.
So they put a barrier on porn access designed to embarrass the average Joe taking an occasional peek at some booty.....next thing, they stop doing that and buy a DVD or two each and swap them around with their mates (as used to occur before the Internet) suddenly, you have lost 30% of Internet traffic.
Does Antonella seriously think your costs to run the Internet structure will remain the same? No. Your share of ISP staff, advertising, upkeep, rental etc will skyrocket.
Why would it be so important to one person sitting at their pc in one locality to be so concerned with what another person somewhere else is viewing on their computer?
So much so that they would be willing to pick up the 30% shortfall in fees in return for what?......peace of mind knowing that Joe isn't able to look at a cute bum?