I can't wait...
...for the first hack of a .gov.uk website to host a bit of jiggy jiggy... 5% of UK turnover would be a fair lump of a fine...
UK.gov wants to fine websites £250,000 if teens watch porn vids
The government has proposed mandatory age verification measures on all British pornographic websites, on pain of a whopping fine in cases of non-compliance. The 151-page Digital Economy Bill (PDF) was laid before Parliament today. It states a requirement for age verification checks, although the practical matter of verifying …
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 22:43 GMT Graham Marsden
Re: And yet premium rate phone numbers ...
Back in the old days of 0898 numbers, whoever was Minister for Sex Crime decided that these (perfectly legal) numbers should be blocked by default on every phone line and, in order to access them, you would have to contact BT and say "Please can I have the naughty phone number block removed from my line".
Astonishingly, very few people were actually willing to do this and the (perfectly legal) adult premium phone line businesses saw their revenue plummet to virtually zero.
Eventually, of course, the default blocking was deemed to be unlawful and was removed, but it's clear that that short-sighted "won't someone think of the children" mentality hasn't gone away :-(
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 09:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Same Old problem
Different "same old" problem: Charities that tell lies to elicit donations from gullible people and backing from gullible politicians. Man the stories these lot tell, when you actually dig into them, are total made up shit.
Here all that will happen is porn sites will filter UK IP addresses, just as they do UAE, and Utah IP addresses now. But that's the point isn't it, a digital economy bill that's more about restrictions and blocks than economy.
Cameron/May *want* porn sites to filter the UK, because Brits rejected the porn filters on their own Internet connections. i.e. Conservatives, at odds with the electorate, try more devious tricks. News at 11.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 16:30 GMT FuzzyWuzzys
I caught my 13 year old daughter looking at grumble flicks the other day, Missus went schizoid on her, followed by the long discussion I insisted me have once my Missus had come down off the ceiling! Kids are curious, they're going to look this stuff up one way or another. When I was a kid it was dirty mags under the local hedge, with kids it's there on the end of a URL or Twitter link.
Managed to frighten the shit out of her though by joking that there could be a knock at the door from the Plod demanding we all go up the cop-shop and my job could be at risk. Now I don't think it's going to be Plod but it'll be a lawyer from the Gov demanding we all appear as witnesses to nail some small time Pron merchant!
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 17:31 GMT NotWorkAdmin
Sounds like my house
My lot are all over 18 now, but I was taken aback the first time the subject of porn came up when they were growing up. Didn't realise I'd been married to a prude for all those years. Amazed now that procreation actually occurred.
The danger is of course, she's probably not in a minority. A huge swathe of the electorate will doubtless support this with no thought to the implications to their rights.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 17:32 GMT Roland6
Re: Late night pron
One of the nice features of my Humax PVR is that it allows me to delete channels, they can only be recovered by doing a retune - a function that is behind a passcode and has to be done manually and hence requires a current listing of the mux's and channels my local transmitter is using...
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 11:11 GMT Roland6
Re: Late night pron
You call adult channels 'mux'?
The UK Freeview system groups tv channels (eg. BBC1, ITV, BabeStation) together into 6 transmission mux's (multiplexes). Each mux is assigned to a frequency band/channel - these groupings and allocations vary from transmitter to transmitter. In the deployment of Freeview and juggling of bandwidth, some tv channels get moved between mux's and in the freeing up of spectrum for 4G, the mux's get moved to different frequency bands.
Sorry for using 'channel' when I meant 'frequency band/RF channel' in my original comment.
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Thursday 7th July 2016 00:55 GMT JimboSmith
Re: Late night pron
I can delete and move channels on my Sony TV's and have deleted all the babestation type channels. However I've put the "ADULT Section" marker channels on channel 59 and 69 with BBC News/Parliament/Al Jazeera/Russia Today etc. in between them.
Howvever there are 2 softcore porn channels (same strength as on satellite/cable) broadcasting on the digital terrestrial television muxes "Television X" and "Babestation Extra". These are supposedly only only accessible by phoning up paying with a credit card and then entering a pin into the relevant MHEG page your tv. However they're actually broadcasting in the clear just without an LCN so most tvs won't find it. The MHEG code just sends you to the data stream when the correct pin is entered via the remote control.
The streams can be watched with either an old Nokia DTT box or a USB DVB-T stick and the appropriate software. No need to have an internet connection and the only difficult bit is installing the right software which from memory was available on sourceforge. It doesn't leave any traces for a snooping parent to find on the browser and can't be blocked by the ISP.
Now i am aware there are worse nasties available on the internet but I'd deal with that unencrypted soft porn being broadcast into our homes first.
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 13:43 GMT tiggity
Re: Late night pron
My freeview tv has a seracgh function on progs.
I was searching for text "best" (partner wanted to see iif best exotic marigold hotel was on as she had dozed through it last time - & ignored my suggestion that was a sign it was not worth watching!)
.. anyway, top result for "best" was not a tv prog but the babestation channel - I'm used to any random search bizarrely giving pr0n results on the net, but now its applicable to the telly too
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 16:31 GMT Jemma
To be honest, who cares?
Teenagers watching porn can't screw them up any more than UK secondary school sex education does, it simply isn't possible to make porn that is more damaging to a developing sexuality than the real life version of Monty Pythons meaning of life skit that is STILL taught in our schools.. "you don't go charging for the clitoris like a bull at a gate!... What's wrong with a little kiss boy?!"
I find it amazing as well that a 10 year old can legally choose to end their life if they are terminally Ill but a 19 year old or older can't - not to mention an age of consent that was laid down to make a Victorian brothel keeper very rich and deal with rampant syphilis infection (a 'cure' for this then very nasty disease was to sleep with a virgin..) and we're still defending it like its the holy grail when it's been doing more damage than good for years..
Personally, to paraphrase "let them watch c*ck...".
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 19:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: To be honest, who cares?
can't screw them up any more than UK secondary school sex education does
You're not kidding. We had "sex education" lessons from an RE teacher.
He's currently spending time at Her Majesty's expense, thanks to his more, umm, 'personal' tuition of some of my young schoolmates.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 19:39 GMT Baldy50
Re: To be honest, who cares?
The miracle of birth part two, the third world! (Yorkshire)!
'A think it's a bit early to start imposing roles on it don't you'?
The 'every sperm is wasted' song is a classic. Don't think the kids in the bath would get passed through the censorship regulations now.
If that film had been produced today there would definitely been an IT sketch or two in it.
I think if porn was filtered to the extent that the abusive types were more heavily regulated than others it mightn’t be too bad a thing but where do you stop! Mary Whitehouse has a different perspective than I do, so ultimately it boils down to who does the regulating and their own personal views.
To me it's just another smoke screen, that your government is trying to protect you and your kids and if it provides extra spysoft in the process!!!!
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 20:43 GMT Jemma
Re: To be honest, who cares?
Ah, the every sperm is sacred song. First time I saw that I was almost crying with laughter - how anyone managed to film that with a straight face is beyond me. I'm amazed they got away with it even then, especially that kid doing the soprano solo.
Not to mention the Salmon Mousse & Americans sketch. Including the ubiquitous skidmark brown Volvo estate.
I think my favourite has to be Life of Brian "...stwike him centuwion, vewy woughly" and "blessed are the Greek.." "did anyone catch his name? "
Sadly however the target of the parody is one of the things over the years that has helped royally screwed up generations of sexualities. Godbothering has a lot to answer for in this respect.
As Eric Idle might put it "I hope there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, because there's bugger all down here on earth".
Scary thought - but if we are visited by aliens in the next two years or so by aliens the first people they'll meet will probably be Donnie Dickwit and Theresa May. I don't wanna live on this planet any more... If you put her brain into a Jackdaw it'd burn down the rookery and invade Poland.
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 08:38 GMT Teiwaz
Re: To be honest, who cares?
"UK secondary school sex education does, it simply isn't possible to make porn that is more damaging to a developing sexuality than the real life version of Monty Pythons meaning of life skit that is STILL taught in our schools.. "
We're going to end up with The Goodies 'Gender Education' at this rate, aren't we?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oWaIdhkGx0
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 08:38 GMT Dave Bell
I used a US on-line game that had an "Adult" option, and required age verification. It was violence rather than sex.
They dropped that a few years ago because, even within the USA, the verification didn't work. I used my driving licence and had to go through a UK-specific check service. Your driver ID number does at least specify you date of birth, in a rather obvious form that a cop can decipher.
Neither the USA or the UK has a clear national ID structure that can verify age,
This latest thing could be stupidity, or if could be a back-door to introduce an ID Card scheme, again.
In the USA, identity checks that take advantage of this lack of a ID system are being used to stop the "wrong" people from voting. We're not that bad, but things such as paperless billing from electricity companies are messing up the assumptions built into our society about proof of identity (and my father's name was on the electricity bill until he died, not mine: no passport, no driving licence, it was about all he had from the usual list).
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 21:01 GMT veti
You're missing the point
This legislation is being pushed as hard as possible (ooo err) by what is called, without as far as I can tell a trace of irony, the "adult entertainment industry".
Step 1: Outlaw providing porn to minors. A lot of people support this, mostly because they haven't thought through what it means.
Step 2: Implement the Great Firewall of Bri^H^H^HEngland&Wales, although to be honest Scotland and NI are if anything even more prudish in this regard so they'll probably be on board too.
Step 3: Block all pr0n sites that don't require proper age verification, which means a credit card number.
Step 4: Bingo! No more free pr0n in the UK! from now on, You Will Pay for your grumbles. As an added bonus, all the transactions will be identifiable and traceable. Won't that be nice?
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 00:12 GMT chris121254
Re: You're missing the point
but it looks like there wont be any website blocking but instead fines so how are they Implementing a Great Firewall if there not blocking sites? and even if they did what are they going to do about VPNs and Proxys and Tor? and many people dont support this so I think you are missing the point here and there will always be free pr0n in the UK if they like it or not, website blocking has never work btw
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 00:50 GMT veti
Re: You're missing the point
@chris121254: perhaps you missed all the spadework that's already been put in to Step 2.
It's been a pornographer's wet dream for over a decade, and thanks to the gullibility, or is it corruptibility, of UK lawmakers, the UK is blazing the trail.
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 12:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: You're missing the point
This legislation is being pushed as hard as possible (ooo err) by what is called, without as far as I can tell a trace of irony, the "adult entertainment industry".
Absolute rubbish. The adult industry in the UK has already been destroyed by ATVOD, and this will just be another nail in the coffin, all based on the age old adage of 'protecting the children'.
XXX
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 17:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Who are these puritanical tossers who are trying to dictate how other people bring up their childern? I had no problem whatsoever with my teens accessing porn; not least because they were going to do it anyway.
I'd be all for education that emphasises the point that porn is not real life; how a lot of the positions are for the camera rather than pleasure for those involved; how consent works; the importance of lube; how you can build up a 'tolerance' and how the search for ever-greater thrills can go a bit wrong and so on.
Mostly, though, what kind of fucking idiot would stop you looking up theory for two years after it's perfectly legal to practice? While porn isn't exactly based on reality; there's a lot of good information out there and I bloody well wish I'd had access to this wealth of info as a young person.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 18:00 GMT Cynic_999
@moiety - I agree 100% with your attitude. Porn doesn't cause any harm to a child so long as they are not being exposed to it long before they have become naturally interested. Sure, they need to understand that it has as much in common with reality as a James Bond movie, but having been brought up in a World of story books, movies and video games, most kids will in any case assume it is fiction even if that is not explicitly explained. If sought by the child themselves, porn does not "sexualise" children - children watch porn because they have *already* become "sexualised" (It's called "puberty" and is perfectly natural, normal and harmless unless it is unnaturally demonised or supressed).
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 18:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Mostly with you there, except that I believe that some things should be explicitly explained; particularly around the area of consent. A lot of mainstream porn is a bit rapey for my personal tastes and there's quite a few things that are fine in porn amongst consenting, paid professionals that should not be imported into RL without everyone involved being happy about it. Surprise arse-slaps; slapping someone around the face with a cock; grabbing people's heads and ramming the cock in...that sort of thing. Good communication is the key here because in RL you haven't seen the script.
Also anal sex should be well-lubed and a cock shouldn't be the first thing in there, for example. If you believe the porn flicks and just launch yourself in there from the wardrobe then you can do real damage.
Also, some positions should not be attempted if you are prone to bad backs. Trust me on this.
Arse-to-anything is a really stupid idea. There's some truly disgusting diseases you can pick up that way.
And so on. While I'm sure that on one level people do know it's a fantasy; beginners won't necessarily know which bits are a good idea to imitate and which bits should definitely be left on screen. If the government wanted to actually help, they should produce a non-judgemental information site that goes into detail about this. Instead, they legislate an actually harmful spreading of ignorance. I despair at times.
Also, porn stars bleach their arseholes, so a quick note on realistic expectations might be helpful, too.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 22:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
"for example. If you believe the porn flicks and just launch yourself in there from the wardrobe then you can do real damage."
Comment of the week right there ^^^^ :'-D
"Arse-to-anything is a really stupid idea. There's some truly disgusting diseases you can pick up that way."
Yep. What the grumble films don't show you is the cleansing 'prep' that's done by the recipients in those scenes. If you ever wish to put off a teen, google for a prep scene and prepare for the ensuing shrieks. 8-|
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 01:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
If you really wished to put off a teen, then -rather than an "are you over 18?" prompt; which will stop teens for approximately no time whatsoever- here's the prompt I'd use:
"You are here today because your parents did this. Are you REALLY sure you want to continue? What has been seen cannot be unseen.
[Yes] [Ewww! I'm out of here]"
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 20:50 GMT Jemma
@ Moiety
You answered your own question by word four... Sadly they're the ones in charge, mostly behind the scenes of the school system... C of E school and you don't go to church? Not a hope as an ex gf found out.. Although her four year old, when asked what she wanted to be in church, blurting out "I wanna be a lesbian when I grow up" was priceless. That child had all the tact of a Claymore mine in an orphanage.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 17:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
the newly created Age Verification Regulator
eventually the point of this nonsense. the government knows as well as everyone else that this is unenforceable and pointless as most sites will just move abroad. what they are really after is a new government body that provides jobs for more useless government busy bodies at the public's expense. how much does anyone want to bet that the first ones employed will be the people who recommended this approach.
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Thursday 7th July 2016 13:23 GMT P. Lee
Re: And of course the funny thing is...
>Each and every one of us - even members of parliament - is the descendent of a long line of ancestors, each and every one of whom chose to follow an interest in sex instead of denying it.
Pro-sex and pro-porn are not the same thing. Had those ancestors spent their time watching sex instead of having it, "we would not be."
There is also a tendency for porn to spoil relationships which would otherwise involve sex. There are plenty of good reasons for this. Firstly, if you spend lots of time with someone more attractive, younger and better endowed than your partner, the likelihood one of you is going to be dis-satisfied. It doesn't even have to be "lots of time." In most relationships involving sex there is usually an expectation of exclusivity. The person on screen might only be pretending to like their partner, but if you choose to deliberately increase your (very real) arousal level with someone who doesn't even know you exist, instead of your partner, it indicates something about how you regard sex with your partner.
There are problems with impulse control. Delayed gratification isn't only something that's useful in financial planning!
There's something really rather sad about taking something which is wonderful bonding activity for two and turning it into an activity for a lonely one. Perhaps if the porn was turned off, and the company of real people (rather than MMOs or facebook) was worked on or some books which enhance cognitive processes were read, things might be better. Perhaps the attitudes and expectations expressed in porn mislead viewers as to what relationships are all about. Viewers may not expect sex when they walk through the door, but making sex "the main thing" between men and women might not be a winning attitude to acquire.
I'm not saying these exact issues are always in play, or the uk.gov is right in what they are doing, but its best not to see stupid government policy and conclude that the opposite is actually a good thing. Its one thing to give people the freedom to do something stupid, its another to endorse it as "good." We give far too much credence to the law as defining what is good and we expend far too much legislative effort in making sure that the law only allows what is "good." That just leads to sledgehammer-nut (ouch!) situations, taking the law where it should not go and increasing legal intolerance for diversity.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 20:12 GMT GrandTour
That's going to be interesting
What you should really be doing is fining websites and advertising agencies 250k for malware infections. (that's 250k per computer infected)
But wait, there's more!
The owner of the ad company will immediately surrender all business assets to the proper regulatory authorities.
Basically, run malware ads that destroy people's computers, BOOM! your business has been destroyed.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 21:05 GMT Mike Tubby
First the Pron, then what next?
Consider this:
1. Law requires "age verification" for access to Pron
2. Law fails because 98% of Pron is hosted overseas and outside UK legal jurisdiction ... is PronHub really going to do what UK HMG tells it... probably not...
3. HMG manufactures public outcry along the lines of "we made this law and they ignore us - think of the children", followed by
4. new message from HMG "We have to censor the internet - think of the children", followed by
5. its not just Pron now, its religious views, hate crime, anti-this, anti-that, anti-the-other
Part 3 of the Digital Economy Bill is bad law making and potentially the start of a slippery slope...
Mike
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 21:26 GMT Pen-y-gors
Wait! This is actually an improvement!
" its definition of “pornographic material” covers video, still images and even sound-only recordings."
I seem to remember from when they banned all the kiddie-fiddling stuff, that they also included cartoon depictions (like the Olympic logo of Lisa Simpson being naughty), text-only items and even thinking about young persons in a certain way (although saying aah, isn't he cute at picture of naked baby on bearskin rug is okay, but not Phoah, isn't he cute)
I despair at our politicians, I really do.
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Tuesday 5th July 2016 23:05 GMT Graham Marsden
"I can't tell you what it is...
"...but I know it when I see it" as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said.
The problem is that what he or Mary Whitehouse or her "spiritual" successor might see is not what is actually there.
I run a business making affordable leather products which, as you may guess, is a euphemism for bondage gear and BDSM toys and my website has adult content, but it's not "pornographic" as far as I am concerned, but our Thought Police may think otherwise.
So do I have to ensure that everyone who visits it is over 18? If so, how? Do I make them supply a credit card number or maybe send a picture of their passport (hmm, nice opportunities for fraud there) ? Or perhaps they'll need a government issued ID card number...
Meanwhile all the other sites out there in the rest of the world don't have to have similar systems put in place because they're not based in the UK (or they're big enough that they can afford whatever programing and infrastructure costs are involved to introduce this system), so bang goes my business and all the money goes to a few big companies (who will, no doubt, have "tax efficient" accounting systems) or to foreign companies who will not pay anything to the UK Exchequer.
But, never mind, at least the children will be protected (well, apart from the ones who are smart enough to bypass this nonsense or just get their pr0n from non-UK sites...)
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Wednesday 6th July 2016 08:21 GMT Wils
I find the head chopping videos somewhat more offensive, however I'm sure where this legislation is headed it can take care of everything down to subversive content. It will be interesting to find out if this is the start of a global (NWO) agenda.
Strange how until recently child abuse was ignored by almost everyone, and yet now some 20 years too late TPTB are worrying about teenage sensibilities and their Internet use. The ICANN and other bodies could quite easily make voluntary ISP filtering work - at minimum effort and cost. But it's not (just) about Porn.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
