UK's government starts blocking online porn.

[justoh]

How does viewing porn harm children?

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Smaller government! More following the constitution! More freedoms!
Unless it's porn. Or birth control. Or abortion. Or anything to do with gay people. Or anything that has any kind of remotely tenuous connection to sex, gender, or genitals. That's when we need the government, long held as a shining example of an unshakable sense of ethics, to be there to keep us mere mortals from going astray.

Nice strawman.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

How does viewing porn harm children?

The issue here isn't that children are watching porn in record numbers. Or that there are record numbers of pervs watching porn in a public library in the kids section. Those are red herring arguments in regards to the real purpose of this initiative and that is to have the public become comfortable and accustomed with government imposed limits and sanctions for digital internet content.

It is a false "War against pornography" which is nothing more but establishment of precedence in handing government more power to censor whatever it may arbitrarily deem "offensive". Sadly the UK has gone hog wild with this idea that they can and should arrest people for offending others via statements made online or in life and now have allowed their government to recently wage a campaign of censorship on the internet all under the guise of the "Greater Good" and "Its for the children!" arguments. Which are nothing more than a front for government putting itself into the position of having controls in place for information gathering and censorship in medium that it has had past difficulties with controlling. Using the idea that they will protect kids from porn by ordering ISP providers and search engine companies to install filters is just a nice cover story for those people whose first knee-jerk reaction to the mention of the word "pornography" is to nod their lemming heads together in agreement rather than to question this action and its true intent, especially in the long term.

 

[justoh]

Well they couldn't sell the child protection intent if nobody believed viewing porn harmed anybody. What reasons do people give for how it could do harm?

 

[Doppel]

Not just that, but these systems aren't any good. Look up "hide my ass" - it's a proxy running with SSL. Maybe they also just block all proxy sites, but I bet they don't have them all. This idea that you can block something is silly. You can make it harder, but the people who are determined will get it anyway.

I remember as a kid, my parents got some filtering. I liked the barenaked ladies at the time (yeah yeah...) and the filter just keyed off words. It didn't realize it was a pretty benign band. It filtered some other harmless stuff too, and it annoyed the hell out of me. I needed the password to uninstall the filter, but didn't have it...however I found some silly christian site that had their own version of the filter program as well...and I was allowed to install that filter over top of the existing one, allowing me to set a new password...and then uninstall. When my computer time was up...system restore made it look like nothing had happened.

Now, we've moved beyond windows XP, and so have the filter programs I imagine...but this whole idea of blocking internet access becomes a slippery slope. How far will you go to ban it? Block proxies? Block TOR? Block all unknown websites? Why not have parents deal with this problem?

There are really so few public proxies like the one you mentioned that blocking them is very easy--and some blocking approaches like the opendns IPs know about all these proxies and won't let you get to them--though there could be scope creep and I don't know if the UK approach will block proxies as well. OpenDNS blocks all porn and all proxy sites that I have tried, and yet otherwise blocks nothing I've ever wanted to visit.

Well they couldn't sell the child protection intent if nobody believed viewing porn harmed anybody. What reasons do people give for how it could do harm?

You could try googling how porn is affecting children, a lot of people have studied it. 30 years ago plenty of 17 year old guys hadn't seen much more than boobs in a magazine before they see the real thing, now you've got kids spanking off to hardcore porn thrice daily and so by the time they see a real girl their expectations on what she will do and how things will go will change. It's possible the kid will be disappointed when she doesn't want to do what the paid whores pretend they enjoy.

 

[justoh]

There are really so few public proxies like the one you mentioned that blocking them is very easy--and some blocking approaches like the opendns IPs know about all these proxies and won't let you get to them--though there could be scope creep and I don't know if the UK approach will block proxies as well. OpenDNS blocks all porn and all proxy sites that I have tried, and yet otherwise blocks nothing I've ever wanted to visit.You could try googling how porn is affecting children, a lot of people have studied it. 30 years ago plenty of 17 year old guys hadn't seen much more than boobs in a magazine before they see the real thing, now you've got kids spanking off to hardcore porn thrice daily and so by the time they see a real girl their expectations on what she will do and how things will go will change. It's possible the kid will be disappointed when she doesn't want to do what the paid whores pretend they enjoy.

It is to protect children from possible disappointment resulting from unreasonable expectations?

 

[inf1nity]

Americans, put away your weapons, and relax, because...

Spoiler

 

[Jeff7]

Nice strawman.

Simply an observation of far-right tendencies. The "small government" thing suddenly ends when anything related to sex is seen as a problem. Then it's government-to-the-rescue.

 

[OutHouse]

looks like Obama is doing a little prep-work.

A joint British and American “task force” will be created to tackle obscene websites,

 

[Wreckem]

looks like Obama is doing a little prep-work.

Obscene material is not protected in the US. Not all pornography is obscene. In reality most pornography does NOT fall under obscenity. They are going after obscenity, not pornography. And it was Bush(and with the help of other Republicans, such as Hatch and Alberto Gonzales), not Obama, who created the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Obscene material is not protected in the US. Not all pornography is obscene. In reality most pornography does NOT fall under obscenity. They are going after obscenity, not pornography. And it was Bush(and with the help of other Republicans, such as Hatch and Alberto Gonzales), not Obama, who created the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force.

What constitutes obscene material? The government seems to have changed tack to approach pornography by just making it more and more costly to put it up, not? At what point will freedom of speech come in?

 

[Darwin333]

Good. We need to do this in the United States - to an extent.

When I take my 10 year old nephew to the library I shouldn't have to explain to him why there is an old guy in the children's section watching pornography.

So much easier to explain to him why the .gov is outside the library burning books....

 

[Darwin333]

There are really so few public proxies like the one you mentioned that blocking them is very easy--and some blocking approaches like the opendns IPs know about all these proxies and won't let you get to them--though there could be scope creep and I don't know if the UK approach will block proxies as well. OpenDNS blocks all porn and all proxy sites that I have tried, and yet otherwise blocks nothing I've ever wanted to visit.You could try googling how porn is affecting children, a lot of people have studied it. 30 years ago plenty of 17 year old guys hadn't seen much more than boobs in a magazine before they see the real thing, now you've got kids spanking off to hardcore porn thrice daily and so by the time they see a real girl their expectations on what she will do and how things will go will change. It's possible the kid will be disappointed when she doesn't want to do what the paid whores pretend they enjoy.

The best you could come up with is preventing adolescent boys from being disappointed with their sexual encounters??? To be fair thats way better than anything that I could come up with but still... I bet the exact same young men are far more disappointed when they don't get any sex at all, so do we ensure they get laid with some new legal approach? What if they aren't actually disappointed in the sex but with who they can get to have sex with them, how do we protect them from that?

 

[justoh]

I heard that one before from doug stanhope, when he's talking about vice cops. He goes on about how we don't need them, and how every vice moderates itself. You watch too much porn, you desensitize yourself to the kinds of women who are actually likely to fuck you, etc. It's a funny observation, but surely they need a more serious argument?

 

[1prophet]

What constitutes obscene material? The government seems to have changed tack to approach pornography by just making it more and more costly to put it up, not? At what point will freedom of speech come in?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._California

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.


—Justice Potter Stewart

 

[RampantAndroid]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._California

Yeah, I saw that...hence why I asked, hoping for a better answer

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

What constitutes obscene material? The government seems to have changed tack to approach pornography by just making it more and more costly to put it up, not? At what point will freedom of speech come in?

From what I have heard.

Anything which can be legally sold, in a legally registered (sex) shop, in the UK, is fine.

Anything which can't, is also fine (Fines usually up to £50,000, and/or prison sentence, not sure on actual penalties).

So to be clear, if it CAN'T legally be sold in a (sex) shop, it is considered BANNED. (actual rules are probably very complicated, so unrelated things will not be BANNED).

-----------------------------

I think there is a possibility that this new law may not go ahead, as there are a number of difficulties with it.

Some other things have fallen by the wayside, which the existing government tried to bring in. This may go the same way, or be watered down.

------------------------------

Your next question might be, "What can legally be sold in a legally registered (sex) shop".

The approximate answer is something which can legally be shown on TV or Cinema in the UK, but a bit worse (maybe).

I think there are certification board(s) which classify things as suitable for 15 years and over, suitable for Children, etc
At the top is either suitable for 18+, or BANNED (Censored if you like).

I.e. A film which is too extreme (violence/sex/etc) may be BANNED.

 

[Doppel]

It is to protect children from possible disappointment resulting from unreasonable expectations?

Well, when you put it that way...kind of. :$

I assume somebody has a better argument for it than that.

 

[Darwin333]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._California

What in the ever living fuck kind of legal ruling is that?

"I can't tell you how not to break the law but if you do I'll know it when I see it".... foe real dawg?

 

[Wreckem]

What in the ever living fuck kind of legal ruling is that?

"I can't tell you how not to break the law but if you do I'll know it when I see it".... foe real dawg?

The number if obscenity cases is pretty low these days. And that's because as a nation we are more deviant than we were two decades ago. That's the beauty of the miller ruling as time changes what obsenity is changes. Much to the dismay of the religious right.

A lot of online porn would have been obscene in the 1980s but today, not so much.

 

[Vic Vega]

...

 

[Zodiark1593]

Seriously? That's some retarded library policy. I know both the public and university libraries in my area will ban you from the property and cancel your library card (if you have one) if they catch you looking at porn.

Not being conspicuous helps, and being able to change your MAC Address at will is always a plus. (speaking from experience with getting banned at my local library, but not for porn ^_^)

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

So can any Brits confirm that porn is blocked?

What is displayed on a "blocked" page?

It has not started yet.

It's for the future, not now.

Nothing is blocked! (as regards the new law that the government want to bring in).

Obviously ISPs may block spam sending sites, and other stuff. But this is nothing to do with any new laws, and has been done for a long time.

Starting at the end of this year, all new customers will have the filters turned on unless

Source of above quote

British PM David Cameron has announced that all UK households are to have their access blocked to online pornography unless they choose to ‘opt in’. By the end of next year, households will have to accept or decline an automatic porn filter.

Source of above quote

 

[piasabird]

Maybe they have a porn union and only UK Skinjobs are allowed. It is a protection racket. Maybe they are taxing Porn or you have to have a UK Porn License.

 

[piasabird]

So how do they know what is Porn? Its the Porn Police? Arent all UK Sites kind of slutty anyway?