UK internet filtering shouldn't rely on knee tappers, says Tory MP Claire Perry MP today defended the government’s net filtering policy, claiming that David Cameron's government don’t actually want to regulate internet service providers – but that without some sort of lead, global companies would simply sit on their hands. The UK’s biggest net providers are rolling out an opt-in filtering …
"but the real answer is somewhere in the middle, i.e. hit them in the balls?"
I was thinking along similar lines - if what's in the middle has a knee, either someone has a serious medical problem or their wedding tackle also has a heart and lungs and I'm seriously impressed...
Quite, although it also reminded me of the joke (which is also somewhat appropriate, given the discussion material):
"In a survey on men's taste in womens' legs, 11% said they preferred skinny legs, 6% said they preferred fat legs and 83% said they preferred something in between."
Her sorry. Reading fail. Tories probably picked a woman to reduce the danger of their porn avenger showing up on the telly being busted with a lady of the night.
Dear asdf, CP (not child porn, Claire Perry) does her own busting, mostly through apparent ignorance. Like when she told Jimmy Wales that he doesn't know about the web, unlike her . . . or her filtering suggestions: Just block the naughty pictures.
I could, and can, be wrong, but she seems to think that there's routers that can detect if a model is 18 or under-age, or which part of her (or his) body is uncovered to an inappropriate extend or who is actually looking at this picture. She might actually think that the filename "my_little_pony.jpg" can't be anything but the picture of a little pony and that all porn is called "sexpic_45123.png" or similar. I would bet she read this and thought that it could be used for smut-filtering as well.
I think she needs an injection of Common-sense-icine. Unless, of course, she gets the idea of having a moderated, buffered BlightyNet®: cut all connections to these bad foreign internet places and have 23500 moderators* looking at all submitted user content before it is released to the public. That'd work.
Or, alternatively, have Ceefax back instead.
*preferably nuns.
"special advisor on preventing the sexualization and commercialisation of childhood"
Actually I think her original title was "special advisor on the sexualization and commercialisation of childhood"
Until someone realized the implications of what that meant.
A little bit too free market even for the SEL wing of the Conservative party.
> special advisor on preventing the sexualization and commercialisation of childhood
They thought the internet is a problem?
The problem is almost exclusively TV/video. Adverts, even in the children's programming is also often inappropriate - even scary to the kids, not just deemed unacceptable by me.
More subtle are children's films. Check out "Let it Go" from Frozen on youtube. The lyrics are more what you'd expect from Bridget Jones and near then end the little Disney princess transforms somewhat. She acquires a sexy walk, a sparkly dress which in the final, triumphant bit of the song, has a split going up to mid-thigh.
I found it more than a little irritating that Disney is making my life more difficult by showing transformations where parental (indeed all) rules are discarded and out of that emerges a confident sexy woman in adult-type revealing clothes. It's not going to corrupt the children from this one film, but its very hard to discuss issues when its packaged up in a very cool song and when the same values are being pushed everywhere. It is also a lie - children generally feel far more secure when they are given well-defined boundaries than when they can do what they want. However, the pressure from media in general is all along these lines and children will ape the behaviour long before they understand what drives it.
Anyway, TL;DR: the values pushed by mainstream media do far more sexualisation and commercialisation of children than an accidental landing on kinkysex.com (I presume that exists, I haven't checked).
No, the worst things politicians can do is try to legislate on a subject they clearly know fuck-all about. The internet does not need any censorship. Publish guidelines for those with children, by all means. A comparative guide to the plethora of available nanny software might help. Hell; commission software if someone feels that the current offerings aren't up to the job...they have the budget.
Censoring everybody in case a few small-minded twats might pretend to be offended is an act of gormlessness on a colossal scale. That's just talking about the basic concept...if you add in the inevitable "Government IT project" clusterfuck and mission creep it becomes even worse.
Whoever thought of this should be custard-pied on primetime live TV for being a total bell-end.
Censoring everybody in case a few small-minded twats might pretend to be offended is an act of gormlessness on a colossal scale.
I'm offended by that, where's my 'Dear Mr MP' template........
The internet does not need any censorship.
I'm starting to think it needs some, we could do with some real world censorship/enforcement as well. Though the 'offensive' acts I'm thinking of are pretending the views of a tiny 'moral' minority are supported by the majority.
ISP level filtering should be an optional add on - as in Opt-In. Should also be a paid add-on so that the rest of us don't have to foot the bill. Not a big one for 'the market will decide', but if there're really that many people wanting it then the offerings would increase/improve.
If in fact nobody really wants it, the offerings will disappear through not being cost effective, at which point that minority will make a fuss, and we'll end up back in the current mess....... bollocks. Gave that less thought than an MP gives to the workings of the www.
A lot of people like to claim they oppose all censorship. In my experience, most of them don't really mean it. Either you think it's OK to show hardcore horror porn to seven-year-olds or you believe there should be some censorship. The real argument is over how much.
No what I think a lot of people believe is that if you want to prevent your seven year old from accessing horror porn then YOU prevent it, in the same way that YOU put poisons on high shelves and lock power tools away. If you believe that someone else has the right and responsibility for bringing YOUR children up then I worry for the future.
Parents who immediately absolve themselves of the responsibility for their children should be taking a hard look at themselves and not determining that someone else should be doing something because they cannot be bothered or it's too hard.
With every 'Right' there is an equal and overarching 'Responsibility'
I hate to break it to you, but kids get to leave the house occasionally before they're eighteen. No, really. Parents don't absolve themselves of responsibility, we delegate responsibility -- to teachers, doctors, nurses, playgroup attendants, air stewards, youth club volunteers, karate senseis, ballet instructors, social workers and a whole bunch of other people who are sometimes in charge of our children when we're not. The reason we are able to do so with some confidence is because rules are in place. Some of those rules are merely social, some are codified as law. Some of them constitute censorship.
In your world, if a teacher shows brutal porn to a seven-year-old, that's the parents' fault for absolving themselves of responsibility by sending their children to school, and all the teacher has done is exercise their own choice in a wonderful censorship-free utopia. In my world, it's the teacher's fault, and illegal, and rightly so. In your world, if a TV network chooses to show "Hostel" at 4pm immediately after some "Tom & Jerry" cartoons, it's the parents' fault if their child sees it because they should be watching every single second of TV their child sees. In my world, parents are able to gradually teach children how to be trusted to do things without constant supervision -- and thus to grow up properly -- precisely because there are rules in place -- censorship -- that enable us to trust that that won't happen. Your world is a fucking stupid place.
I'm getting a bit worried about you...you keep on about broadcasting brutal porn at minors. That is a completely different proposition to a child having an uncensored internet and clicking on things themselves. The former would be an abuse of authority and there would be an element of coercion involved (as children who felt uncomfortable would presumably not be free to sod off to the cafeteria until the film ended); so anybody -pro or anti-censorship- would kick up. It's a silly example and not particularly relevant to the subject of censorship.
In the latter case; children tend to find their own level and are far more resilient than the Daily Mail crowd would have you believe. I have no objection to my kids looking at porn -never have- because by the time they were old enough to be interested, they were old enough to appreciate the fact that porn isn't real life.
> The former would be an abuse of authority
Er, how, if there is no rule against it? What you're saying here amounts to "It's censored, so we don't need to censor it."
> anybody -pro or anti-censorship- would kick up. It's a silly example and not particularly relevant to the subject of censorship.
In other words, you are completely against all censorship as long as discussion of those examples where you do in fact support a bit of censorship is disallowed for some reason. Which was my point. Thank you.
Hmmm
When you choose to pass parental responsibility to others 'in loco parentis' they assume the responsibility to act as you would if you were there. If they then break the law showing brutal porn to a seven year old, how does a net filter that presumably would be turned off by that type of person help?
The TV Broadcasters also have a code of conduct to live up to - this precludes showing Hostel at 4PM but by extension do you think that broadcasters should require pin access to late night movies regardless of the time just because a parent is unable or unwilling to tell their child to go to bed?
Again you seem to not accept the rights and responsibilities - you choose the playgroup / airline / sensei - you do this using due diligence and protect your child that way, not by saying the government should ensure anyone that my child may see/meet needs to be checked so I don't have to think about it.
My world my be a stupid place but at least its mine rather than the nannysafe acceptable version you would have me live in.
> how does a net filter that presumably would be turned off by that type of person help?
I never said it did, and don't particularly support the Net filter. I made a point a few posts up about people who claim to oppose absolutely all censorship under all circumstances, plenty of whom pop up in discussions of the Net filter. I don't think it is true that pointing out that most such people don't really want to follow through on what they claim to believe is exactly the same thing as wholeheartedly supporting the current government's Internet policies, but some people here seem hell-bent on interpreting it that way.
> The TV Broadcasters also have a code of conduct to live up to
Yes, which constitutes censorship, which was my point.
> Again you seem to not accept the rights and responsibilities - you choose the playgroup / airline / sensei - you do this using due diligence and protect your child that way, not by saying the government should ensure anyone that my child may see/meet needs to be checked so I don't have to think about it.
The government? But here's what I actually wrote:
> The reason we are able to [delegate responsibility] with some confidence is because rules are in place. Some of those rules are merely social, some are codified as law. Some of them constitute censorship.
I don't think it is true that saying that there are social norms (hardly a controversial claim), only some of which are enforced by law, is exactly the same as refusing to look after my children myself because I think the government should do it all for me.
For the record, I think compulsory police background checks on anyone who works with children is a bad (albeit well-meaning) idea that has had terrible results.
> My world my be a stupid place
Your world appears to contain no middle ground between absolute and total opposition to all censorship and wanting to live in the USSR, so yes, quite.
"That's the only reason I would watch the Parliament channel."
You're missing out. Prime Minister's Questions is like a free visit to the Panto and amateur comedy night in one. Watching the rehearsed cheers and jeers and scripted put-downs is quite amusing until you remember they run the country and the depression hits you.
I need a drink.
The internet is the architypical lonely place. Being online as a family is the only safety measure for teaching children about it and the exotc things in life and psychology.
The only problem is that in the 20 or 30 years we have had the net, nobody has ever thought of the children like that.
No, no; not the icon. Not now.
It's too late.
"Isn't the idea of relying on web filters to keep your kids safe rather than doing the job yourself - and then expecting there to be no problems as a result - just as fanciful?"
How dare you Sir (or Madame).
Ms Perry is a very busy wife, egg donor and MP.
She cannot be expected to spend valuable time actually parenting her tribe of potential photo ops "little treasures".
Let alone actually learn to use that oh-so-complicated-my-poor-little-head-will-explode web filtering software her ISP and browser provided.
No siree.
And forget hiring someone to do it for her, with her busy schedule she's never at home.
"You have to opt-in to get porn, rather than opt out of being filtered."
Are you sure? I thought I have to opt in to opt out of opting in out of opting out? See, I'm already confused... wow, this proves that a government plan once in the blue moon has actually... WORKED. I guess there's a silver proxy to every censorship.
When mine turned on, I had to select a level from 'light, medium, strict' and then wait two hours to use the 'Off' option (can't make changes until it's updated itself). I then had to click 'Delete filter' to stop receiving a blue page tell me I was using an off-network DNS server.
So, unless I missed something (and I looked pretty closely), 100% of BT subscribers will activate the filter. What probably won't get reported is the percentage who then hit OFF as soon as they get a chance
So yeah, I had to opt in to opt out of opting in.
I also don't entirely trust BT not to fuck something up at somepoint, so most of my traffic (including DNS) is now routed over OpenVPN to a VPS that I wasn't making full use of before.
“We can’t force people (i.e. parents) to turn filters on.”
From the sound of it she sounds like she would like to. I would love for her to be locked in a room with no access to any information unless it has been approved because then we can guarantee her safety from the big world out there.
Stupid girl. And shame on the cotton wool nutters wanting to remove the world from the people who live in it.
No you can't, which is why you fucking Luddite dailymailers bitched and moaned and now we have the great firewall of Britain. Cheers for that btw.
How about a modicum of education on the subjects at hand, only a few years back the Internet was compared to the Wild West, with bandits lurking around every rock just waiting to rob you of your valuables and/or murder you.. erm.. how is that any different to how it is today? Oh wait, that's because we have good ol' Dave and his team of sheriffs out there to look out for us. Except that it didn't actually make a difference as it just forces the crims to get smarter, and thus tightening the noose around the rest of us law-abiding folk.
Bell-ends.
</rant>
>The “reflex on the left is we must legislate” she said, while tapping the right elicits a cry of “hands off my internet you ignorant luddite.”
>The answer was somewhere in between, Perry argued.
This sounds like classic Perry - a typical MBA banker fool who can do self-important, but doesn't know a doctor's-hammer-to-the-balls dodgy metaphor when she sees one.
Yet another 'family friendly' for 'hard working families' type policy...
Will someone please define for me, what is a family and more importantly who is not in a family. As we seem to have a whole bunch of people claiming to champion the interests of families without defining what they are, and if they are in the majority or just mouthy..
Are we talking Robert Robinson [2]+ {2.4} (age 8-16) as in Ask the Family
Do they stop being a family when the {2.4} ->[1],[1],[0.4] ? reach 18 or 30+
What about cohabs with no kids [1+1] + {0}
Or cohabs with her kids [ (1+{n}) +1]
Or Singles [1]
Or single parents [1] +{n}
Or Divorcees [1] , [1]
Or Divorcees with kids [1]+{n} ............... , ......................[1] at wekends
Or .... pick you own combo and syntax
So, a quick wikipedia of Claire tells me that she did Geography at Oxford, has a Harvard MBA, and has worked for a couple of banks before getting a safe Tory seat cos she's a female.
Someone please remind me why she's voicing an opinion about this? For some weird reason, she seems to consider herself an expert. Why? What qualifications or experience does she have on this subject?
This is an example of what's wrong with politics in this country. Politicians are talking about, and making decisions on subjects they know nothing about. Like Gideon and the economy for example.
"Someone please remind me why she's voicing an opinion about this? "
The same reason Call-me-Dave listens to her.
3 kids and a set of female reproductive organs.
Ex- PSB's tend to have strange views on women. Something about being shipped off to some max security warehouse boarding school at a young age.
"The answer was somewhere in between, Perry argued, with a small dose of legislation and a lot of corporate social responsibility."
Yeh, because that same winning formula that you love so much was such a success when it came to the banking system wasn't it?
We certainly saw the triumph of corporate social responsibility over pure profit seeking in action there, as all politicians avoided regulation like the plague.
However, this isn't about that issue, it's a piece of boneheaded political populism of the "we must do something to protect the children" variety that is going to start us off down the road of an increasingly censored internet. How about making the point that parents have the responsibility to supervise and limit what their children do on the internet, in the same way they do in the real world, gradually allowing them more freedom and indpendence as they feel that their kids are ready to start navigating their way through the world themselves?
Surprised she hasn't got her teeth into the late evening, so-called "adult" free channels on Freeview and Freesat that show considerably more than the copies of "Parade" that were floating around my local gents' hairdressers when I were a mere stripling. I felt quite cheated when I had to actually get up for the haircut but I seem to have escaped unscathed and I've no doubt that current tech-savvy youth, who can easily find their way around the likes of a VPN or other ways to by-pass the filters, will also emerge into adulthood untouched. Grandstanding politicians trying to disguise internet censorship (as that's all it is, basically) as child protection is the worst form of government, especially when they quite obviously haven't got the foggiest notion as to how the net works. They are, putting it bluntly, talking out of their collective arses.
It's interesting to note their insistence that porn is bad, that parliament ought to be a child-friendly place for MPs with children and then compare that with what they actually do themselves...
I'm guessing Claire Perry doesn't know that the medical reflex test is where the term 'kneejerk reaction' came from.
"We must be seen to be doing something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
You end up with ill thought-out garbage that achieves nothing.
> Perry claimed reports of overblocking were “fanciful”
She's lying. It was documented last week that filters blocked an update to a game because it had letters S-E-X in the file name.
"Perry accepted there were limits to what the government could achieve through legislation. “We can’t force people (i.e. parents) to turn filters on.”"
This can also be read as:
Perry accepted that she and her ilk have wasted £0000's and time even debating this, because ultimately it will be up to the parent to implement any solution.
Mumsnet, like every other religion, want to enforce their inferior morality on to me. No!
Keep your morality to yourself, you, after all, are the only people interested in your wicked ways. Don't be trying to convert me or apply your foibles to impact my life.
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