Just delete the internet – pr0n-blocking legislation receives Royal Assent The Digital Economy Bill 2016-17 has received Royal Assent, and with Her Maj's rubberstamp it shall henceforth become a requirement for all pornography-serving websites to verify the ages (and thus identities) of all of their visitors in the UK. ISPs may be forced to block sites which fail to do so, and the fact that many such …
There is not going to BE an "abroad" for much longer. Yes, it is currently still nearly trivial to skip into some different jurisdiction to escape any one particular decision, but the walls are closing in from all sides and all governments around the world are queuing up to take hints from each other on how to regulate and restrict internet access further and further. All the restrictions enforced through China's firewall weren't "a big deal" as long as VPNs were an option - then they flat out forbade those too and now they kinda are.
There is less and less time remaining for us to cryo-freeze someone so that in a hundred years he can say "back in my day we didn't need a special authorization to open up a blank browser page and another one to call up Google and another one to follow the result link" (and be promptly called a liar and get laughed at incredulously).
When do you think the American Wild West is going to come around again? Barring WWIII happening - NEVER. You have witnessed its online equivalent first-hand - cherish that opportunity, because none of your descendants will get to experience the non-locked-down non-spoon-fed non-sanitized version ever again. For their own good, natch.
"Government ignores consultation and pursues legislation into law anyway. "
And a short while later some MPs and civil servants involved all headed off to various dungeons for a spanking and domination.
Bloody hypocrits the lot of them. What is the hang up people have with sex? So its no big deal for kids to watch a stallone/vin diesel/van damme/arnie film and see people get blown to pieces and murdered in various unpleasent ways, or those rather graphic crash videos on youtube or live feed, no problemo! But some adults engaging in consensual sex acts? Quick, wall off the web, its a moral crisis! And while you're at it cover those piano legs!
Government suggests legislation. Consultation tells government idea is stupid.Government ignores consultation and pursues legislation into law anyway.
Under the NZ National gubbermint it's more like "someone suggests legislation that hurts poorer people/increases wealth for the gubbermint's cronies/increases spying power/reduces rights, later that day it is passed under urgency".
Democracy? Just another thing national thinks should be banned.
http://bugmenot.com/ - find & share logins, real useful for when you find that obscure/obselete driver file for that old bit of kit you have but the website you found it on requires signing up to access said file.
"bugmenot"
...was never of much use frankly. All the websites that you cared enough not to sign up for did in turn care enough to "opt out" of Bugmenot and because they did honour such an option, you got zilch. Lately, it has become utterly useless even against the "mildest" sites - I guess it's just slowly becoming sufficiently unpopular for any targeted sites to notice and ban logins much faster than new ones become available...
I live in the capital within sight of the parliament building... 6Mb/s and no chance of improvement for another 3 years!
Not far away from you in Lower Hutt. Getting Fibre in my area now, another month or so. But I've known plenty of people on Fibre - use the Chorus/tele$cumSpark speedtest sites and WOW this is fast. Use anything else (other speedtest site, YouTube or other streaming), and it's a whole lot of expensive meh, probably faster on ADSL.
Got mates in Porirua who have to wait till 2019 to get Fibre or VDSL speeds, though admittedly their ADSL speeds are at the top of the range.
Funny. I remember not to many years ago (well, in the 80's/90's) how NZ had one of if not the best communications networks on the world. Amazing how much "privatisation" has advanced us! :(
Actually, your problem might be a physical as well as virtual wind problem. All the blow coming from the politicians is sucking up all the bandwidth!
That reveals which MP's and MP's family members are looking at pr0n.
And I guess you could cross reference that with the ICR database leak to see exactly what sites they are looking at.
In fact, maybe that legislation itself is some kind submissive/exhibitionist self abuse by conservative MP's!
In which case we should ban that filth.
"That reveals which MP's and MP's family members are looking at pr0n."
Nope. MPs (and their families and staff) are exempt from the provisions of the DEB and their ICRs are "expunged".
Perhaps there is some other way we can get at them? [Hack Icon Required]
"Nope. MPs (and their families and staff) are exempt from the provisions of the DEB and their ICRs are 'expunged'."
And were they able to explain, with a straight face, just why they should be exempt? (The cover reason: obviously there's going to be one rule for the elite and one for us plebes. Just unusual to have it written down explicitly.)
And were they able to explain, with a straight face, just why they should be exempt? (The cover reason: obviously there's going to be one rule for the elite and one for us plebes. Just unusual to have it written down explicitly.)
The old chestnut of "research"... That's the excuse given by political types here in the States for all sorts of similar exemptions from various laws for themselves.
"MPs (and their families and staff) are exempt from the provisions of the DEB and their ICRs are "expunged"."
I fail to see how that can be possible. Presumably *everyone* is protected against arbitrary publication of their internet habits and equally presumably MPs and their families are trawled just the same as everyone else in the big dragnet collecting the data in the first place. Since any data breach is, by definition, something that shouldn't have happened, it is hard to understand how MPs' records are any less likely than mine to be included in such a breach.
"I fail to see how that can be possible."
It's as possible as every other fucking clueless desire that comes out of their empty heads.
They decided it would happen, therefore it will.
If we are lucky they will pass the "no gravity for MPs" bill in the next session...
That reveals which MP's [...] are looking at pr0n.
And I guess you could cross reference that with the ICR database leak to see exactly what sites they are looking at.
Well, they're MPs, so I'll take a wild stab in the dark and say "child pornography" for $500, there, Alex.
Of course, Labour politicians would never be caught doing anything that can bring themselves into disrepute, being so pious and pure.
Whilst I realise it's heartening to live in an echo chamber where you and your kind have screamed vocally how righteous your opinion is so that only similar voices to yours can be heard, thus legitimising your idiocy and validating your bigotry. But if live outside that echo chamber, people like you just look and act like total pricks.
The problem with just attacking the Tories on this issue is that you ignore the other parties policies, which, if you check, are just as fucked as the Tories.
I always question the sanity and intelligence of those who scream abuse at one group, whilst ignoring their own is equally as repugnant.
The words abject hypocrite and sanctimonious don't do it justice.
That is because we are increasingly living in a police state, also an increasingly undemocratic one.
I refused to take part in that very same scheme for Spain, I told my company it was unethical, and my career stopped there.
In case you are wondering, yes, they do match all kind of data.. including mobile phone location and who is near you.. so even if you dont speak to then using internet/telephone, as you hang arround them, they know they are your friends...
Two points.
1. I'm sorry to be living in a place where the partially elected government thinks it can outlaw stuff (and I'm not just talking pron, anything) that's consentual but 'not conventional'. Who are they to say what's conventional or not? They only got 37% of the popular vote. Who do they think they are?
2. I'm happy to be in a world where thanks to technology, it's simple to get around any pathetic, impotent, Helen Lovejoy inspired laws they want to pass.
"They only got 37% of the popular vote."
The FPTP system favours the two large parties. Even if Labour won - their authoritarian streak would be no different.
Only the Lib-Dems have shown any concern about privacy issues. No matter how well they might poll this time - they aren't going to win anything like a proportional number of seats.
The Ruling Class. They're Tories, don't you know? Born to rule over us plebs etc...
That was a good movie - one of finest Peter O'Toole performances. Any resemblance to some of the members of May's government is most likely purely coincidental.
"I'll fire up my VPN and go looking for it."
yeah, about that... ISP filtering doesn't work well when people have access to VPN or Tor. So as it is over here across the pond, a stupid law that tries to prevent people from doing things that fall under the blanket term "vice" ONLY punishes those who are willing to obey that law. And those who circumvent such things will simply laugh at it.
The USA had an "experiment" early back in the 20th century called 'Prohibition'. The rise of organized crime and widespread DISREGARD of the law (and unofficial increase in Canadian and Mexican liquor imports) drove its repeal a decade or so later.
A similar law was passed in the 1970s, restricting highway speeds to 55mph. It was widely violated as well. California highway speeds typically moved at 65-70mph while that law was in effect, and police knew that traffic moving along at the same speed was SAFER than randomly pulling people over and citing them for doing more than "the maximum speed". The 1990's power changeover in Congress, under Newt's leadership, REPEALED that [Reagan had orchestrated a partial-repeal in the 80's but couldn't pull off a full repeal - that took a majority in Congress].
Anyway those are TWO examples of attempts to legislate against the will of the people, and the LAUGHABLE and widespread willful disobedience of the law that resulted.
Ah, but China has shown a way to deal with VPNs. Just restrict ALL encrypted traffic that can't be decoded by the State. And if your system is able to parse other formats, you can also put a pinch on steganography. Control the points of ingress and egress, and you can prevent "conspirator" routers from helping as well.
Unlike with Prohibition, the borders CAN be patrolled pretty effectively if the State really got around to it.
It's getting too late for that now. It could have worked if it was put in place a few years ago, when almost everything on the internet was cleartext. But these days? Encryption is the default for a lot of things. Including this forum. Including all major websites, and most applications too. If you block everything that can't be read, you break the internet to a point that, even in a repressive state, the angry users are going to be a problem.
I do wonder what constitutes "non-conventional". For some in the fruitcase fraternity this presumably includes anything other than the missionary position: no more blow jobs and even having a wank could land you in hot water; female orgasms can go back to being mere myths.
'I do wonder what constitutes "non-conventional".'
Sodomy, for starters. Which is insertion of the penis into any orifice other than a vagina. Yes, sodomy does legally include BJs.
However, titty-fucks do not consist of penetration of an orifice, so do not constitute sodomy. That's why they're classed as gomorrahy (which is similar to sodomy but in a different place). Definitely non-conventional. Even if you're married to Dolly Parton.
Since MPs created the law, their behaviour must define what is classed as conventional. So having sex with your own wife is also non-conventional.
And, by anybody's standards, watching grumble flicks of Donald J Trump being pissed on by Russian hookers is non-conventional squared. Getting turned on by watching it is non-conventional cubed.
Apropos of nothing at all, I had to laugh a year or two back when Tesco sold a yellow climbing rose called "Golden Showers." You can get them from the Royal Horticultural Society (amongst many other places) for only £14.99. I have no idea why I just thought of that.
The classic tactic for slipping in something the slipper knows is pure BS. You can smell the greasy fingerprints of the cabal at the Home Office all over this.
Age verification was the hobby horse of the woman MP CMD appointed Child Exploitation and Sexualization Tsar (not the current title but I found the original one far more amusing).
Y'know, the one who could not be arsed/work out how to set adult filtering on her browser.
The actual quote is from two books which most of us from the Continent had as a part of our English language study material. They were written by a Hungarian immigrant after the war and chapters on various English cultural topics. The shortest chapter was entitled "Sex". It consisted of one sentence: "They have sex on the continent. In England we have bed warmer bottles".
And then we move up a ratchet - secure Teamviewer to desktop running on server in Iceland.
I must admit I've been using VPNs on and off for years - mainly to be able to test how Google users in country X see some of my customer rankings. And getting past geo-blocking to watch local TV.
Time to leave them permanently on I think. And is it being unfair to use different VPNs on different laptops and phones?
I have multiple devices here, at home, and every one of them hangs a shingle out in the 'net at a different location around the world. Not that these devices actually go anywhere in the physical world; just that I really prefer both separating my traffic from the others that live here and I'm more than a bit paranoid (with cause).
I also do other things to scramble things around but that's it in main.
Its unlikely they will be able to stop people getting to porn sites imho but this is still worrying, there were amendments that were passed to make its less bad like making the definition of porn sites more clear and making sure sites like Reddit are not blocked at least to my knowledge.
Even then there no no legal compulsion for them to stop porn and its very unlikely they will put AV on Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr or any other site as the ORG says.
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2016/is-the-government-misleading-the-lords-about-blocking-twitter
This is still a bad bill turn into a bad law.
Its unlikely blocking of sites or AV will begin anytime soon especially now that there a election. My guess we will see what happens after June 8th
At risk of sounding tin foil hatted, I expect the government knows full well any new laws allowing internet censorship (not just restricted to pron but also covering libel, secrets and other areas unprotected by the UK's lack of provision for freedom of speech) would be hard to enforce effectively, but a sweet side effect (and what I suspect is the aim) is blanket criminalisation of swathes of the population.
While in extremis, this erodes habeas corpus, broadening the opportunities for targeted silencing, persecution and imprisonment of individuals on any kind of 'shit list', on a mundane day to day level, it opens the door to more intrusive surveillance without effective protection. If it is too hard to spy on, cajole or intimidate individuals with a clean record, and too hard to expand state powers without attracting negative attention, just use 'think of the children' legislation to 'dirty up' as many records as possible - who would object if they have nothing to hide?..
A beer for Renate Samson anyway..
Prohibition of something that many people like - tends to lead to an increase in organised crime.
When something is touted as "immoral" then you can often bet there is a religious ideology pushing the agenda. The Christian Churches often seem obsessed with what people do, or just think, in their sex lives - rather than helping people in need.
Organised crime? How? The legal porn industry can barely make any money off of it these days - no-one pays any more, and advertising money is hard to come by when all the big networks shun the industry. There's no way that organised crime can compete with free, and no reason they'd want to.
why is there a problem with a vibrator supplier collecting usage data on an app, when this is basically extending the same issue to a huge part of the population? I assume this did not require a real name/credit card/address/social security number etc...
Do what we say, not do what we do (not even in private).
Who decides what isn't mainstream activity anyway? In my experience very few would think they are not mainstream (regardless of their proclivities, and regardless of my views)
I can't see any realistic enforcement that is not trivial to bypass either.
Goodbye M&S food porn too then
OK, so it's a stupid unworkable idea. But that's not the point.
The point is that the government can say "we've put in place legislation to block minors from viewing online pornography in the UK". The Sun and The Daily Fail can then get off their high horse.
It's about perception, not about actually doing anything useful.
In this democratic people's monarchy of the UK, the non-techies vastly outnumber the techies.
The non-techies have been demanding for a long time that internet pawn be stopped, and the techies should stop whingeing and stop the pawn. The techies respond that it is like asking Newton's Laws to be repealed, but that is democracy for you.
In real politics, of course, there would be a sensible compromise. E.g. if you really want to watch pawn, smoke cigarettes, or drive a car you pay extra tax and extra extra tax if you pay anonymously.
Everything has its price.
"The non-techies have been demanding for a long time that internet pawn be stopped, and the techies should stop whingeing and stop the pawn. The techies respond that it is like asking Newton's Laws to be repealed, but that is democracy for you."
Maybe instead, when they ask for prawns to be banned, the techies should just say "No." Don't try to reason, just stonewall.
@spacadet66
What kind of democracy is that? Why should techies, rather than (say) religious nutters, be allowed to impose their values and standards?
Nobody should be allowed to impose. Even a democratic majority must accept some limits, but minorities should accept their minority position.
Didn't you know that in today's PC-crazed culture it's inconceivable to not compromise...? I don't care how precisely you've determined the exact GMT and what instruments you used to do it, I say it's three hours over yonder, and we'll bloody well need to sit and argue until we find some middle ground, OR ELSE...
"Maybe instead, when they ask for prawns to be banned, the techies should just say "No." Don't try to reason, just stonewall."
But the problem with recalcitrance is that, eventually, people go, "Sod this!" and go around you. Even a coast-to-coast stonewall can be bypassed by sea. The risk of stonewalling is that they simply ignore you and you get no input in the final solution.
Assuming their main idea is to stop kids getting at it - not going to happen.
Plenty of tech savvy under 18's and the workarounds will be communicated around like wildfire.
The ones at risk of getting their card details (or whatever valuable info is deemed needed for age verification) will be the tech clueless over 18s.
Lots of under 18s will want to get at porn & a jumping through a few hoops wont stop them.
Way before the web, the Dury track "Razzle in my pocket" summed up under 18s efforts to get at banned stuff rather well
I was reading an article about the DEB on Ars the other day, when they removed the "30 Mbps for everyone" bit.
Part of the article which caught my eye was this:
But when pressed by Onwurah on whether "citizens own and control their own data," the minister responded: "Citizens elect the government and in many cases the government is responsible for the data, and having democratic legitimacy behind the control of data is critical to a functioning democracy."
Well i guess everyones Internet costs are going to start to increase since they law requires that the ISPs block none compliant websites and this is going to cost the ISPs more which they will ultimately pass onto the customers. With the number of pron websites that appear everyday and are picked up by the filtering companies it won't take long for the Russian and Eastern European website to get around any blocks. Plus you can still go to Google images and get all the pron you want without every needing to visit another site
It won't cost them much. ISPs already have censorship systems in place - they are required for the voluntary* child abuse imagery blocks (BT calls it 'cleanfeed') and to block websites which are subject to a court blocking order. It would not be difficult to just add another set of entries to the list. They can group together to establish an industry body that processes complaints and generates the block list collectively.
*Parliament made it quite clear that if any major ISP doesn't voluntary comply, legislation will be introduced make it no-so-voluntary.
Despite repeated warnings, parliament has failed to listen to concerns about the privacy and security of people who want to watch legal adult content.
There's the rub, then. A good portion of the populace (Trump voters, Brexit voters, Le Pen voters, other associated Neanderthals) want nothing more to make the phrase "legal adult content" an oxymoron.
Website involved around horror shows plenty of gore, dismembered bodies, blood flowing and dripping everywhere and yeah, that's just life for you buddy.
Website shows a female's boob and then all the alarm bells go off. Because heaven forbid, how on earth can you show something so upsetting and distasteful!?!?!
I think some people should seriously sort out their priorities here.
I don't have children myself, but honestly... I'd be more bothered if my little dipper would be confronted with the first website than the second.
when teens are sexting each other anyway?
when back in the pre-internet days we all had access to shared wank mags from older brothers and pirated our own grumble flicks by heaving VHS decks to each others houses?
when in the early internet days popular was the man who knew USENET and had a CD burner? (I think my first one cost £400 IIRC) (and popular now will be the man who uses a VPN and megaupload)
when enough people get their rocks off on softcore wank fodder like the tudors, game of thrones etc (if people didn't, they wouldn't put it in)
Or in Tory NewSpeak manufacturing, possessing and distributing child pornography.
Because under the relevant law that's what it is.
Context is irrelevant and society "Must be protected from this evil filth" (C Rabid Xenophobia Publications T/A The Daily Heil)
Authoritarian governments (and in the UK I'd count everyone from Thatcher onward) want more and more vaguely defined laws so there's always something anyone can be arrested for. Authoritarian govts believe in the KGB view that everyone is guilty of something. It's just a question of finding out what. And if we can't find out what, locking them up on general principles.
And that's how you do police "work" in a police state.
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