The UK govt are about to ban all types of porn from the internet (in the UK only of course). People who want porn (normal adult, nothing sleazy porn) will have to 'opt-in' with their service provider. Search engines such as google will have to ignore all search words pertaining to porn if the owner of that IP hasn't opted-in- no idea how they will do this - but if someone tries to find child porn online, they will get a pop-up (Apologies) showing where they can get help for their problem. Jim Gamble from CEOP (Child Exploitation & Online Protection) criticises the move saying the govt need to find the people responsible for putting it up in the first place. People who try to access any type of violent porn, ie snuff movies or even simulated rape will be arrested (via IP address I presume) but Paedophiles won't - this is very strange to me, not the snuff movie guys, the paedophiles getting help posters on their screen rather than a visit by police. They are trying to same normal porn is a stepping stone to kiddie porn, like smoking a joint is the gateway to injecting heroine. Once someone opts-in they go on a database of porn watchers. What do you guys think? Just another step closer to total profiling? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076
I think the gov't is doing exactly what they should. The entire reason man created government is to have a body of like-minded leaders making responsible decisions that control our personal lives. And yes, the act of looking for something is worse than committing the atrocity itself. One of my life mantras is this: If you would just lock your doors, we wouldn't have any thieves. I do not see why the blame has to be confined to a few people when we can all share it.
Google already has a filtering system for searches - I can opt for a 'safe search' or not. I guess I don't see a problem with offering an "opt-in" versus an actual ban. Kinda like zoning ordinances - strip clubs aren't banned, they just can't be close to schools. No big deal.
well if it came to a choice, i'd rather see a guy in his room watching and pleasuring himself rather than committing paedophilia. Obviously I'd save a few lab-rats and let scientists loose on both.
I sure hope you didn't take my post seriously; I thought it was obvious Garball was being Phoenician. I think punishing the whole for the problems of a few is absurd. More absurd is that we can't regulate what the rest of the world does, so we censor what our citizens can see. People always throw water at the flames and never at the source of the conflagration. I had an English teacher in college tell me about an "artist" who would cover herself in chocolate syrup and shove a sweet potato up her ass. He disagreed with the act and did not consider it art, but he would go to bats to protect her performance. I still question that conversation a decade and a half later. Of course, what that artist was doing was not illegal. I, by no means, support kiddie porn and think Dante would have to make a tenth ring for those who make it. However, I'm always wary of how our elected parents are going to solve the matters. If you can sign a "Let Me See Boobies" waiver that allows you to continue on your quest for finding the perfect rack, I don't have a problem with it so much.
I am going to risk sounding like some batshit insane conspiracy theorist here but this is quite disturbing to me. It's a bit of a sly move in my opinion. It's a good thing for a government to act against child pornography, but it is a different thing entirely to make a much broader stroke and prohibit access to any sort of porn by default. I feel that's missing the point, and there is one more problem. People want what they can't (easily) get, if anything this will create a problem not solve one. A quick glance at comments from news articles shows that people feel like they are being restricted, and I can't help but agree. The internet was meant to be free, its power lies exactly in the fact that no one should know what data is being transmitted. First we learn our online activities are being watched by our governments, now they seek to restrict it even further. It's censorship plain and simple, no matter that we are talking about porn -which is a very iffy industry- but if they can do this and everyone will just swallow it, then who knows what will be next? All this SOPA, PIPA, PRISM stuff, it really does begin to look like some governments are hellbent on reducing the internet to a means of controlled, censored communication. I may be taking this too far here, but in the grand scale of recent events, this is just another move to restrict and censor.
I really don't know how they are going to sort out 'violent' V 'non-violent' porn. I just saw a woman n TV saying BDSM and spanking is included as violence.
The ban will last all of ten seconds and then some 15 year old with a hankerin' for spankerin' and some tech savvy will find his way around and then disseminate the info to those who care to know. If there is one thing about the internet that adults refuse to get it's that the adults are not in charge.
Tell you what, I can see this being a huge boost for the Labour party. And it could sign the end of the Lib Dem idiots. Haha.
I think Cameron has just bought a chain of dodgy sex shops down dark alleyways where the dirty mac brigade will be 'anonymously' out in force Seriously though, it's a bit rich from Britain's conservative party - they are quite well known for being the dirtiest dogs in the street, more skeletons than the Parisian catacombs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris
I am not worried about anyone finding a way around, that'll happen anyway, there is always somebody smarter out there...What worries me is the boldness with which they propose this censorship. It's just so hypocritical for the west to stomp on China about censorship only to proudly announce that they'd like to go down a similar path.
How are they going to define porn? What's perfectly innocent to one viewer may be horribly offensive pornography to another. Who was that judge who said he couldn't define it, but he knew it when he saw it? Does the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue qualify as porn? Maybe some strict Muslims, who are used to seeing women covered head to foot except for a narrow slit for their eyes, might think so. How can you ban something you can't reasonably define?
And while we're on the subject... We cater to a huge social lie that 'porn' only means sex acts. I personally think there's tons of culturally sanctified porn that has nothing to do with boobies and wingwangs. How many shows are on the Discovery Channel to the tune of: I Survived this Appallingly Hidious Accident! Complete with actual live footage of the original entrails and dismembered limbs. Enjoying that kind of programming is watching porn. When they made that three part series with actual found video from the tsunami victims in Japan.... That made me ashamed to be a person. That was porn at its ugliest.
I have heard porn discribed as anything that is sexually apealing but lacks artistic merit. To me that is any Rihanna video.
Not of it's the foot of a man. It's probably abuse if it's a women so yea, you'll still be able to watch gay foot licking videos, as long as they don't nibble, that's too much like a baby sucking a tit and highly offensive to us all!
Firstly, the government isn't banning porn. It's attempting to restrict access. And it has failed. ISPs have refused to agree to the 'opt-in' approach, despite what Call-Me-Dave and his spin doctors say. An impasse has been reached in negotiations between the government and the ISPs, which isn't stopping the idiots in charge claiming victory. Fortunately, I don't think this will ever pass into law. It's going to be a legislative nightmare for one thing. For another, it's a civil liberties black hole. People will ask the question 'What does the government have to do with what I do in the privacy of my own home?', and they'll have a point. Banning child and 'extreme' pornography is one thing, but preventing someone from accessing something that's perfectly legal is quite another. The child protection argument is total bollocks. Yes, we need to protect children. But in protecting children there are two separate issues here. Firstly, and most importantly is the prevention of abuse. Second is the prevention of under-age children viewing porn. The former is done by tracking down the paedophiles and taking steps to incarcerate and rehabilitate. The latter is made more difficult by the fact most computer-literate kids can, by the age of 12, get around parental controls. So the way forward is through education. Restricting access just gives something a mystique and turns it into a loaded gun which is more likely to cause problems on exposure - such as when they try to emulate it. Educate a kid and they'll see the same porn, but they'll see it with critical eyes and they might just go on to live all the more sexually fulfilling lives because they've had that education.
But oh no, everyone will turn homosexual, we must ban that too. Yeah, all this pot clanging was probably used to scare some of the weak minded pedophiles.
If only someone could stop the 50+ spams a day I get for products that make penises bigger and stiffer. (Yes they go in the spam box but I check it for misdirected email before I dump it.)
One dicey point about child porn these days is that, more and more, we hear about cases in which the kids are making it themselves. High schoolers (and sometimes even younger kids) are "sexting" each other. They're uploading videos of themselves. They get to an age where the hormone storm hits, so they're interested in sex, and they have all the technology they need to make and share their own porn without any adult assistance or participation. Sure, this is a very stupid and short-sighted thing for kids to do, but kids are short-sighted almost by definition. No adult is abusing them, but they are abusing themselves. How do you reasonably control that kind of behavior? Good parenting is where it starts, I guess, but the unfortunate fact is that not all kids have the advantage of good parenting. So what do you do?
Getting social services involved is a start. But the problem is that social services are over-stretched and shouldn't have to teach parents how to raise their kids. An interesting sub-plot in this is that, when pressed in a radio interview this morning, Cameron said that he wouldn't ban The Sun's topless page 3 because it's a choice someone makes to go out and buy a newspaper. Double standards much, Dave?
Very much depends on context. In the context of page 3, I'd say it is. And a lot of kids will grow up with that opposite them on the breakfast table every morning. Whether that's right or wrong, I'd prefer not to say. The main (and very oblique, given my post) point I was getting at was that there's no difference between going out and buying a newspaper and going out and looking for porn. Both are active choices, and you won't be exposed to either, normally, without looking for them. Though it has to be said that it's less likely that you'll get exposed to someone watching porn on the train than you are to have the guy next to you shove page 3 in your face.
