'Porn lock' heralds death of WikiLeaks, internet, democracy, universe

Market opportunity

How about this for ISP's? Block email from known spamming IP's, monitor, kill botnet traffic and outgoing spam then do the anti virus/malware stopping at the server, so it never reaches you? Another few extra quid a month? Also knocks their traffic down.

No it's not rocket science, but even Paris would understand the benefits. However I think that vested interests might knock this on the head.

Back out into the raging blizzard again I suppose.

Opt out of responsible parenting?

A responsible parent should never leave a child with unsupervised access to a communications network (be it post, email, phone, or web).

Even if you filter every bit of pron? Other threats remain. (Grooming to give just one example).

And the boundaries of child friendly censorship become very difficult to specify. Should young children see news stories, war reporting, violence? What about controversial politics, and demonstrations? Who decides how they learn about their own sexuality? What religious information? Healthcare? Sexually transmitted disease? Abortion?

Censorship of legal communications, in a democracy, should be always be *voluntary*.

Yet even voluntary censorship, still, doesn't allow parents the luxury of opting out of responsible parenting.

Wrong reason for being stupid

The main reason that it would be stupid is that an internet filter of all smut would be impossible. There are so many porn/smut sites out there, many of which are long lasting, many come and go very quickly. Many expired domains get bought up by companies who sit on domain names with the hope of making a profit from selling them. In the mean time they host all sorts of junk, anything that will make a few bucks. A fool proof filter isn't ever going to happen (even before you worry about hijacks). Any system based on black lists is clearly just going to be playing catchup. Any system based on white lists is going to be susceptible to change of use of names and white listing will always be viewed as an extreme form of censorship, it would stop people from launching new website as an when they wanted. You would always have to wait of the MinistryOfThoughtControl to give its approval.

If you want to protect the kids and Mary Whitehouses of the the world then you need to build them a new network. A walled garden where freedom of thought and expression is heavily limited. Only approved suppliers would be allowed in. Strict rules would need to be imposed on content. Then you'd have a constant battle on what would be deemed appropriate. Should you treat 17 year olds the same you you treat 3 year olds?

Ehh?

"This is a very serious matter," said Mr Vaizey. "I think it's very important that it's the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect children."

This might sound a bit sodding radical Mr Vaizey but how about the parents of said children come up with solutions to protect their children? Maybe they could keep the computer in the living room where they can see what is going on.

Is he going to ask Ford and GM to come up with solutions to stop people aren't old enough from driving from getting in a car? Or ask gun manufacturers to put solutions in place to stop people who aren't entitled to use guns from actually using them?

Why when it comes to the internet do parents apparently just walk away from the situation stating that its not their responsibility?

Wont Someone think of the Children?? How about as a parent you take some sodding responsibility for your children's activities for once?

Cretins!

I wish you best of luck with that stupid plan Mr M.P.!

"The internet...designed by adults, for use by adults. Children tolerated!"

Don't worry, it'll never happen...

...The Aussies started all this at a time of economic plenty when all the streets were paved with gold (or printouts of internet porn, one or the other).

The tories are trying to start the same thing when everything's gone to hell, with budget cuts and the smell of mothballs lingering in every corner of Whitehall.

This begs the obvious question. Leaving aside the technical and philosophical flaws with the idea, examining all the worlds websites to decide which are naughty and which are nice is going to be an astronomically expensive and never ending process. So who's gonna pay for it?

Assuming government don't want to have to pay for it (that's normally what "we don't want to legislate" means) then it would come down to the ISPs who would obviously pass the cost to their customers, which would be commercial suicide.

So even if they then push on (which they won't), you'll be able to have your clean-feed internet if you want but if you take the filthy-dirty-middle-england-offending-wont-somebody-please-think-of-the-children-feed instead, it'll cost you a tenner a month less because it's so much cheaper to administer. Which will people choose?

When a politician says they don't want to legislate...

>" The most important and substantial thing Vaizey has said repeatedly on the question of internet pornography is that he really doesn't want to legislate."

You have to read between the lines sometimes, and anyone familiar with the conventions of British politics over the past couple of decades might well read this as a veiled threat rather than a statement of benign good intent. How many repressive laws did the last government force through the statute books after initially having said they'd really rather not legislate? This is one of the most bog-standard political strategies nowadays:

1 - Identify "problem" based on media hysteria, start highlighting it but mention how little you want to legislate and how preferable some kind of self-regulatory solution would be.

2 - Propose extremely drastic restrictive legislation, wait for initial fuss to die down a bit.

3 - Withdraw initial excessive suggestion, present new "watered-down" proposals that are in fact what you really wanted to get passed in the first place, claim to have been reasonable and listened to the voice of compromise.

4 - Profit, as "new" proposal passed by herd of tame backbench MPs who can now sell it on the "reasonable compromise" line.

Just because a politician says they do or don't want to do something doesn't necessarily mean it's true, you know. They do have a record of deception. Skepticism is entirely an appropriate response.

Parentage

If my kids try to visit a porn website they are stopped by Cyberpatrol, a nifty bit of kid protection software. If my kids visited porn websites it is because I have no kid protection software. In that event i am showing that i have no desire to do everything my body can do to protect my kids. If parents with kids do nothing to protect their children from the sicko of the net then they too are showing that they just don't give a dam about protecting their children. I would have no problem bringing in social services.

I love my kids enough to protect them, parents that do not should have their children put under council protection.

Stopping the country from viewing Wikileaks is censorship gone mad and one step towards China and its absurd censorship.

Great idea

If they implement this we can finally stop children being exposed to that obviously obscene Olympics logo on the net.

Of course they will still see it all over the place, but that's OK because it isn't on the internet so it doesn't count.

Do these imbeciles really think they can come up with a definition of 'porn' which a majority of people will agree on, *and* which will be stable enough to last a usable length of time, *and* will be easily applicable to new material and to new technical developments, *and* won't be trivially subverted, *and* won't be easily twisted to apply to them as well?

Haven't they even heard of the very first response to this kind of thing, to substitute the names of the relevant politicians for any 'rude' words they try to ban?

Vigilance remains vital

Yes. vigilance by parents on what their little darlings are up to. But it would be far better to educate them about "inapropriate content" instead of creating forbiden fruit which they will just have to get at one way or another. The challenge of circumventing the filter only makes it more likely that kids will find serious porn sites, as opposed to just Googling boobs and bums.

I am a genius so shut your face and listen.

One one side of the fents is the lunatic religious saying that a dickless man went into low earth orbit, that sex is bad, dirty and nasty and your should save it for the one you love and that masturbation is bad, children born out of religious ceremonies are bastards and single mothers ought to be ashamed of THEMSELVES...

Shame, Shame, Shame - guilt, guilt, guilt, masturbation makes you go blind and we will invent all this silly puritanical bullshit so that NOT having sex makes you pure and having sex makes you sinful....

So side A is anally retentative.

Then on the other hand you get all the crazies who act out all the mad shit that was done to them and their society by Team A and their "morals"....

And it's all crazy.

My scope on the sex online is that some of it is useful in identifying issues, some of it is useful in terms of sexual education, and some of it is exciting and some of it is just really screwed up people acting out what was done to them in their families in direct and in direct "reflections" of the abuse and neglect.

And some of it is just really good "lets fuck like animals" sex...

But my main issue is not that sex is a moral issue, or right or wrong or this type of sex is good and that type of sex is bad etc...

My main focus is on "Is this really role modeling how to have healthy relationships - starting with yourself, and you inner circle of family friends and acquaintances and strangers..."

A lot of online sex really is unhealthy - in terms of setting a bench mark for others to live by and learn from.

I think a lot of it really is harmful and bad for ones self esteem.

A lot of the porn industry is a manufactured product of sicker and sicker activities, in order to stimulate the audience, in order to generate revenue.....

It's just like sticking more and more booze, coke, heroine or gossip into the scene.

While the argument really does hold true that it's up to the parents, and that the parents should be censoring what their offspring access and or view, the truth is that they don't and can't; and what is more important, many parents are hopeless role models who either have no idea on how to role model relationships with themselves and their partner, and if they don't most of them are trapped in the idea of "You must not go an ask for help" - which is coupled with "And what will people think of us if this gets out - the intergenerational family shame and secrecy - the keeping up appearances".....

It's all bullshit.

You cannot role model what you don't know how to do.

And if you don't know, it's your responsibility to go and find out.

Healthy adults dole model healthy relationships and - they raise sane children who can trust their feelings - and when they kids see the crap relationships being portrayed in most of the sexual goings on on the net, they will generally ask themselves, "How does this make me feel?" and much of it "Feels really crazy - because it is really crazy".

People who have been raised to have healthy relationships, pull away from the madness and those for whom it's all they have ever known embrace it.

I found that this book was a good starting point.

http://www.johnbradshaw.com/bradshawonthefamilybook-1.aspx

One rule for parents, one for everyone else

Can't we have a rule that states "Anyone with children should have filters installed". Given the importance of looking after the children (and their insufferable parents), the filters should be crowdsourced. So no mumsnet or daily mail to fuck with tiny little heads.

What's wrong with banning children from the internet anyway? They're not allowed in pubs, so why do we have to put up with their parents whining on about the internets - ban the lot of them and leave the rest of us alone.

Star Trek in Danger

What about the Borg queen and Captain Picard? Cross species eroticism? Inappropriate? Banned?

Or does inappropriate mean that every statement of active politicians which isn't the whole truth will be filtered? Beautiful world, we will never hear again of ideas like porn lock.

That makes this initiative inconsistently and contradictory.

Snap conclusion...fruitcake friendly?!?

That's shill talk. Umm, they've been wanting to censor the net for years. Nanny (thinks it) knows best.

More importantly, what does human rights law have to say about government intrusion into individuals' private (and legal) business? Oh you must have forgotten to mention that. Just like Ed Vaizey, Phorm, BT etc etc...

Silly you. I'm sure it won't happen again. /sarcasm off.

As for "...he would quite like ISPs to do something about it for him", is that along the lines of “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” (http://bit.ly/ihiiUV)