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One step closer to Internet Governing

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I knew this government would put the wheels in motion with this and it looks like it is starting..

Today - Porn, Tomorrow - Anything they just don't want you seeing!

The British government is planning to ask internet service providers (ISP’s) in the U.K. to restrict access to pornographic web sites and protect children from gaining access–but it’ll probably have a hard time getting them to toe the line.The Internet Service Provider Association said today that controls on children’s access to the Internet “should be managed by parents and carers with the tools ISP’s provide, rather than being imposed top-down.”

It comes after U.K. communications minister Ed Vaizey said he would meet with Internet providers like BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk “in the near future” to discuss the way households access pornography online.

“I’m hoping they will get their acts together so that we don’t have to legislate,” he told The Sunday Times, “but we are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have a new communications bill in the next couple of years.”

The government’s idea is that sites that contain pornographic material would be blocked by default, so that people would specifically have to request access to them from their ISP’s.

Nicholas Lansman, the ISPA Secretary General argues that this sort of ban, “will lead to the blocking of access to legitimate content and is only effective in preventing inadvertent access.”

It could, for example, mean a block to photography sharing site like Fickr which contain some adult material, or blogs platforms like Tumblr which contain pornographic blogs.

Tom Scott of The Guardian says a Great British Firewall would be “useless” because of confusion surrounding the definition of “explicit content,” not to mention the public sector’s poor track record of managing IT projects.

Virgin Media

Virgin Media is among the ISPs which could be asked to block explicit content to customers. Image via Wikipedia

Even if such a initiative does end up filtering some adult content from people’s ISPs, parents also should not underestimate their children’s ability to bypass an Internet filter with the help of a proxy, file-sharing site or neighbor’s wireless network, among other things.

Lansman said online safety was a priority for the ISPA, which already blocks child abuse content, but “blocking lawful pornography content is less clear cut".
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Funny how The Sun still have 'Adult Content' and that's kept on the bottom shelf at newsagents!

Do us a favour UK and vote these c**ts out at the next opportunity!

 
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Eggy McMuffin said:
I knew I wasn't crazy for building my porn bunker.
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Your biggest worry Eggy is what happens to it when you die. I've heard comsideration of a service to "clean up" your bunker for you if, God forbid, you've kicked your last ball. You could choose cremation, or the generous donation option.

 
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ThunderDan said:
Your biggest worry Eggy is what happens to it when you die. I've heard comsideration of a service to "clean up" your bunker for you if, God forbid, you've kicked your last ball. You could choose cremation, or the generous donation option.
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I have an arrangement with my best mate in place. It's up to him how he deals with it, and I have the same responsibility for his porn bunker, but it isn't too good thanks to his girlfriend discovering it.

 
Eggy McMuffin said:
I knew I wasn't crazy for building my porn bunker.
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Do you allow "access" to your porn bunker? Seriously this is a massive worry, if the government do this then its basically big brother. the next step would be you needing to request access for every site you use or want to use, therefore a nice record of all sites you visit to be perused at their leisure.

 
Ban porn, but keep social network sites open so that the paedo's can carry on grooming

 
It's easy to turn this into a joke, but Mod's point is a very serious one. The surveillance of ordinary citizens is a gross infringement of their privacy and individual lliberties.

Child pornography should be totally blocked and those caught dealing it should be severely punished. But what consenting adults do is nobody's business but their own.

People with children have a duty of care to prevent their children having access to it. It's not the government's job to do that for them.

 
Blocking internet pornography ... that's censorship, isn't it?(Guardian)

As Larry Flynt, the Hustler magazine publisher, has pointed out many times, you may not like pornography, but banning it quickly becomes an important freedom of speech issue. We can all agree that child pornography is problematic, but this is an exceptional case. Adult entertainment is really a matter of taste, and its makers usually participate willingly in the creation of the content. Meanwhile, nobody, of course, likes the idea of children stumbling on all sorts of explicit adult video, but these are issues that can be tackled with a mixture of sensible parenting and good parental control software packages that can help.What it is not obvious that going down a Chinese-government style route of blocking access to certain webservers is really attractive. It is an idea that has also been canvassed by the film and music businesses hoping to deal with the problems of piracy. Filtering out pornographic websites would certainly provide legitimacy to that suggestion, and then you have to ask what else should be banned next? The WikiLeaks website, of course, and perhaps any other website that is involved in leaking/releasing previously confidential information. A nice trinity of national security, piracy and porn.

One final thought: if you think this is an unlikely scenario, then think again. There is a Communications Bill in the offing next year. Ofcom is already saying that this is the moment to debate online content regulation. Or as the regulator puts it: if somebody is offended watching a YouTube video on their full-screen television at home, then they will want to know who (if anybody) they can complain to about it. Yes, the debate about internet content regulation is worth having, but it is a bit early to think about blocking content you may not like. If freedom of speech is worth anything, it has to be defended in the hard cases, not the easy ones.

Which is why we have to stick up for porn.
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Plus, the internet wouldnt be anywhere near as big without porn in the first place.....

 
Blimey, if you can't access porn on the internet, the local council waste sites are gonna be chock-a-block with discarded computers and lap-tops.

I might just consider keeping mine for the Shed End.

 
ozymandias said:
Mod's point is a very serious one. The surveillance of ordinary citizens is a gross infringement of their privacy and individual lliberties.
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We gave that up in the US after 9/11. Electronic surveilllance used to require a warrant from a secret court, but GW Bush did away with that. Comfort can be taken in the massive numbers of law-abiding people who dabble with porn - like the best place to hide a tree is in a forest. But I wouldn't get too worked up over the idea that internet porn might be made illegal. Moralists have been trying since 1990, and always run into the insurmountable legal hurdle with clear definition and/or free speech guarantees, and then fail.

ThunderDan's Top 5 benefits of legal internet porn:

1.) Peep show theaters and booths don't draw like they used to, which is good for neighborhoods that didn't want them in the first place. And their janitors can do something (anything) more respectable with their lives.

2.) Buying girlie magazines from a sweet little old lady shopkeeper in now unnecessary. No longer having someone that you know see you trying to decide which issue to buy.

3.) Digital media is easier to conceal than a box labelled "Do not open", something Eggy's mate can surely confirm.

4.) Free porn means that you didn't deny your children anything important in order to pay to see what Asian chicks are up to these days.

5.) Webpages will never be stuck together. :Dziekuje:

 
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Censorship.

Always starts so insidiously & usually through language prescription of some sort.

Like how you can't write c**t anymore.

Pretty soon you won't even be able to view it.

Then you won't even be able to say it.

Then...

 
dkw said:
Cant read it at work but I presume one of them is about Betamax losing to VHS?
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You seem to be an expert in these matters, dkw. Although we may have wrung as much out of this joke as humanly possible, I can imagine you starting a local porn industry called 'Cock [in] 'er Mouth'.

 
I think "more than is humanly possible, or good" is applicable there Plokkers

 
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