'Porn filter'

[random_pickle]

Are there any members on here that live in Britain right now? I have a bit of a question for you guys.

While everyone was talking about the newly-born baby of the royal family, Prime Minister David Cameron is trying to pass a law that will block pornagraphic sites on the internet. His reasoning behind this is to protect children and their innocence. Access on computers will be blocked by default and the only way to get around it is to called the internet provider to have it unblocked. It has been revealed afterwards that porn won't be the only thing blocked.

Based on conversations with several ISPs, Open Rights Group says the new "parental controls" will reach far beyond pornography. By default, the controls will block access to "violent material," "extremist and terrorist related content," "anorexia and eating disorder websites," and "suicide related websites."

I for one think that this is an incredibly stupid idea. Why can't we just get parents to teach their children about the internet? If that doesn't work, there are downloadable site blockers that do the trick. There's no need to inflict it on EVERYONE. I don't think I have to explain why the latter part about blocking other content is bad as well, that speaks for itself.

Here's a link to an article about it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/uk-internet-filter-block-more-than-porn_n_3670771.html

So what are your thoughts on this?

 

[KatsuKitty]

In the US, there's one thing we highly prize and that's freedom of speech. Courts have been reluctant to place any restrictions on the First Amendment beyond real child pornography, even when it comes to things like hate speech and pornography that's not "obscene", a largely antiquated adjective that's used to go after a few hundred scat porn producers whenever a Republican is president. Even if you leak classified information, it must make its way out before you can be charged (this notion of "prior restraint" being invalidated by NYT v. US back in the 70s). If you're not a pedophile in the US, you can say and view whatever the hell you want.

Therefore, I frame my viewpoints around that value. The problem is just that, you're not exclusively accomplishing the task of protecting pornography from children. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the propsal is a backdoor for government control of ideas, despite the fact that you can "turn it off". To begin with, the block put into place on the ISP level in Britain excludes anything that porn "touches". The entire country may lose access to websites such as Tumblr, Flickr, or 4chan on that premise, despite the fact that these sites are not exclusively porn sites. So right off the bat, you're losing access to large areas of the Internet that host user-generated content.

But the problem goes much beyond that because any tolerance of this censorship is a tacit approval by the British public that the government has the freedom to deem particular tracts of content "acceptable" and others "unacceptable". There is no possible way to make any filter category that is not excessively broad, and our founding fathers realized this 200 years before the internet was a glimmer in anyone's eye. Censorship of material by an omnipresent authority such as the government is the first step toward controlling people's opinions on a matter. For example, a website may deem valid & fair criticism of Muslim culture "hate speech", a website discussing extreme weight loss to be "promoting anorexia", or a heavy metal band's website to be "promoting suicide". It restricts the free flow of creative expression, unorthodox ideas, and politically incorrect rhethoric, effectively putting the taxonomy of ideas into the bumbling hands of a politician.

You're the parent. Put a block on your computer if you don't want your children viewing porn, and don't ask the government to do your job for you. This would never fly in the US given the precedent I mentioned, and for good reason.

 

[Picklepower]

My country, America, has had, and still has, its asshole "moral crusaders", but I've heard about the UK's Video Nasties, aka banned horror movies. And I heard they cut nunchuk scenes out of Kung Fu movies. Does that still go on?

 

[Trombonista]

This sounds about as bad as Green Dam Youth Escort.

 

[Seahorses]

Porn is how Christian Weston Chandler learned to be super hetero. Hmmm....maybe it should be banned.

 

[José Mourinho]

Parents should be involved in not allowing their kids to have access to porn. Blocking sites sounds more like SOPA-ish.

 

[TastyWoodenBadge]

My country, America, has had, and still has, its asshole "moral crusaders", but I've heard about the UK's Video Nasties, aka banned horror movies. And I heard they cut nunchuk scenes out of Kung Fu movies. Does that still go on?

The UK doesn't have the "Video Nasties" law anymore, but there was a period during the 80's when all references to Ninjas were removed from kids TV shows and movies (The censorship board thought the word had extremely violent connotations for kiddies TV), when the original TMNT series came to the UK it was called "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles", and nearly all the Turtles weapons had there name changed or just removed completely (Michelangelo's nunchucks being the best example)

 

[Bgheff]

While everyone was talking about the newly-born baby of the royal family, Prime Minister David Cameron is trying to pass a law that will block pornagraphic sites on the internet.

What a sneaky prick. At any rate, I do not live in the UK, I am American and have American viewpoints on this type of thing. It's up to the parents if they want to police or not police their kids internet usage. Government enforce censorship like this ends up making nobody happy, except for the person who got the law passed.

 

[Ivan Komarov]

BurgerClap here, and I think that any censorship of the internet on any scale is wrong. England has fallen from the most respected little island on the planet to what appears to be a SJW "chek ur priveldege" nannystate. It's sad to see it happen.

 

[Picklepower]

My country, America, has had, and still has, its asshole "moral crusaders", but I've heard about the UK's Video Nasties, aka banned horror movies. And I heard they cut nunchuk scenes out of Kung Fu movies. Does that still go on?

The UK doesn't have the "Video Nasties" law anymore, but there was a period during the 80's when all references to Ninjas were removed from kids TV shows and movies (The censorship board thought the word had extremely violent connotations for kiddies TV), when the original TMNT series came to the UK it was called "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles", and nearly all the Turtles weapons had there name changed or just removed completely (Michelangelo's nunchucks being the best example)

I heard about that, I just didn't remember if the Nasties, were still banned, or not. Here's a funny thing about American censorship, in Wallmart, you can get any violent movie, or game you want, if you have id, but they aren't allowed to sell any cd's with parental advisory labels, that's why I don't get Rap cd's there. Also its funny that you mention ninjas, because in America there was a ninja craze in the 80s, and another in the 90's, when I was a kid there were movies like, Surf Ninjas, the 3 Ninjas, Beverly Hills Ninja, the Power Rangers had a lot of ninja references, and of course, Ninja Turtles.

 

[Judge Holden]

As a brit and someone who has actively studied the history of this idea I can say without hesitation that it is the most shambolic crock of nanny-state bullshit ever uttered on the subject of porn in recent memory, and is being carried out by a stupifyingly spineless government that is solely doing this to pander to the most loathsome sector of self righteous, self important, hypocritcal scumbags in the country, The Daily Mail. The entire thing is predicated on the near farcical supposition that viewing porn will instantly turn those actively looking for it into depraved serial killing kiddy fiddlers, and was shamelessly carried out on the back of two child murders where the killer (shock gasp!) viewed pornography. For those that have noticed the similarity to the repulsive swinewhore Mary Whitehouse's campaign against "Video Nasties" I commend you for your observation, as the attempts to induce moral panic and hysteria over the "evils of this new media" by brainless and hopelessly out of touch busybodies.

The entire thing has many similarities to the US/Australian right winger movements who think that all gun massacres/murders by young people are because of violent video games since it is utterly at odds with scientific studies with zero substantive links being found, basic statistics as the tens of millions of people using porn/playing violent video games would mean that if those seeking to censor are correct and there is a significant link between viewing such material and carrying out imitation crimes (say 0.1% of all users being brainwashed to commit crimes) there would be tens of thousands of such crimes being carried out each year by gamers/porn viewers, and basic common sense as it hs been known for a good few milennia that viewing images depicting bad activity does not make people want to engage in them. All these have been happily ignored by a government wanting to pander to the daily mail and other such producers of bullshit.

 

[QI 541]

First the government controls what ideas you're allowed to see, then they control what ideas you're allowed to have, then a guy wearing a Guy Fawkes mask kicks everyone's ass.

 

[Night Terror]

Stupid berk. I'm not a political person but Cameron is a smarmy wanker, and now he's trying to pull this stunt? Most of our recent prime minister candidates have been dodgy (step forward Nick Clegg)... can you imagine what it'd be like to get access back? Having to ring your ISP and be all "...yeah... can you, like, lift the, er, filter"

 

[TastyWoodenBadge]

In Australia the current government has been throwing around the idea of an internet filter for a couple of years now, but I don't think it will pass and I am glad our communications minister (the retard in charge of the thing) resigned, I swear he didn't know a damn thing about the internet.

 

[Javert]

I am probably being optimistic here but I think this was designed to fail. Dave Cameron and chums can make a lot of noise and talk about this for a while and then fail to actually push the bill through, probably blame it on the uncooperative ISPs or their coalition partners. They can then tell the Daily Mail crowd 'We tried our hardest, we really did; maybe if you give us a majority next time we'll actually be able to do something about it!'

Either that or they honestly believe they can go ahead with their plans, God forbid.

 

[Lady Houligan]

Why can't we just get parents to teach their children about the internet? If that doesn't work, there are downloadable site blockers that do the trick.

Because then you're asking people to actually be responsible for their child and to engaged with them rather than just plopping them down in front of this screen or that. And God knows we can't have that. /sarcasm