South African Bill to block all porn

Great logic

According to Gigaba: "Cars are already provided with brakes and seatbelts, it is not an extra that consumers have to pay for. There is no reason why the internet should be provided without the necessary restrictive mechanisms built into it."

Surely : "Cars are already provided with brakes and seatbelts to prevent unnecessary deaths both of the driver, but morally more significantly, of innocent others. This equipment is therefore not optional, and ALL drivers must pay for it in the price of their cars.

Pornography does not cause death and does not harm others in any manner more statistically significant than, for example, eating fish - therefore building in non-optional restrictions into the viewing of pornography reflects an arbitrary moral standpoint on sexuality which will cause considerably more persecution and suffering of others through politically motivated witch-hunts than were it left unrestricted."

How does the Home Affairs Minister define what is and what is not porn?

Or does he just know it when he sees it?

Where do these numpties come from?

Politicians without a clue, OR politicians under increasing "religious" pressure.

Pretty soon, we'll all have to shower in our underwear, lest we catch a glimpse of something naughty!

South Africa should know better.

Australia should know better.

The radical Muslim states, well who gives a fig?

Comparison to seat belts?

I dont really think that most people want their internet filtered a la China like they want seatbelts in their cars.

Methinks it's the old "freedom from" argument that most dictators use.

If you want a highly technically literate youth

block all porn.

That wont stop it being accessible, but it will require a bit of serious effort, and the only people who wont be able to access it will be the older generation, who will be free to run the country and visit prostitutes.

Everyone wins.

On one hand they ban porn, but look at how the president of ZA acts!

On one hand they ban porn because it is offensive to woman, but on the other the president marries several woman at the same time and fathers 21 children that the local tax payers need to support. The tax payers in South Africa pay around R15 million each year to support his growing family...

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Zuma-dad-for-the-21st-time-20100531

Nice....

....backdoor effort in killing off sex education and aids prevention, meguesses. And also a practice round for the implementation of the nuts, bolts and gears of a totalitarian state.

I don't get it

What exactly is he trying to accomplish here?

Wonderful World

So I guess they're gonna have a nice network with no ssh or https, no VPN traffic and probably no torrents.

ports 25 and 80 only and then only where the traffic is in plain text, no gzipping or compression.

after that you change your block lists to include any image cache sites (google this includes you) and anything that can do searching in case you get led to the wrong site by using terms like "Analyst" or "Analysis" and some joker can't spell analist ...

then you put in place firewalls that look for flesh tones on pictures and block anything over 30% ...

The next step is to drop all connections of anyone looking for these sites on more than 1 occasion ...

there you go, you're at the point where noone would in their right mind even bother to use the internet ... especially since if you're in south africa you can just go and see porn, violence and rape on the streets whenever you want.

Well....

what will they blame on one of the worlds highest rape numbers on when this has gone? Poverty? Poor policing? Family break down? Low Morales? Any other thing that's hard to tackle?

Nah, sure it will be TV next....

at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorists..

The big money flows into africa now are coming from the right wing fascist christians in the USA - largely the Focus on Family wankers.

They spend shed loads of money propping up the radical christian churches out there

and they have a few major items on their agenda:

1) kill the gays - tho of course, they call it something else

2) banish all porn

3) outlaw all other religions

Because they bring big money, they find scum sucking (as opposed, I guess to cum sucking) politicians who will push any agenda for the right money.

This, people, is not a good thing.

Oh how PW Botha laughs...

The government in South Africa has come full circle.

Pieter-Dirk Uys, the South African satirist, came to the attention of many people because of the Apartheid government's prudish views on things like pornography. And he was so right when he said that he never could have imagined that the new post-Apartheid government would be providing him with much more writing material than PW Botha and his cronies ever did.

Oh how PW Botha is laughing from his grave now... This bill pretty much returns South Africa to the same state it was in in the seventies, where magazines like Scope had to use stars on the nipples and nether regions of the ladies to preserve their modesty.

Just trying to make the network stretch further?

SA has pretty awful connectivity; my chums down there are always reporting bandwidth problems and outages. Currently I hear there is a cut in an undersea cable that has dramatically reduced capacity, and the rumour is that SA has handed 90% of the nation's remaining capacity over to FIFA for the duration of the World Cup. My contacts tell me they are already enjoying an unannounced 'two hours on, two hours off' regime on their connection, with availability switching precisely on the hour, and expect it to become very much worse soon...

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

I used to live in the UAE and the "blocking" there was a joke - It was enforced as only one carrier provided internet at the time (Etisalat). Not sure if that's changed since but back then you could bypass it by using an offshore proxy / some HTTP tunnelling.

It also used to operate on a blacklist basis (I suppose whitelisting the entire internet is little too challenging) so as new proxies / anonymiser services became available they were usually accessible for months/years until Etisalat finally caught on.

No safer sex than masturbation.

South Africa's moral guardians have a huge problem with sex amongst their populace, especially with an estimated 5.7 million people living with HIV and AIDS in 2009.

If they really cared, well for the males at least (we all know women don't watch porn !-) they would offer free computers and porn and preach the virtues of a safe ejaculation into a nice antibacterial tissue.

Or, they could do what most developed societies do and concentrate on building up a decent economy that provides decent jobs and work. Nothing like dreary old work to put your mind off sex.

How can they tell?

The ISPs will be jailed if they let porn through? (How do you jail a company by the way?)

Exactly how are they supposed to tell what is porn? Quite apart from the impossibility of scanning such a gigantic flow of data, some stuff can only be tested in court.

So a ridiculous chilling effect, as they'll have to ban anything that any demented prosecutor might claim to be porn. (Such as for instance anything supporting opposition politicians, maybe?)

Of course some blocks on obvious porn will be relatively easy, such as scanning for the Olympics 2012 logo and blocking any site displaying it.

lest we forget

1 in 4 South African men have admitted to raping a woman.

South Africa has the highest incidences of child and baby rape in the world.

There are 100 murders or attempted murders per day.

Porn is not a problem in SA at the moment, but the world cup going there is a travesty.

Naughty words: knickers, pants, bra, Y-fronts, briefs, thong, G-string

Will I be allowed to shop online for underwear?

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Does that include Picture Messaging - the article wasn't too clear on how much was being asked of the mobile companies...

@Daggersedge

South Africa has signed and ratified the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, Article 9 of which states that "1. Every individual shall have the right to receive information" so they agree that there *is* a right to "view pornography or anything else" unless they're going to start picking and choosing which information is acceptable for people to receive.

And as this is the *African* Charter, it is at the very least the business of others on that continent apart from those living in South Africa since those others are "Firmly convinced of their duty to promote and protect human and peoples’ rights and freedoms and taking into account the importance traditionally attached to these rights and freedoms in Africa".

Yes, other countries do things differently, but when they a) accept a set of rights but then b) start restricting those rights, someone needs to call them to account.

Best of luck, Mr Plank!

Where there's a will, there's a way! CP is illegal, doesn't stop the dirtbags from getting it and leaving it on their phones in public places.

So Mr Plank, what constitutes porn then, eh? We'd best define what is and what is not, classed as porn eh? "Images created or obtained for sexual arousal."? Would that fit?

Right, well you'd best be ready to lose shit-loads from your economy 'cos a bloody great percentage of the ads you see are designed to arouse us in subtle ways to get us to boy stuff! Sleek new cars, deodorant ( although the Lynx effect doesn't work me! ), food, coffee, etc.

How about banning the women's gymnastic events too. Fair few blokes sending the Missus down the shops on a Saturday afternoon, so they can have a bit of quiet time with Anna Triple-Pullover and her prowess on the bars!

This battle for control is a horrific nightmare in the making...

Oh great more moralist arrogant control freaks in political power seeking to impose their will for an Orwellian world on everyone else.

@”impossibility of scanning such a gigantic flow of data”

Matching URL's with a banned hit list of URL's is unfortunately entirely possible. Its low tech, but it works enough to educate a population into becoming fearful. Fear is the ultimate means of control. People's own fear will control them. (Fear can be used to control as Orwell showed). For example hit the wrong URL, you are fined. Hit it a few times then you get punished even more seriously. But dare to keep hitting opponent political URL's and you end up repeatedly getting arrested and even detained (strangely whenever there are political protest meetings about to happen) or worse still, you end up vanishing into a jail for years or even worse in some countries you will end up in a shallow grave.

But the technical side is ultimately less important than the endless will of the arrogant moralist control freaks who are determined to find a way to control people ever more. Because they will find a way to control whatever that technology is and their endless desire for control will make things ever worse for everyone they control. They will find a way to increase their control and they will spend billions of other peoples money just so they can gain ever more power for themselves. (Its what they have always done throughout history, its just now they have ever better technology to abuse. The control freaks will not be able to resist abusing technology to give ever more control, and they can see its going to be way beyond their predecessors wildest dreams).

Ironically the more the control freaks seek to impose their will by spying on and so controlling and micro managing peoples lives, the more the control freaks create public anger against their control. But its more than this because they also therefore educate the public about the control freaks core desire for control over others. The control freaks rampant need for control is ultimately them plotting their own demise from power. In short the more the control freaks seek control, the more they move the public towards a revolution against their control.

The Internet has already transformed many industries and the way the control freaks are going, its going to transform politics as well. I guess its about time the world changed, this minority of control freaks in every generation have subjugated the population for long enough. They even take their countries into wars just so they can gain more power over more people. Its time the world pushed the control freaks out of power and to one side and ironically its the control freaks own actions which is breeding the publics increasing anger and hatred against them.

@DaggersEdge

If you believe sovereignty really has any significance when it comes to internet based media and information, you are still living in the dark ages. Countries can only *try* to place borders around parts of the internet, but they will never be 100% successful. (Even with a 100% successful border, it will simply mean people will create underground private internets using VPN or whatever.) People who want to get to smut in South Africa will find a way. In the end is it worth the financial cost?

This is where......

the TLD of xxx would come in useful, I mean sure, there are always going to be people who won't play by the rules but if legislation made it against the law to publish pornographic images on any "normal" domains (and with meaningful punishments for those who broke the law) then those countries who did wish to ban pornography would have a much easier time of it.

Now don't get me wrong, I dont have a problem with Pron, I dont have a problem with a country banning Pron or whatever is offensive to its populace. This minister was DULY ELECTED so I am guessing that there was some kind of manifesto that suggested that this might be a policy of the government?

Another dumb government

This is surprising given the reputation of the SA government leadership and their reputation.

Smart InterNet users know what and how to do circumvent filters, obviously the SA government doesn't.

Irresponsible Reporting

This document is not a real "bill". It was developed by an independent

organisation (with a board including three pastors) as a proposal for

a bill they would like to see tabled. A real bill is something that is

actually tabled in parliament, usually by the relevant Department.

Who the what?

".....the Justice Alliance of South Africa...."

Is it just me, or did everyone else get spandex, capes and masks with that?

erm

So what if I transfer porn from my phone or laptop, lets say I have recently visited I dont know Germany, and then decide to transfer that porn to my friends phone or laptop over bluetooth or wifi overmy own private network... is the ISP still guilty of allowing porn to be distrubuted?

This Gigaba dude

probably thinks the internet is a little black box with a blinking red light and a 'disable porn' switch.

I think a bill to prevent stupid people from becoming politicians would probably solve more problems.

backward country - and this will backfire

Having previously lived in South Africa, I can't see this *ever* being enforced.

The sad fact is, the government is incapable of even enforcing traffic laws - drunk driving, speeding & unroadworthy cars are the order of the day. The chances of being pulled by a cop are 100 to 1 and if you do, you can usually bribe them.

The South African government attempts to appear 'civilised' and 'first world' - they take on ideas from first world countries, whilst completely neglecting the needs of the population - education, housing, welfare, hospitals - the list goes on.

This is a country with over 40% illiteracy amongst the adult population. Unemployment is about the same rate. It has the highest HIV rate in the world. It has one of the worlds highest crime rates.

What we're seeing here is a return to the insanity of the previous Apartheid regime - plain and simple. There's no democracy, no rainbow nation, it's a one-party system where the ruling elite do as they please.

In short, welcome to Africa.

This new bill won't be worth the paper it's written on, simply because it will never be enforced.

South Africa is, to all intents and purposes, lawless - it's the wild west.

Having said all that, it's a bloody fantastic country that's sadly being run by a bunch of clowns (who took over from the last bunch of clowns) - banana republic.

Malusi Gigaba?

Or "make less the gigabytes"?

Mines the one with the pornography detecting packet sniffer in the pocket.

This will make teaching South African history interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_smuts

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