British Prime Minister Promises Default On Porn Blocking 311
judgecorp writes "David Cameron, the British Prime Minister has promised that the UK's ISPs will be required to provide connections with 'porn blocking' filters switched on by default.. The public promise comes despite opposition from ISPs, and the near-universal acknowledgment that the system wouldn't work. Last week also saw the leak of a letter from the Department for Education which effectively told ISPs to lie — to implement their preferred 'active choice' system, and simply call it 'default-on'."
The crucial point (Score:2, Interesting)
The crucial point is that if no porn is available, the boys will just wank off the photos of clothed models and celebrities as they did before the Internet was widely available, and it's hard to find any valid argument why wanking off the photos of clothed people is inherently better than wanking off the photos of nude ones. It certainly didn't do me any good not to have porn available when I most needed it back in the 80ies.
Phew! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now little Timmy won't be bothered by all those nasty websites he has no interest in.
Well, at least not until he comes across some of those sites that slip by the filters - as they inevitably do - or he learns how to turn the filter off (as children eventually will).
And it's not as if he will be missing anything important. Oh sure, filters have been shown to be over-zealous in their protection, often blocking non-porn sites as well but why would he be interested in reading Wikipedia or the National Geographic or any of these other disgusting websites anyway? Do they have any redeeming value at all? And even if they do, is it worth the risk that young Timmy might see a nipple?
Besides, sex is unnatural, and so is the human body. Nobody should see it naked. It's been that way since the beginning of time; children never witnessed nudity or sex until they were eighteen and in no way should we question this belief. Its not as if this sort of repression causes any problems. Anyway, the youth of today must be inculcated from the start with the idea that it is okay for the government to tell us what to read and what to do, for the good of the nation. A strong government should lead its people in thought and action!
I for one am glad the government of Great Britain is moving in this direction and can only hope the governments of the other nations of the world follow suit. Its just one step towards bringing our world back to a more civilized level of discourse, where things like sex, violence and alternate religions are removed from view. It's for the good of our children after all.
(By the way, just out of scientific curiousity, have instructions on how to disable this feature been issued yet? I only ask to make sure I don't accidentally turn it of, of course).
Re:The crucial point (Score:5, Interesting)
The crucial point is that if no porn is available, the boys will just wank off the photos of clothed models and celebrities as they did before the Internet was widely available, and it's hard to find any valid argument why wanking off the photos of clothed people is inherently better than wanking off the photos of nude ones. It certainly didn't do me any good not to have porn available when I most needed it back in the 80ies.
Its hard to find any valid argument why wanking off to any photos is inherently a bad thing. Anyway, before the internet came along, people just passed top-shelf magazines around the playground, no clothed people required.
I'm waiting for the big ISPs' lists of people who have opted out of filtering to be leaked and the press to publish a list of MPs who have asked the ISP to let them watch porn through the internet connection that they put on their expenses... :)
(Also: please will people write to their MPs and tell them to oppose this shit?)
OP is ridiculously wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Block all? No. Block a lot? Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The crucial point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Block all? No. Block a lot? Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
The not unreasonable assumption is that if a child can find porn, then an ISP can automate the process of finding it and blocking it. To the layperson, the idea that all these clever people can come up with a way to search the internet and classify content and even rate the quality of that content but are suddenly flummoxed by coming up with a way of reliably blocking porn that kids can find sounds more like "well, we don't want to block porn, so we'll tell you it's impossible and tell you that you don't understand the internet".
Ok, this will sound pretty cynical, but imho the current crop of politicians don't care if legislation is difficult or even impossible. And they know how difficult this task is, in fact, the more difficult, the better. All they really care about is whether a new law means that they can funnel money through parliament to one of their mates.
This sort of thing is perfect for that. A never-ending task whereby they can pay some private company run by one of their cronies an obscene amount of cash to continually search the web looking for new porn to block.
Everyone wins except the taxpayer.
Re:This wont end cleanly (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they should add religious content to the list of things they're going to block; maybe then people would start seeing the problem with such censorship.