so pushing web filters from the other end?
UK to stop children looking at online porn. How?
Commercial porn websites face big fines if they allow British children unfettered access to their content. The companies must introduce age verification and will have a legal obligation to ensure that those accessing their material are over 18 years old. The government said the proposals put the responsibility “squarely on …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:03 GMT TonyJ
"...so pushing web filters from the other end?..."
Yes and I personally have a real problem with their entire approach to this - I've said it before on here but any government, or government-controlled agency, that has the ability to effectively censor information would do so.
This whole "think of the children" thing is really "let US think of the children" to allow the generally stupid - that are exactly the kind of people who think that if they do something stupid, they should be allowed to claim compensation from someone else because it must be both someone else's responsibility to protect them from themselves and well they deserve it.
I mean notwithstanding the whole question of how you control this for sites in say, Canada or Japan, the whole concept is insidious and ridiculous.
For crying out loud 1984 was supposed to be a warning not a set of instructions!
Apologies for the rant.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:50 GMT Dr. Mouse
I have to agree. It is the parents' responsibility to ensure their children are safe, but we now have a whole generation who think they can leave their children sat in front of a TV/Computer, ignore what they are doing, and assume they will be safe.
It is simple to implement appropriate filters to a child's internet access, and that should be the parents' job, not the government's. It is also a parent's job to take an interest in what their kid is doing and protect them from the evils out in the world (to an appropriate level).
This is all a symptom of the entitlement culture and laziness epidemic in this country (and beyond), as well as the government's wish to regulate and intrude on every aspect of our personal lives.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:47 GMT John Lilburne
"It is the parents' responsibility to ensure their children are safe,"
Adults tend to get their lawmakers to make sure that unsavoury material is not readily available to kids. Which is why porn tends to be on shelves out of reach of small kids, and fags and alcohol is age restricted. I seem to recall that Germany already has a age-verification law regarding online porn and kids.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 12:16 GMT Hans 1
>I have to agree. It is the parents' responsibility to ensure their children are safe, but we now have a whole generation who think they can leave their children sat in front of a TV/Computer, ignore what they are doing, and assume they will be safe.
The thing is, kid has hw access, any measures taken are futile. As usual, education is the only way to go forward here, and/or constant surveillance of your offspring.
I use a little of both, I tried the filters thing, then, a mate of his managed to reset the admin password on the box while I was not around. He has a mobile with data plan, can do tethering. He can go into any internet cafe and, and, and - education is the only way for teens. For pre-teens, active surveillance is the only way, I think.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 19:22 GMT Geoffrey W
@Hans 1 "education is the only way to go forward here"
How do you educate kids and teens, or indeed adults, to not be interested in mucky pictures? You cannot educate rampant hormones and a burgeoning sexuality. You can educate them to be careful at best.
Why do people panic so much about sexuality in the young? We've all been young and been in that situation, and look how we all turned out!
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Wednesday 17th February 2016 05:23 GMT ShadowDragon8685
@Geoffrey W "How do you educate kids and teens, or indeed adults, to not be interested in mucky pictures?"
You don't, mate. As a 30-year-old man (oh my god, how did that happen?!) I very clearly remember first being interested in getting my hands on pornography at the ripe age of 13, and succeeding. I also remember, at the age of 17, successfully defeating the nannyware on a school computer in under five minutes, as part of a bet with the IT wanker who installed it. I wagered the cash I had on me ($20,) versus his day's wages. The twat accepted, then reneged on the deal when at the 8 minute mark he was staring at the Playboy.com homepage.
"Why do people panic so much about sexuality in the young? We've all been young and been in that situation, and look how we all turned out!"
Ephebophobia. No, seriously, that's a word, look it up. It means the fear of adolescents, which is not generally the same kind of phobia as I have towards anything with greater than four legs, but generally the same sort of thing which leads persons in middle and later age to be irritable, grouchy, and completely out-of-touch with current youth culture.
(Ephebophillia is something very different, and I do not recommend googling that one.)
But seriously, kids are gonna look at porn. Nothing short of global nuclear armageddon is going to prevent that. Possibly not even that, at least not until the old copies of Hustler and Playboy wear out. And even then, that only raises the bar as high as convincing someone to take their clothes off.
Honestly, if you want to stop your kids from having wild amounts of sex, the best thing you can do is LET them have unrestricted access to pornography. Not only will they be better able (and thus more inclined) to satisfy their urges manually and autonomously, but the porn will give them a wholly impractical viewpoint on what a sexy, attractive human body is, meaning that they'll feel inadequate compared to the porn stars, and they'll find almost any prospective partners they can lay their hands on to be equally imperfect and less desirable. Which is not to say it's an absolute guarantee, but it'll help.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 23:22 GMT dan1980
It is, of course, the parents' responsibility but that doesn't mean that there is no place for the Government to be part of this. After all, it's also parents' responsibility to monitor and help choose what their children watch on television and the government provide a useful service here in setting up classification systems.
The specifics of those systems are not always fantastic - as our own experience in Australia with R ratings for video games demonstrates - but the concept is a good one: provide the information and tools for parents to better understand and manage what content their children have access to - as they see fit.
Putting that in practice, the 'solution' is simple: create 'net nanny' style software (and support) that parents can - if they want - use to manage this themselves.
That would would not only respect the role and rights of parents but would also be FAR more effective because it would help restrict access to the (as the author says) millions of free porn sites around the world. Yes, it would be quite the job to maintain such a list but that's exactly why this is a suitable place for the government to come in - it's far too big a job for parents to manage by themselves!
I'm not suggesting the government should code the software itself and certainly it shouldn't manage the site list but it is (in my opinion) a perfectly acceptable use of public money to fund the development and management of this software by a professional, independent third-party so that the necessary tools can be provided to parents.
The biggest downside of such a solution, however, is that it respects everyone's privacy and treats adults like, well, adults. And that is something that all our governments seem opposed to in the highest degree.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 23:55 GMT John Brown (no body)
stupid, not ignorant parents.
"I have to agree. It is the parents' responsibility to ensure their children are safe, but we now have a whole generation who think they can leave their children sat in front of a TV/Computer, ignore what they are doing, and assume they will be safe."
I'm having increasing difficulty in having any sympathy whatsoever for these parents. These are people in their early to mid 30's FFS. They all got at least some computer education/instruction at school and have probably been on the internet since their own teens. There's no excuse for them not to know what's out there. We are well past the days when computers were something mysterious and magical to parents and that all their kids were "computer geniuses" because they can spend all night playing games and twatfacing their friends.
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Wednesday 17th February 2016 08:55 GMT Nattrash
Maybe I am just a(n too old) fart, but...
"but we now have a whole generation who think they can leave their children sat in front of a TV/Computer"
So what the hell ever happened to...
"Now you get out there and don't come in before you have scabbed knees. Or tried to jump the moat... and failed."
Bloody "Health and Safety" culture...
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:08 GMT Robin
I mean notwithstanding the whole question of how you control this for sites in say, Canada or Japan, the whole concept is insidious and ridiculous.
But what do you expect, coming from people who at one point (and probably still do) believe that email addresses and real world people have a 1:1 relationship.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
The fictional book-within-a-book in 1984, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein", is pretty much written in a howto style for ingsoc society.
“The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living.”
Sounds frightening familiar doesn't it?
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 15:14 GMT h4rm0ny
Agreed. There are two immediately obvious problems with this, (three if you count it wont stop teenagers looking at porn). The first is that whatever the ostensible aim of this, the effect is to track people's porn viewing habits. That's a pretty big deal in a society like ours. Is it right or even smart that the government should build such profiles of people throughout their life? Call it exclusion of children, but you could more accurately call it identification of visitor.
Second big problem is that this sets up the government as arbiters of what is or isn't acceptable viewing. Aside from any debates about porn, it would be inevitably amended into a general category of "Bad Material". Political and social information and opinions would rapidly be placed into the category, starting with those that "everybody knows" are bad, and ending... well, somewhere else I would bet.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 18:14 GMT Graham Marsden
Here is the link to the consultation
Excuse the blatant piggy-back, but so far I've seen nothing that links to the actual consultation, so here it is:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/child-safety-online-age-verification-for-pornography
Go there, fill it in, explain to them WHY them demanding the moon on a stick doesn't mean that anyone can deliver it and maybe, just maybe, we can stop this nonsense.
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Wednesday 17th February 2016 02:05 GMT Graham Marsden
@Suricou Raven - Re: Here is the link to the consultation
> I'm actually surprised the questions are worded in a way that makes disagreement possible
Yes, that is a pleasant surprise, although the comment boxes are tiny with limited character input and, for one question, I had to tick "yes" to get access to the comment box on the next page as "no" would just have skipped it.
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Wednesday 17th February 2016 04:21 GMT Daniel Voyce
Re: Here is the link to the consultation
That is a farce of a questionnaire - it is like they are already assuming that they have worldwide reach to apply punitive laws on websites that are hosted anywhere else in the world, why do we still allow people who have no idea on technology to legislate on it?
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Wednesday 17th February 2016 12:20 GMT Graham Marsden
@AC - Re: Here is the link to the consultation
> I aint filling that in, I'm still furious that they leaked everyone's responses on the Filtering consultation
I don't know if you're joking or not, but a) AFAIR this one doesn't ask for your personal details and b) when you provide responses to a consultation you agree that, unless you specfically state otherwise, they will be made public.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Gubmint knows this will fail, it's just a way to move further along to their ultimate goal...
What would the web look like if it was being built from scratch in 2016?
It would look exactly like a corporate app store. They want to kill the web and make it into a cross between pay TV and an app store.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:04 GMT Stuart 22
Re: Gubmint knows this will fail, it's just a way to move further along to their ultimate goal...
You would almost think our legislators have shares in the VPN business. Worse is that it is an incentive for our kids to learn and spread the black arts of hiding their behaviours.
Perhaps politicians should pay more attention to 'unintended consequences' than 'looking out for the kids'.
I mean all that guff to stop (supervised) under-age drinking in pubs of our generation to be replaced by (unsupervised) drinking and worse in the parks for our kids was a really great move - yeah?
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Thursday 18th February 2016 11:04 GMT Graham Cobb
Re: Gubmint knows this will fail, it's just a way to move further along to their ultimate goal...
You would almost think our legislators have shares in the VPN business.
Not the VPN business... the Media business (and not just shares: very lucrative donations, revolving doors and cosy relationships). I assume this is being pushed by Big Media, who are very annoyed at the censorship of films in cinemas, on DVD, and on TV which is bypassed by porn sites.
Of course it helps that it plays well with the authoritarian wing of the Tory party, but there is no money in that so that can't be the real driver.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 12:26 GMT Prst. V.Jeltz
Re: Gubmint knows this will fail, it's just a way to move further along to their ultimate goal...
"What would the web look like if it was being built from scratch in 2016?"
what a horrible thought!
There has always been a direct correlation between how corporate a website is and how useful it is.
something like x= - y where x is corporate bollocks and y is usefulness.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 08:37 GMT Dan 55
UK’s ISPs will have to get involved in this somehow:
Realtime blocking of free pornsites, worldwide? That's only slightly more expensive than the snooper's charter.
Will there be a special dispensation for dead pig fucking? It obviously allows you to pontificate about family values and all that's good and wholesome.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: It's going to be a mess
"The worst mistake made by lawmakers is beliving that perceived problems can be solved by making laws."
I think you underestimate lawmakers, assuming they actually want to solve problems (by whatever means). Being cynical, I feel they just want to keep their jobs, taking time to generate problems and then, taking more time to come up with a solution (never mind, how irrelevant, that's for them to spend more time on, later).
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:47 GMT Vimes
Re: It's going to be a mess
one of the worst mistakes that a lawmaker can make.
One of the others being the assumption that technology can do everything...
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 08:57 GMT Adam 52
Re: Stupid or lying?
They aren't stupid. You don't get to be in the top 0.1% by being stupid.
What they are is politicians, even the civil servants, so they're telling people what they want to hear, or what a vocal minority want to hear and the silent majority don't know or care about.
They don't care if it's impossible, they don't care if a small business single-mum porn producer making a comfortable living gets prosecuted and has to fall into the hands of a pimp.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:41 GMT John H Woods
Re: Stupid or lying?
"You don't get to be in the top 0.1% by being stupid."
I'm afraid a certain number of things: private schooling (and the old-school tie links), nepotism, cronyism, parental wealth (and the consequent ability to do N years of unpaid internships amongst other things) mean that really it very much is possible to get into the top 0.1% whilst being stupid even if not because of it.
Furthermore, characteristics such as charisma (especially media-facing), (apparent) sincerity, ability to form soundbites, knack of detecting the source of power and willingness to suck up to it are all very much more important in this line of work than intellectual horsepower. It seems to me that what you actually need to be (and to do) to become a UK MP almost tends to preclude the kind of people who would contribute most as our representatives and legislators.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:08 GMT BenR
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
Proper sex and relationship education = good thing.
Thinking that will stop kids growing into young adults and getting their rocks off watching online porn = clearly as delusional as the Government and the Great Web Filter of Westminster.
all it means is that when they finally watch the porn, they'll just enjoy it for the 'spectacle' rather than thinking it represents reality. Like watching American "wrestling".
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
Making sure kids know that porn is staged; not necessarily how it's done in real life would be part of essential education, in my view. Also make the point that some things you can't unsee...
That'd be a much better way of spending the money and effort.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:44 GMT LucreLout
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
@moiety
Also make the point that some things you can't unsee...
This. In spades. It would apply to all sorts of material which can be found on the internet, ranging from gross to sick to the genuinely disturbing. It would work better than any censorship.
Many problems with legislation around technology stem from it's written by and to appease baby boomers, who are the last generation not to get technology. Now, before the boomers let rip with the down votes, there are a great many technological masters within their cohort - much of the foundations upon which the modern age exists were laid by them - but in terms of a whole generation, they're the last of the Ludd's.
Gen X spans the gap between "hedge finds" and downloads, Gen Y would have heard of the former but possibly not encountered it much if at all, and the Millennials would assume it was a fairy story, like most of the 60's.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
"[...] to appease baby boomers"
The late 1940s Baby Boomers came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. They were therefore on the crest of the wave of technological and sexual mores changes. Their world changed much more quickly than their parents' - with a general liberalising of education and everything else.
Their offspring grew up in a politically conservative era which attempted to wind back those changes. There was trend to dumb down everything to a set of fixed rules that precluded a deeper understanding of any subject. Consumerism made it possible to use technology without any understanding of how it worked.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:36 GMT TonyJ
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
" ... the fictional rubbish that makes up porn fantasies." --- msknight,
Yeah, have you ever tried getting a washing machine repair man round within five minutes of phoning?
(yes I know it's an old one ...)
"Oh dear...my clothink appears to have fallen off!"
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:54 GMT King Jack
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
Isn't most entertainment fictional? Action movies/tv depict mass murder but we all know it's fictional. It is enjoyable. Same with porn movies. Nobody, including children believe they are looking at a factual guide to sex. The sooner more people realise this the better.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:30 GMT Velv
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW
Dara O'Briain talks about this in one of his shows. Couple visit the Doctor as they can't conceive. "Tell me what you're doing?" the Doc asks, and after a brief description of intercourse the tale ends "then I pull out and cum on her tits"
So perhaps thinking porn = education is not such a good idea.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 14:50 GMT msknight
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
In terms of the fictional rubbish... yes, the schoolkids do believe it.
Watch the three parter "Sex In Class" which was on Channel 4 when Goedele Liekens showed it like it was/is - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/sex-in-class-tv-review-bringing-britains-abysmal-sex-education-up-to-standard-10444201.html
That includes the attitude towards relationships that is strongly mysogynistic, and the young women that watched it, thought that this was their role. When this was all blown to bits, attitudes changed and respect stared to show through... however parents attitudes don't help; when the young girls were sent home with mirrors to examine their own body and become familiar with how they function, one of the parents called Liekens up to complain that it was not appropriate! I mean! What's not appropriate about not learning how your body functions and being comfortable in your own skin?
"Actually, it's not really the teachers, nor the kids, nor their parents who are at fault. In one very telling scene, Goedele met the MP Graham Stuart, who chairs the Commons select committee on sex education. Watching this grown man squirm as he revealed his ignorance of basic female anatomy was hilarious and depressing in equal measure."
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:35 GMT Cuddles
Re: Wanna stop kids looking at porn?
"Then teach then proper sex ed and educate them about relationships"
Indeed. Which is why numerous groups, including the Education Select Committee and various teachers associations and health related types, have recommended that proper sex education be made compulsory in schools. The government have responded by saying that they have no intention of ever doing anything vaguely sensible even when recommended by cross-party committees specifically created for this sort of thing, and could everyone please stop thinking of the children.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 08:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
This will be widely ignored ....
I believe that a lot of the porn sites that have ".co.uk" domains are actualy hosted overseas. Unfortunately for this goverment, it's authority stops at our borders, so anything overseas sites will probably ignore this rule. Plan B will be to get the ISPs to do the blocking for them, but the technical complexity of this (plus the simle fact that the porn sites can just change IP addresses, domain names, etc) will probably defeat that; if not then the use of VPNs terminated in overseas servers will do the job. Plan C will probably involve banning VPNs (no chance of that working - business will scream like mad), while Plan D will involve banning the internet, television, video, and all written communications.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 13:12 GMT Marcus Fil
Re: This will be widely ignored ....
In the days before "Europe" stepped in and ensured the great unwashed of Britain (or v.v.) could gawp at pr0n like our mainland brethren UK producers frequently worked under aliases. So if the fwits "in charge" make this law we are merely heralding a return to the "bad" old days. However, given my first sentence maybe this is really a cunning (sic) plan by Davvie Darko to get us all to vote to stay in the E.U. If we do, then any future law requiring ownership of a credit card to access on-line porn could surely be shot down by the European Court of Human Rights. With the usual additional cost to the UK tax payer and the total failure to recoup those costs from the personal fortunes of said fwits, and their "advisers" to being such efin fwits in the first place.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:49 GMT LucreLout
Re: This will be widely ignored ....
Plan B will be to get the ISPs to do the blocking for them, but the technical complexity of this (plus the simle fact that the porn sites can just change IP addresses, domain names, etc) will probably defeat that;
I'm assuming they'd just delete the entry from their DNS servers, which would likely be all the law required them to do. Re-point that away from your ISP to Google and the problem goes away.
I can't imagine the ISPs will want to spend serious money policing something they know they'll struggle with. The flip side, of course, is that you'd probably see TOR expand as more people use that to escape their ISP, and more institutions etc provide entry nodes.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Karen Bradley (MP, Staffordshire Moorlands) was just on BBC Breakfast and seemed somewhat confused about the difference between a search engine and an ISP"
This tells me she's the chairperson of a Higher Commitee of Technological Digitalization of Great Britain and Scotland.
...
yeah, I know, I'm a disgusting mysoganist. Or worse.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:03 GMT Adam 52
Data
Just realised one possible motivation for this. Experian et al. sell age verification data sets. I'd imagine that they are happy to lobby for this legislation, both as a way to increase their sales but more importantly as a way to build up a porn-watching demographic.
As the sales training says, a near-monopoly product with a compelling reason to purchase is a gold mine.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:21 GMT Afernie
Re: Data
"Nope - not even close"
Feel free to believe that. The corruption in the UK, and in Westminster in particular is endemic - the reason it doesn't show up in the Corruption Perceptions Index is because it's much more subtle and insidious than the ol' African-Dictator-with-a-Swiss-Bank-Account scenario.
The sci-fi writer Charles Stross observed that if Ernst Stavros Blofeld were real and alive in our world, he'd be running a First World Country, or large trans-national NGO. When the real criminals are world leaders with intelligence agencies and drones, we're all fucked.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 13:38 GMT Brewster's Angle Grinder
Volition is exportable
"Follow the money. The UK has African levels of corruption, so it's ALWAYS a scam to transfer wealth from public to private, and into politicians pockets."
I think you need to understand the difference between corruption and democracy. Corruption is where you pocket the public's wealth without the public's consent. Democracy is where you convince the public it would be in their own best interests if you pocketed their wealth.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Data
Experian and pals have already jumped into the cosy bed with the governement on data digitization. The other day I was invited to verify online identity through one of the Gov trusted partners. As I was curious to put my fingers in the fire (but not all of them), I didn't choose Post Office, went for experian, or the other lot. Having gone through several screens where they asked me some very detailed questions, it came up with a "unfortunately we can't verify your identity at the moment, please try again later". Oh well, what did I expect... For now it's voluntary, but how long?
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:05 GMT Steve Davies 3
Naff all use
Kids today know all about VPN's in order to get around the non availability of TV shows in the UK (or to get them for free). This knowledge is out there. The horse has bolted.
Any kid who wants to get access to Pron will know how to do it and no UK Politician (of any colour politically) can do a thing about it.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:35 GMT John Lilburne
Re: Naff all use
Not the point. They know they can't stop someone that is determined to access something. What they are looking to do is limit the cases where someone just happens into a porn site. Similarly they know they can't stop some kid from buying drugs, but they put in place laws to discourage dealers from selling skunk outside schools.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Naff all use
"What they are looking to do is limit the cases where someone just happens into a porn site" -- John Lilburne
Citation needed, I think. I can't find any porn unless I disable my (default-enabled) parental controls on my ISP, then untick (default-enabled) safe search on Bing or Google.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Naff all use
"They know they can't stop someone that is determined to access something."
The playground pecking order is driven by peer competition. It becomes a badge of membership of the group to do whatever is the current fad. Once one kid knows how to do something then it is quickly passed round their peers.
Given the ease of copying an binary image they don't all have to access the primary source. Like alcohol - it only takes one kid who can bypass the checks to supply his mates.
The announced guidelines on teenage sexting finally acknowledge that legal prohibitions are no barrier to teenage curiosity. Education that is informative - rather than "just say no" - is a better approach. It might even help reverse the current trend that infantilises the thinking of under-18s in all areas of life.
The more images that are labelled as pr0n - no matter how innocent - then the more they will distort the judgement by youngsters. Forbidden fruit always excites their curiosity - and they can grow up into hypocritical adults who pay vitriolic lip service to the official line to hide their own desires.
Over 40 years ago my Finno-Scandinavian girlfriends taught me that a society can educate kids to differentiate nudity, sex, and pr0n in a balanced way.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Naff all use
kids might know about vpn, but do they have the ways to pay for it? I mean, yeah, some are smart and probably run a worldwide porn ring network from their bedroom, but how many, percentagewise, would be able to pay for vpn. It's not something you purchase off a specific shelf on the way back from school...
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 12:26 GMT Tim Jenkins
Re: Naff all use
" It's not something you purchase off a specific shelf on the way back from school."
At least one of the 'anonymous' VPN service providers allow payment via gift cards bought for cash in highstreet shops*. US-only at the moment, but I can see that changing...
*AKA 'mall outlets', I believe.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:56 GMT LucreLout
@crarcher
Good luck with that. Not entirely sure sites based abroad give 2 hoots about the legislation here or in over 200 other countries.
I'm not sure how they could. Allegedly there are a great many actresses with their own websites, and because of the numbers involved, competition is probably quite, erm, stiff. How are they supposed to fund on-going compliance checks and legal advice for 200+ nations?
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Good gawd/ess ...
".. are naughty sea-side post cards banned in the UK?"
Many were once prosecuted - and there are probably some that would no longer be stocked.
In the 1970/80s seaside T-shirts were printed on the spot using thermal transfers. There is no doubt you would be arrested these days for wearing some of them on the grounds of causing someone "offence" or for corrupting children.
Common ones were a black silhouette like an ink blot. Some were accompanied with signs of the zodiac. A variant had the number "69" above the blot - and below it was "try it you'll like it". A friend asked what it represented - and her 14 year old daughter explained it to her.
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Wednesday 17th February 2016 09:38 GMT jake
Re: Good gawd/ess ...
Good gawd/ess again ...
"A friend asked what it represented - and her 14 year old daughter explained it to her."
14 year old daughter, so the friend was 34ish (probably, +/- a year or three), and she had no idea what "69" meant? I feel ever so sorry for the poor woman ...
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Let me see if I understand this, the government wants pr0n sites and ISPs to ensure people are over 18 that are viewing the content which can only be done by supplying identification to websites run by people who potentially have questionable morals (No not the pr0n, the malware and crap served up on a lot of these sites)
Then what happens when the same ID is used for identity theft?
Are they really that stupid or are people for believing this moral "think of the children" crusade is anything other than utter bullshit?
Will somebody please take the time to teach these fuckwits about how the internet actually works? They might as well employ Stephen Fry as a consultant as the current level of knowledge is that shit.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:22 GMT codejunky
Hmm
"Just as we do offline"
And who thinks this works? Kids drink, smoke, do drugs and get laid and this is before leaving school. And of course this is where you can often physically see them unlike the online world where there is NO way to ensure the person on the other end is the person you think.
And when did we get so puritanical over sex again? I know labour was begging to interfere in peoples bedrooms and these lot aint improving the situation.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:35 GMT PassiveSmoking
Could someone please explain to these clowns how the internet works? How are you going to sue a company based in Azerbaijan?
Also, could someone please explain to them that there is no creature on the planet so cunning, resourceful or determined as a horny teen who wants to look at porn?
Good luck with ordering the tide to go out.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:44 GMT A Non e-mouse
Also, could someone please explain to them that there is no creature on the planet so cunning, resourceful or determined as a horny teen who wants to look at porn?
Obligatory Dilbert cartoon: dilbert.com/strip/1996-01-24
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 09:48 GMT Blofeld's Cat
Sir...
Only the other day I found that while browsing, I had quite innocently wandered into a furniture site where the sideboard legs were brazenly displayed.
The result of some innocent woman, child or servant seeing such images is too horrible to contemplate.
As my mistr... <cough> friend likes to point out, it is but a small step from an uncovered piano leg, to a life of drug addiction, prostitution, politics and hypocrisy.
I remain sir, your obedient servant,
Colonel Buckfast-Guzzler (retired).
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:07 GMT BoldMan
Re: Pornography Legal Definition?
Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 defines pornography to be:
an image "of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal"
Hmm so does that include car ads?
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Pornography Legal Definition?
"[...] produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal"
It is the prosecutor's view of what is arousing. Therefore one must presume that they find it arousing - even if almost everyone else wouldn't. Remember the old definition that it is "whatever turns the judge on".
It worries me that the people who are most zealous in their condemnation of others - often seem to have their own predilections. It is a natural human reaction to be most vitriolic about that which you want to keep hidden in yourself. The case of Cardinal Keith O'Brien being a perfect example - but not unusual.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:01 GMT Uncle Slacky
Re: Pornography Legal Definition?
As Bill Hicks put it:
"Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thoughts, that's their definition, essentially. No artistic merit causes sexual thoughts. Hmm... Sounds like...every commercial on television, doesn't it? You know, when I see those two twins on that Doublemint commercial? I'm not thinking of gum. I am thinking of chewing, so maybe that's the connection they're trying to make."
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Pornography Legal Definition?
" the only thing I ever found defining certain sexual acts was on the prohibited to import list."
A magazine importer was fined by the then UK Customs for importing pr0n - whilst the same naturist material was already on sale legally.
The word usually used is "indecent" - which seems to be able to be stretched to cover anything. If a zealot wants to see "indecency" in a picture - then they will - no matter how innocent it looks to everyone else.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm trying not to get too het up about Govt shite these days
You won't stop them doing their shite, it's not like they're answerable to anyone....
Let them do their shite then we will work around it like we always do and the masses will start to follow what we do
You'll have more to worry about when pig head man pulls out... (of the ECHR).
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
TWOFT
Besides I have a much harder time trying to explain what paedophilia, rape, genocide, war, school shootings, aircraft bombings etc is and the graphic detail of them in news reports from my kids than some smutty pics or vids off the internet.
I don't put the radio on when I have the kids in the car because I don't want the to hear news reports as I think those are far more damaging, create far more fear and those are genuine atrocities taking place.
The real world is a far scarier and more dangerous environment.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 13:02 GMT BugabooSue
@TWOFT
I am the same, but for myself.
Lifelong bipolar disorder finally under control - I dumped live television and radio 5 years ago on the advice of a psychiatrist as I found every bit of shite and disturbing news personally affected me.
I am not a 'fluffy' - I was in the British Army and also worked for the MOD for 22 years. I have seen and endured some truly horrendous shit in my time. BUT, this continuous drip-feed of nastiness from 24hr rolling news, and sensationalisation of same, was literally driving me nuts.
The whittling down of Rights by Hameron and his pet Witch is doing pretty much the same now. They are not 'Looking after The Kids', they are using every excuse they can to screw us in the ass while all the time saying it is "For our own good!"
I am ashamed to be British now. I went to war for this fantastic Country, and then gave up 22 years of my life to trying to protect us from despots like Hameron and his ilk. I did not do it to help them bring "1984" into reality.
As others have said, the *Kids* will get around anything these retards put in front of them, it's the rest of the people I worry about - it's NOTHING to do with kids per se, it's all about controlling the populace - US. *The Sheeple*
Let's take away that excuse:- make PARENTS take responsibility for their own kids!!
What? Oh yeah, silly me - Them doing that would take away one of the big sticks They are using to beat our rights/freedoms to death with.
"First, they came for..." "...and I did nothing..."
Brothers and Sisters unless we fight this idiocy whenever we can, we're totally screwed.
Not Anon for good reason.
EDIT: Sorry, got a bit off-topic there. I detest Hameron and all the current crop of self-aggrandising losers that now grace the House of Commons. Pretty much all are bunch of spineless turds. (Just an opinion, of course! lol)
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:56 GMT Chika
Turnip
Children will be children. They will try anything and everything unless you are there to stop them. You tell them not to play with matches but unless you are there to stop them, chances are that sooner or later they get one out, strike it, then find out what the dangers are.
When it comes to the Internet, what we actually have is a repeat of the problem that was around years ago when some parents, too lazy to actually look after the children, abdicated their responsibility to the television, then wondered why they turned out like Bart Simpson. It isn't the television anymore, it's the computer, and the hazards are a lot bigger than they were when Auntie Beeb held their hands.
It's at the root of what is wrong with so much. What Merkans refer to as "Soccer Moms" will scream blue murder for the law to restrict online porn, ultraviolence and other things they view as unsuitable for their precious little darlings despite the fact that the sites in question were never designed for such an audience and that the only reason why the brats get away with it is because they are allowed to.
To use the Merkan's own jargon, the law enables poor parents to slack off taking proper care of their children which in turn enables said children to do whatever they like online.
And that's the biggest trouble there. For example, it's all very well putting warnings and certificates on content but it is pointless unless the parent acts on it. A good example is that recent review of the number of children who actively use social media despite being underage. Whose fault do you think that is?
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:11 GMT Big_Ted
They want to ban British porn ? ? ?
Having seen the state of some of the "actors" / "actresses" on them all I can say is the vast majority of the world will celebrate.
As to children seeing porn and what is ok whats the next step ? banning them posting all pictures of people under the age of 16 and wearing anything arousing such as swimwear, PE kit, school uniforms, ankle socks etc.
These idiots working in the government need to sort themselves out so only non abusive (yeh do a deep check to see if they look at porno nasties or fiddle with those they shouldn't) and intelligent people who understand the internet and what is possible make the decisions on what to past laws on, anyone who doesn't pass a written exam to show they understand should not be allowed to vote or have any input at all.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 14:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: They want to ban British porn ? ? ?
"[...] whats the next step ? banning them posting all pictures of people under the age of 16 and wearing anything arousing such as swimwear, PE kit, school uniforms, ankle socks etc."
That ban has effectively been in place for years for pictures of anyone "who is - or looks like - they are under 18". IIRC the Sexual Offences Act 2003 changed the rules to include 16/17 year olds in the same classification of "children" as under-16s.
IIRC wile the official levels of "indecent" pictures have simple nudity as the least level - the mid-level is "dressed in a provocative pose". That should make a lot of family album pictures of pouting youngsters illegal. People are getting very sensitive, even self-censoring, about any pictures of their children - no matter how innocent the context. A judge recently banned a pole dancing(?) club from using St Trinian's costumes on its advertising posters.
I am fairly certain there have been cases of people being convicted for possessing children's clothing catalogue pictures.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 13:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I expect the Pirate Bay....
The Pirate Bay....
....don't be silly, that was BANNED long ago, there is no way I can access that now, politicians have so successfully protected me from my foolish ways. I can't acces it, I can't see any proxies to it....no no you are mistaken, I definately can't access it, no way Jose....
....and now there is no way I can download any illegal material from it as it is blocked, how could I, the Politican hath spoken, it is removed, unfindable, I am safe and protected....
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 21:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I expect the Pirate Bay....
"....and now there is no way I can download any illegal material from it"
You can't download anything illegal from "it" because doing this is not a criminal offence. If you did download something "it" [ directed you to | linked to ] your action may or may not be a _Civil offence_ depending on why you did it (eg. academic research, critical review), but it is not illegal.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 11:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Corporate web filtering
I once did a course for some web filtering software at the software company HQ.
They said the porn filters were quite good.
Took me all of 30 seconds to get something on the screen that they had not allowed for! (It only searched for flesh tones, not for the shine from PVC!!)
I knew that 24 hours in the red light district of Amsterdam would have its uses!
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 12:24 GMT Charlie Boy
What age and sex is your averager Hacker
Look if my 12 year old boy managed to workout that using google translate on russian porn sites allowed him to bypass the talk talk porn filter and watch all the grumble ficks he wanted (until he got busted), do yo really think age verifcation is going to work at all.
Most kids are more tech savvy than their parents (there maybe a few exceptions on here, but that won't last for long), what idiot thinks that legislating on age verification will have the slightest effect on the porn viewing habits of modern adolescent boys and girls. At best they'll view it as a challenege, at worst they'll start looking at the really dodgy sites that are already illegal (kids, animals & dead people)
The pblic, and politicians n particlar need to learn that this Genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and that blocking it will not work, so they need to look elsewhere for their solutions.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 12:24 GMT MrXavia
Bypassed in 60 seconds by any smart kid, proxies, caches, tor, VPN's, torrents,
Many various ways for them to access adult entertainment material.
Plus they could do what an idiot I knew did, which is use your parents credit cards...
We have poorly educated folks in positions of power as usual..
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 13:14 GMT EnviableOne
The State Of The Nation
As has already been mentioned, its all done to a subset of parents failing to actually do the parenting, and its not their fault, they never got any parenting when they were young, and neither did their parents. It all tracks back to the parents of the 60s-70s abdicating their responsibilities, so the kids grow up with messages of free love and no parenting skills, so we have teenage pregnancies, and indiciplined kids, and accelerating generations in this group, those that did have values and parenting get, fewer and harder to identify and we end up where we are today.
There is no good way to fix it, there is no subsititue for propper parenting, the state can legislate, but doesn't have the reach or power to enforce it, Schools can try, but if its not re-inforced at home, there is little they can do, so we end up in either a nanny State or a Anarchistic Dystopia.
I'm off to have some fun while i still can ....
last one out turn off the light .....
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 14:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The State Of The Nation
"[...] so the kids grow up with messages of free love and no parenting skills, so we have teenage pregnancies, and indiciplined kids, [...]
That is too broad a brush. The ones who got pregnant were often from strict homes where any idea of sex education was banned. As it was often said "Bad girls know how not to get pregnant".
Before the Pill became generally available pregnancy was down to ignorance. Abortion was a dangerous backstreet affair - except for the rich who could afford a private clinic's D&C operation. The babies were often given up at birth - or raised as an apparent sibling. People married young to have sex. After two quick babies they found they had a loveless relationship from which there was little chance of escape.
A couple of generation earlier it was not unusual for married couples to have eight children. After the 1930s, possibly due to the work of people like Marie Stopes, the average dropped to two.
My Finno-Scandinavian girlfriends taught me that you can introduce sex and relationship education at a young age. However the whole of society has to provide a context that education is worth something - and that there must be jobs for people to do afterwards.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 15:12 GMT SolKillam
Well it didn't worked then and it won't work now. The only thing that can be done is to oblige sites like pornhub, chaturbate or fapshows.com to show the content only to verified registered users and this will never happen. So what will be the next step in order to improve the filter system?
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 15:19 GMT Diodelogic
Somewhat surprising!
What's that? you say.
It's somewhat surprising that everyone (I think) has missed the obvious. The UK government doesn't expect this plan to work and never did. What they do expect is that that they will pick up goodwill points for being anti-pornography and for saving-the-children, plus maybe some extra shine by successfully prosecuting a few sites. These are the things that matter to career politicians.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 17:35 GMT TimeMaster T
Lewis was right
"“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C. S. Lewis:
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 19:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Lewis was right
"[...] but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
I think he missed an element of the psychology of many zealots. They are trying to salve their own consciences over their own libidinous thoughts and practices - either past, current, or future.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 18:24 GMT Graham Marsden
Link to the Consultation Document
This is the link to the Consultation
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/child-safety-online-age-verification-for-pornography
I recommend everyone go to that page and point out that you disagree with a) their attempts to censor the internet and b the idea that adults should have to ask permission to look at adult content.
"Won't Someone Think of the Children" never results in good (or sensible) legislation.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 18:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
The US might be strong enough to impose extra-territorial control on the internet, but I don't think the UK is, especially when US business interests will be the biggest opposition. Pay sites won't have a big problem, they could just show a clearer front page to visitors from UK IP addresses or something, but business models have moved on and ad-supported porn is now the norm. Sites like pornhub are in no way going to cooperate with this voluntarily, and seeing as the supreme court already ruled the equivalent here law unconstitutional when our politicians tried it, I can't see our government being much help either in that regard.
And AVS were horrible. Nobody, save credit card thieves, wants to bring that back.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 18:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Google image search
So will they try to force Google UK to add age verification for disabling filtering of explicit results? And then say that because most UK residents visit google.com instead of google.co.uk that Google needs to do it for google.com also?
I'm sure that will put a light bulb above the head of the Saudi regime, and they'll demand that any pictures of women not wearing a hijab be censored on google.com!
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 19:43 GMT Cynic_999
I'm afraid that I cannot get at all worked up about the idea of children seeing porn. By the time they are old enough to have any significant interest in watching it, they are well aware that it has as much similarity to reality as James Bond, and is simply sexually stimulating entertainment. A few minutes and a couple of Kleenex later and its back to playing GTA with no harm done.
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Tuesday 16th February 2016 21:00 GMT Spaceman Spiff
My parents were smart, and progressive. They knew that we (my sister and I) would become sexually active and would, even before that, be curious about how the opposite sex works. Solution? Plenty of kleenex for those hand sessions after reading some chapters of Lady Chatterly or Fanny Hill. Then, there was the copy of the Kamasutra my dad brought me back from a trip to India... Just don't ask me to describe the "Elephant Position"! Honestly, don't ask - I don't remember any more! :-)
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Wednesday 17th February 2016 16:53 GMT Michael 28
Government Paywall
Screw the kids, think of the revenue.
Obviously, paraphrasing a politician, and in light of recent investigations, I don't mean this literally.
However, when this has been attempted in the past, it did mean consolidation of said service providers, in a manner not in the consumers best interests.
I am surprised , however, that a conservative government is supporting the porn industry, by erecting (fnarr fnarr) a paywall, for free?
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/08/06/pornhub-erects-premium-monthly-paywall-become-netflix-porn
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Thursday 18th February 2016 00:34 GMT Bota
NEWS!
I had some jazz mags from the age of 12-ish graduating to pirated VHS tapes from my mate around the corner who'd burn copies of "Asian invasion" for me for a few quid. Nowadays,I imagine kids (like my younger brother) just send skin flicks by whatsapp and other peer to peer stuff.
I think porn can be dangerous, but a little inspiration once in a while after a shit week isn't the end of the world. Also the government isn't my parent, or my equal in raising my own kids. They can get fucked.