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back to article PHWOAR! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, Prime Minister

The government wants to stop children getting easy access to hard-core pornography: but the interwebs have exploded in righteous indignation at the apparent emergence of a police state. The Prime Minister wants ISPs to filter pornography, just as mobile operators have been doing for half a decade or so. Users wanting to access …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How many households out there have Internet access? How many of those households have children? How many business with Internet access employ children? If the answer to both is less than 50% then the system should be opt IN instead of opt out.

    Why should adults, businesses and the ISPs have to spend money/time abiding by this system when it has no effect on children at all in these situations.

    Of course the ISPs will also have a list of people who've opted out of the block because while those other categories you refer to can be called 'adult' they are not 'porn' and they are not being blocked.

    Then next, which you've failed to address, is that Davey might then decide that guns, alcohol and gambling hurt the kiddies, then probably free political discourse might also hurt the kiddies. Better get it blocked.

    Finally, have you got some evidence that kiddies are getting more access to porn? Have you got evidence that they are psychologically harmed by it?

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What will be blocked?

    I once worked for an isp that provided schools with internet access. There was a default filter service which was a black list. I once fielded a call from someone who wanted to block a site because it had pictures of a female celebrity in a bikini! He genuinely believed all schools on the network would want this site blocked.

    Additionally every piece of press has a default view that all pornography is bad and viewing it will endanger and corrupt the viewer with little to no evidence out argument as to why.

    Pornography is as varied as any other medium ranging from realistic to fantasy. In the same way I believe a teenager can tell if Die Hard or The Wire is a more accurate depiction of life as a police officer, I believe they can differentiate between the fantasy and reality aspects of pornography.

    Additionally it seems that the talk of body image being damaged due to the perfect/enhanced/shaven bodies of the actors. First of all the actors bodies are varied, more so than any Hollywood film. If you block the varied pornography then the only sexually imagery people would see will be of Hollywood actors which has a tendency to be less varied potentially providing a narrower acceptable body image than pornography provides.

    Pornography can also be educational, there are so many things that sex education does not tell you about sex that pornography does.

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  3. Persona non grata

    The irony that is

    either the government or a telecoms company being put in charge of a morality based decision.

    How we laugh...

    PRISM anyone?

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  4. David Roberts
    FAIL

    Political whitewash?

    I've lost the will to read after the first of at least 6 pages of comments, so apologies if this has already been said.

    Anyway, as we all know a porn filter is a nightmare to set up and manage and relatively easy to circumvent.

    Keyword blocking will just lead to keyword creep and an ever extending list of words with multiple meanings to block.

    So realistically the ISPs don't really want to have to maintain an ever changing but (partially) effective filter.

    The government wants to off load the responsibility for hard stuff then claim a success.

    In practical terms, most Internet users will be forced to opt out of the filters because they prevent so many legitimate searches.

    So the pressure is off the ISPs.

    "Not my problem mate they opted out."

    The government is also absolved of all responsibility.

    "We tried to save you from yourself but you chose to be bad."

    In fact, the more stupidly restrictive the filters the better for the ISPs and the government..

    They can both point to having done their best and shift the blame to the public.

    I am assuming that many will have to opt out of the filter and hope that enough people will opt out that it is seen as a rejection of police state censorship rather than being an admission that you are a pervert.

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  5. plrndl

    Spot the difference

    The difference between a mobile phone with internet access and a broadband connection to a home, is that the former is widely available to children of any age for use unsupervised, and the latter is only available to creditworthy adults, who are de facto responsible to any access they may permit to children. That the two are currently regulated differently is not an anomaly.

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  6. codejunky Silver badge

    A bit wrong

    "most UK ISPs already censor the internet using the Internet Watch Foundation's list of sites hosting child porn, and mobile operators have been blocking adult content for years with few complaints, so it's far from obvious what everyone is making such a fuss about."

    First of all I want to point out the important- CHILD PORN IS ILLEGAL. That is why it is blocked, because it is actually illegal. They block it because it is against the law. If you cant see the obvious difference between blocking the illegal and blocking the legal but immoral then you are an idiot.

    Second you say they block it on the mobile so its fine to block it at the ISP for all other devices. Important difference- MOBILES ARE SMALL, MOBILE BARELY COMPUTERS. On a tech site you should know this, if not seek help from one of your more knowledgeable colleagues. The small device has no filtering software and if the option came available we would need more powerful phones at entry level to run the filter. Also being a very small device it can easily be taken by a child and while she doesnt know how to actually use it the < 2 yr old neighbours kid can unlock and activate various features of mobile phones. Very different for a computer which can easily be seen and can have various levels of blocking (you can even pay someone to do it for you!!!). So while there could potentially be justification for blocking legal but immoral content from mobile phones this still does not legitimise the all out filter.

    Now I will try to help you with the difficult concept of legality and morality. Both are opinion but one is the basis of defining crime while the other is merely being offended by something you dont agree with. Trial by morals means that we are all guilty because everyone has their own morals which are often incompatible. Trial by law gives defined difference between criminal and not. So when the gov starts spouting the corrosive and damaging effects of porn with pretty much zero evidence we can be certain they are talking about morals. And by demonising porn this way they are claiming an entire industry is so wrong they want to punish it, yet it is not so wrong that they cant get support to make it illegal.

    I would also urge you to put your mind to a difficult problem now- is game of thrones TV or porn? I dont actually care about your answer because you have just formed an opinion. And people dont agree. And morality is a few people disagreeing. And you think it is ok for the gov to trash talk based on their morals while not having the support to criminalise it. So regardless of your morals you think it is ok to block a very popular tv show. And by the same manipulation you obviously support the gov blocking and filtering anything they want, totally bypassing the law.

    I started getting bothered about this when the bankers were attacked based on morals regardless of how law abiding they were. They were criminalised as a group regardless of who was or wasnt criminal. I hope this has made obvious what you couldnt see Bill. Because you are part of the media and if you cant see what is in front of you then how can you report on it?

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  7. ewozza
    Facepalm

    The porn filtering proposal is a disaster for Britain.

    If only smart people can jack off while viewing porn, stupid people might have to settle for having sex - which might lead to lots more stupid people.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unneccessary law: Microsoft Family Safety, Apple Parental Controls, etc.

    allow filtering on the device level and also allows me as a parent set a limit on the time my kid spends in front of the computer.

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  9. Ben Rosenthal

    I'm shocked at how short sighted this article is, you really can't see the problem with the government running a list of sites they don't want people to see?

    Yes it all sounds very reasonable today in it's "for the children" guise, I'm not so sure they'll be saying the same thing in ten years time if we let Cammy get away with it now.

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  10. Misfit

    THE PORNS!! ITS ALL OVER THE INTERNETS!!

    Everyone is talking about the over censorship of the net by out now policed state. Lets look at the other end. I can start a site on AngelFire and load it with porn. How is anyone gonna know to block it until somone finds it. There are HUNDREDS of unlist porn sites. Now lets look at torrent sites that offer porn, block the whole thing? No good can come of a universal ISP, possibly government controlled filter. Parents need to wise up and actually watch what thier kids are doing and if they are getting into stuff they shouldn't (not hard to check browser history or router logs) take thier $700 iPad and keep it from them. They will learn how to use the internet properly after they have been without it for a week. A filter is not a substitute for parental responsibilities. With a filter many parents will let thier children have free unsupervised internet reign. Speaking from experience, at 15 I was able to get around a goverment filter. A very quick search on google (it will be blocked, lots of porn) can tell you how to tunnel through ANY filter. Look at the many countries battleing piracy by means of censorship, they have failed time and time again by people wanting the net to be free.

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  11. A J Stiles

    Conflating Separate Issues

    Is it just me, or does anyone else sense a subtle effort being made to elide the difference between "child pornography" and "children accessing pornography" ?

    These are two very different issues.

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just an aside I am on talktalk and blocked social media after 12am in the hope that it would stop son being on Facebook all night. Didn't work of course as he sleeps with his mobile but has interesting side effect that looking at readers comments pages first Page is okay but second or more is blocked. Guess its time I went to sleep anyway.

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