Blocking Internet Porn

[Perrie Juran]

Blocks on internet porn to begin in new year: 20 million families will have to make a Yes or No choice on access to filth.

 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

I have visions of the naughty-word filter and spam-blockers here and don't imagine civil-servants and politicians will be able to come up with anything better.  The only difference is the pron sites won't have to try to break through to homes, their market is assured.

What's the betting that after a 70% drop in hits to known pron sites immediately after this is introduced it'll be back over 100% of previous levels within 3 months?

 ETA for below: yes, that's what I meant.

[Innula Zenovka]

To my mind it's a big deal about nothing.   All that's happening is that ISPs will be offering content filters when you set up your account, and if you don't choose an option, they default to On.   And, as I understand it, exisiting accounts, at least with some of the major ISPs, will be asked if they want to have the filters on or off, with a similar default.

To my mind, most teens will be able to circumvent the filters anyway, so I don't see it as being a huge deal for anyone other than the government, who will be able to say, "Look, we did something about children being exposed to porn on the internet!  Yay us!   Now go and find someone else to blame for the fact teenagers are interested in sex."

[Dillon Levenque]

Good grief. Not to the idea but to the way that article was written. I thought, "This has to be one of that scumbag Murdoch's rags.",  but no! Turns out they're a competitor!  They're right down there in the sewer with Murdoch going at it hand to hand

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Filters have been tried where I live without much success.  There are ways around them.  They also filter out things that are not porn.  For instance it filters out valuable medical information on breast and prostate cancer and sexually transmitted diseases etc., educational articles on reproduction in humans and animals.

Basically its a band aid popular with politicians who can then say they've done something, when they really haven't.

I don't advocate censorship on the web for adults anyway.  That doesn't mean that minors shouldn't have their internet experience censored.

Nothing takes the place of proper parental supervision when kids are on the internet. Any parent relying on filters to assure their kids don't see porn is just shirking their responsibility as a parent.  Minors should not have access to the internet on a computer that is not in sight of a responsible supervising adult.  If the there is no one to supervise, the internet should be forbidden and access to it locked.  Its not going to hurt the kids not to have 24/7 access.  They spend far too much time as it is in front of a screen.  And yes, I practice what I preach.  No one under 18 can access the internet in my home without supervision.

[Orca Flotta]

No one under 18 can access the internet in my home without supervision.

 

Under 18? Didn't you maybe mean under 8? What 17 y/o worth their salt didn't have sex at that age or at least knows how it works? 

[LepreKhaun]

<sarcasm>That makes me feel proud to live in the USoA, <fabrication>where such a thing could never happen.</fabrication></sarcasm>

[Sassy Romano]

About as successful as all the recent blocks on torrent search sites.  Incredibly trivial to circumvent but seen to be doing "something".

I propose a bull**bleep** filter to filter out this sort of nonsense proposed by self important politicians myself.

[jujmental]

Does this mean access to SL will be blocked?

After all, there's more sex in SL than Playboy.

© The Judge

 

[Kenbro Utu]

Hope this is not too obtrusive or complicated.  I have to have full open access on the internet for medical research, whether it be ob/gyn, urologic or gastrointestinal.  You'd be surprised what "Safe Search" will block in terms of medical terminology. 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

---

Orca Flotta wrote:

No one under 18 can access the internet in my home without supervision.

 

Under 18? Didn't you maybe mean under 8? What 17 y/o worth their salt didn't have sex at that age or at least knows how it works? 

---

No I meant 18.  Yes teens have sex before that, it doesn't mean they are allowed to have it in my home, nor does it mean they are free to look at bdsm and other fetish porn on the internet in my home. 

I am not a prude.  One of the objections i have to internet filters is that they censor a lot of great art because it happens to show nudes.  I have no problem with kids seeing naked people.  I believe kids should learn to have a healthy respect and appreciation of the human body.  But porn doesn't promote that, particularly where women are concerned. 

[jwenting]

---

Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Filters have been tried where I live without much success.  There are ways around them.  They also filter out things that are not porn.  For instance it filters out valuable medical information on breast and prostate cancer and sexually transmitted diseases etc., educational articles on reproduction in humans and animals.

I don't advocate censorship on the web for adults anyway.  That doesn't mean that minors shouldn't have their internet experience censored.

---

Worked for a government department years and years ago that had a firewall so strict it blocked their own website (seriously...).

As to pron filters blocking things that aren't, it's been tried at universities where it blocked medical encyclopedia showing body parts, because the images has a high percentage of skin tones in them

Censoring (or better monitoring) childrens' access should of course be up to the parents, not some government bureaucrat spending his or her days creating lists of things that are "appropriate".

[jujmental]

Hurrah! Google and Microsoft are going to rid the internet of kid avatars!

© The Judge

[Freya Mokusei]

---

Kenbro Utu wrote:

Hope this is not too obtrusive or complicated.  I have to have full open access on the internet for medical research, whether it be ob/gyn, urologic or gastrointestinal.  You'd be surprised what "Safe Search" will block in terms of medical terminology. 

---

It's probably worse than you think.

The censorship provision is being outsourced to a £1.3bn deal with Huawei - a company banned from operating in the US because of its highly-suspected ties to Chinese gov't. The ex-military founder was invited to party at Number 10 after his generous investment last year.

With Big Dave trying his very best to delete his own Internet history last week - mostly to cover up the lies he made during the last elections - promising to keep Disabled Living Allowance (then removing it after holding a vote in the non-disabled access basement of the Houses of Parliament), destruction of child benefit, EMA and Future Jobs Fund, the cutting of nearly 20,000 front line care/response personnel (he promised to cut zero) - it's really not very hard at all to see this being used for political censorship. The current government in the UK is full of people wanting to prevent access to information, be it to cover up torture, smashing up hard disks, or just kicking out soldiers before they can draw a pension.

The software involved is also capable of 'blocking' the following:-

• "violent material”
• “extremist related content”
• anorexia and eating disorder websites
• suicide related websites
• alcohol related websites
• smoking related websites
• “web forums”
• “esoteric material”
• “Web blocking circumvention tools”

It's a little difficult to say at the moment how many of these options will be enabled, but given the scope you can imagine the silliness. Good luck trying to contact an alcohol abuse service on a public web connection, young people (not just under 18s, many British people below 25 are still living under a parental bill-payer) seeking information, support or help may be out in the cold.

Many options are available, however. Proxies/VPNs that are built into the OS or browser (I'm fairly certain that Tor/other Onion-stuff and privacy focussed browsers such as Epic will be fine), search engines such as DuckDuckGo, and hundreds of tools that people are already arming themselves with. I've seen fully shareable privacy tools fly off of shelves faster than they can serve requests.

This isn't a suitable way to exercise parental controls, it ignores the problem and encourages technophobic parents to rely on a system that does nothing to protect children and young people. It throws personal accountability under the bus and invites both UK and foreign governmental regulation into your home.

Fortunately, the tabloid 'The Sun' will still have boobs on the cover. The Daily Mail (the OP's link) will still highlight Russian's stapling bodyparts to the pavement. Dave has promised that.

More information here and here.