El Reg deep dive: Everything you need to know about UK.gov's pr0n block Remember last night when you went online to order pizza and stumbled across those two people humping each others' brains out? No? Us neither. But it seems we've all dodged a bullet because the Brit government is still worried. So worried, it is introducing age checks on online adult content to prevent kids accidentally surfing …
This is great. Our dark overlords get to de-anonymise the Interwebs and provide state aid to the pr0n industry, in a single move.
Think about it: what better way to facilitate the persecution of thought-criminals than to ensure that they cant even so much as have a wank without our benevolent dictators knowing about it.
Privacy? We've heard of it, and we don't like it, goddammit! It's just a circumvention device for terrorists and paedophiles. The fact that the 99% who aren't terrorists and paedophiles will have their civil and human rights raped is just inconsequential collateral damage. So, OK, maybe they're not terrorists and paedophiles, but I bet they've done something naughty, and we your divine rulers demand to know what it is!
Plus, as an added bonus, they get to siphon all your money into the pr0n industry, because let's face it, how else are they going to prove legal age, if not with financial transactions. Let them clearing houses take care of that pesky business. The ghost of Hugh Hefner thanks you.
""I don't think it's a done deal," said Blake. "There's no shame in abandoning a policy that it turns out isn't going to work the way you thought it was."
There's no chance that this will be abandoned. We have some clueless, cloth eared, inept old dear as PM, a woman brought up in a vicarage, somebody who knows less than nothing about technology, and to judge by other policies things "privacy" is a concept that doesn't apply to government.
And thinking about all the other crap policies that government keep pushing despite their self-evident stupidity, why would they see any sense on this?
Because it effectively introduces a censorship block on the entire country as a side effect. Mandatory one.
So it can be used in the next election(s) to protect us from corrupting influences from the East... West... South... Eurasia... Eastasia... Whatever we need to be protected to while being fed the correct regurgitated easy to digest goo produced by the Daily Beobachter.
Who couldn't set the age restriction rules on her browser.
So she organized a debate (that was attended by about 6 other MPs)
Next thing she knows CMD appointed her as Czar for Child Sexualization & Exploitation (later renamed when it read like the title was for someone to support both subjects).
And the rest is going to be history.
BTW It was Perry who though gambling sites should to the age checking, before it turned out one had dished its whole customer list to CC fraudsters.
There's no chance that this will be abandoned. We have some clueless, cloth eared, inept old dear as PM, a woman brought up in a vicarage, somebody who knows less than nothing about technology, and to judge by other policies things "privacy" is a concept that doesn't apply to government.
My mum met some civil servants from the Home Office when she was on holiday. I won't say where she was in case it identifies anyone. They said Chairman May was inept and clueless as their minister and just as bad if not worse since she moved in to Number 10. I can well believe that
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"What am I doing wrong?"
You presumably weren't using usenet in those days. The most insidious was the people who flooded unmoderated alt. groups with pr0n pictures - then complained to ISPs to try to get the group closed down.
This was usually aimed at groups whose discussion subject they disliked eg those of feminists, atheists, naturists.
The groups actually carrying pr0n often moved to a euphemistically named group - which could catch people unware.
There was much puzzled debate over one strange posting in alt.rec.urn - that transpired to be a list of botanical names of cacti. Apologies followed from a non-English speaker who had confused "naturist" with "naturalist"
Didn't everything have "binaries" in the name too?
Christ - it's got to be 20 years since I've used usenet regularly. It was about 1998 when alt.fan.pratchett got too big to read completely. By 2000 my now other-half was using usenet but didn't realise it because it was under the banner Google Groups rather than a news panel in her mail client of choice.
(Actually, Google Groups was 2001 so she was probably using DejaNews for the first year I knew her)
alt.sex.hamster.ductape?
Back in the 1990s the neighbour's 12 year old son used to boast about how they evaded the school's attempts to block internet sites. One nerd woul dfind a way - then it spread round the school like wildfire. He showed me one of his peer group's favourites - IIRC something like alt.binary.tasteless ??? Mainly very gruesome medical pictures. Definitely mind bleach territory.
If I remember correctly around the birth of flashing banners and mp3 download sites you were offered an extraordinary amount of porn along with some very risky images to click. This was in the days before "hot local singles in Hull are waiting to talk to you". Then came adblock and these are but a distant memory.
There are still a few naughty websites that will redirect you via java script but if you are on those websites you are already being naughty.
Which makes you wonder where all this "stumbled upon" porn actually is?
@Oor Nonny-Muss: In the 90s, a colleague* was working on a shared PC in the middle of the office trying to access a technical website - Called something like "MacDougal.com"; He typed "McDougal.com" which turned out to be NSFW. His shriek of horror drew everyones attention.
* Honest, it wasn't me. I got caught out when I ran an executable that turned out to be like an animated gif; My reaction was to reboot, but I didn't think to turn the screen off, so the image stayed there for several interminable seconds...
About two dozen years ago I installed a TCP/IP stack and Netscape on a work colleague's computer, then proceeded to show him the basics of how t'WWW worked. When it came to demonstrating search engines I thought I'd use his academic specialism as an example and typed in 'video live art'. Big mistake.
I was once showing my retired landlady and her husband how to access useful financial info on the web - share prices etc. Can't remember exactly which site it was, something like Moneyexpert.co.uk or whatever. Accidentally went to Moneyexpert.com which was something very different. Red faces all round
Hah, both Yahoo and Bing were prone to serve strait up hardcore on their Image and video search at various points. Yahoo did it overtly as on of it's ill fated attempts to monetize itself, before an inevitable humiliating retreat. Bing just drug their heels purging it when they launched video search. Hence the rise of things like "SafeSearch" et al., which still didn't stop the banner ads either
To be fair most of the sites they pointed were bottom feeding site scrapers that were spamming the search engines to drive traffic to even less savory locations. Places like Angelfire, Tripod, and Geocites would get hit in waves as they figured out ways around the successive waves of half-assed blocking. How did we survive the 90's and early '00s.
Anyone who claims to have made it to the modern age without accidental porn in their browser cache is probably either blind and using Lynx, a liar, or a Unicorn.
My kid stumbled upon some once.
First or second grade school project, at school if I recall. He was searching for images of kittens, and their adult form. Being a bit lazy he didn't include the last three characters "cat" in the search.
Let's just say he learned a bit about safe net use, and a bit about slang that day.
I can't see why anyone would object to just filling in a complete personal profile including your full medical history, your sexual preferences, previous convictions and your full banking and credit card details (and a fingerprint and DNS record that you will have to supply separately via some ridiculously expensive approved agent) that is kept by some Government agency quango.
After all - we all trust the government and their appointed proxies to look after and protect our data don't we ?
Perhaps we should get used to the idea of having microchip implants to identify us and enable Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to collect the data without all the hassle of asking permission.
It just occurred to me that they may be the perfect combination to act on the Government's behalf and provide all the data facilities needed .... on the other hand, why don't we just make them the actual Government? We already trust them with our data, and they already conduct themselves with the required level of moral and legal disdain and arrogance, so the transition should be imperceptible !
Let those who have the Legal, Moral and Parental responsibility to do just that.
I have seen news paper articles, tv interviews, half witted rants from MP's
who feel they should show they're standing up for their constituents even when they haven't a clue what they're waffling about, technical, legal, moral and even religious opinions of all flavours and increasingly hysterical aftermaths if we do/don't do something about children accessing smut online.
I have yet to hear any of the Politicians ,Charity reps, tech pundits, or any of those other "I have to say SOMETHING, it'll get me on the telly" dickwits offer the simplest solution.
If children are accessing porn online the 1st and most effective line of defense is the parents.
We are for ever having public heath campaigns rammed down our throats, now is the chance to do so for a good reason.
Blitz the media, slip a reminder onto Google.co.uk's front page, send out the flyers, booklets and Government approved instructions.
I have always relied on a simple idea, "just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should."
Rant over you can go back to normal viewing (don't forget to have your photo ID ready though).
This won't stop anything in the grand scheme of things. It might be a vote winner or it might not it's a double edged sword and the politicians would do well to remember that. What will actually happen is the child or children at a school who can access the pr0n on their computer will become more popular. I've been on the bus when school has just ended and the boys were sharing images by Bluetooth and videos by WiFi. Some clever kids will look at the keychain on their mother's or father's mac and get their password that way. Some will download from mainstream sites like twitter etc. others will get it via a vpn/tor etc. It will still get passed around that won't stop. The difference is that the lanky kid at my school who looked 18 wouldn't be able to rent out his magazines for a quid a night any more.
I would like to know who in Parliament is going to stand up and say 'I signed up to AgeID and found it safe, secure and easy to do'.
Asking a Politician to 'stand up' and make a statement doesn't guarantee anything like the truth whatsoever.
Force them to use it for six months first, then if there's been no scandal, maybe, just maybe*....
Of course this is no guarantee of data safety either.
... the Digital Economy Act is also supposed to deal with online copyright violations, but Mindgeek are one of the most notorious purveyors of material ripped off from pay sites, then uploaded and distributed for free, whilst they cash in on the adverts which appear alongside it!
given unrealistic expectations of the act
Hey, it's not just children that are affected you know.
It's awkward, borderline embarassing, often frought with risks in pursuit of and gets more awkward and even occasionally uncomfortable as you grow older.
You get over it.
What I don't get over is 'unrealistic expectations' of any act of parliament being sane and measured to counter whatever threat or risk is present without being an undue burden on the citizenry and not another building block laid for some future potential tyranny.
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People should have a right to be able to access legal content (regardless of how seedy or unpalatable you may perceive it to be), without having their personal details required by law to be logged in a nice big tracking database.
People should also have a right to privacy in their own homes.
Or do you disagree with these?
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"Where this type of material is concerned there should be no 'right' to possess it or conceal its presence from law enforcement."
Umm, you do realise that we are dealing with *legal* material. Stuff that is already illegal is covered by existing laws and you won't be able to get hold of it just by ticking a box that says "I'm over 18.". So, pretty much by definition, there *is* an existing right to possess this material.
If you wish to conceal its presence then that, too, is covered by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (to which nearly every country on the planet is signed up), article 12 of which states that "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.".
"I have nothing to hide."
Well that's debatable...
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> I don't recognise its so-called 'legality'.
Fortunately we don't have to rely on *your* personal preferences to decide what *we* are allowed to see.
Meanwhile, consider this quote from Myles Jackman, Human Rights Barrister:
"Pornography is the canary in the coal mine of freedom of expression".
Or, to paraphrase Martin Niemoller:
"First they came for the pornographers..."
The Internet has the capability to be the greatest opportunity for freedom of expression ever, but this, of course, terrifies authoritarian regimes, who are doing their utmost to control it using "think of the children" and similar specious arguments to justify their oppressive laws.
Naturally, once such laws are in place, it is easy to add a bit of Function Creep and start blocking other "unacceptable" material.
But, of course, I have no doubt you're just someone else who thinks that "Freedom of Expression" means "Freedom to say the things I approve of..."
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Where this type of material is concerned there should be no 'right' to possess it or conceal its presence from law enforcement.
I have nothing to hide.
So you have nothing covering your windows then? I mean if you've really got nothing to hide then you wouldn't be bothered with what people see through them.
Where this type of material is concerned there should be no 'right' to possess it or conceal its presence from law enforcement.
Without the plod having an appropriate warrant, everyone has the perfect right to conceal whatever they like from law enforcement. It's known as "the right to a private life" (article 8 of the European Charter of Human Rights), or more colloquially, "An Englishman's home is his castle".
You lot are revealing an awful lot about yourselves and your motives in attempting to access this material. One wonders why you are so keen to protect this 'right' (hint: there isn't one).
More 'unwarranted' 'moral majority' propaganda....
It's not totally about 'this material'. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
To allow this to pass without comment, will almost certainly give them permission to add the same 'safeguards' to other categories of information.
'Porn blockers' have been known to block education and other health information sites too.
I wish to upvote your trolling to protest the downvoters who can NEVER stop themselves from downvoting your trolling.
Trolls should be allowed to have their say - what they fear the most is being ignored.
Their postings do serve a useful purpose. They remind us that there are people in the real world who do hold such views - and that can provoke a useful debate on the pros and cons of something.
It should be remembered that the levers of power are usually held by a minority - who often try to exorcise their inner demons by controlling everyone else.
"Maybe you should take a close look at yourself in the mirror. I'll understand if you don't want to - it might reveal some things about yourself that you don't want to acknowledge."
I had a very close look at myself in the mirror, and what I saw I want to acknowledge, but the UK grubbyment insists you pass Age Verification to see my acknowledgment.
“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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
I'm glad your conscience is clear...
Due to humans being humans I can't see how this is ever going to work.
Anything that depends on asking "are you 18+?" can be bypassed by simply lying.
Anything that depends on asking "enter details to show you are 18+" can be bypassed by simply lying.
Anything that depends on asking something like "enter credit card details to prove you are 18+" can by bypassed by stealing and then lying.
As XHamster says, comparing with buying booze or going into a nooky cinema is flawed as with those the claimant is stood there in front of the gatekeeper declaring "I am 18+ and this is me saying it, look at me, do I look like a kid?".
So you don’t even need to physically have it.
I forgot my CC once when I went to a shopping center, didn't realise until I was at the checkout.
I asked them if they were able to perform 'cardholder not present' transactions and they said they could - so I gave them all the CC details from memory. No problem.
"Can be bypassed by putting in a fair bit of effort to steal a CC... you could say that about many things now but most people don't immediately turn to theft or identity fraud the moment they can't have something they want."
In this case, though, I can very easily see something like that happening in the case of teenagers. We know there will be ways to get around this blocking - and one of those ways will be to 'borrow' their dad's credit card without his knowledge. After all, they aren't actually buying anything, just using it to prove they are over 18, so he'll never find out. It'll be perfectly safe - what could possibly go wrong?
Parents and schools need to be having discussions with their children about pornography, explaining that it is not a representation of real life and it is often a fantasy that can take things to extremes," said Lust, who has created a site that aims to help do this.
"Instead of trying to fix a social problem with technology, children should be educated and given a safe space to explore their sexuality."
Girl on the Net agreed, saying that young people have been crying out for "properly funded sex ed, which doesn't just cover the very basics like pregnancy and STIs, but which is broad and covers issues such as consent, self identity and pornography as well".
The many teachers I know bemoan the fact that they ALREADY have to teach this stuff at a younger and younger age and that this clearly isn't helping. They say they should not be having to talk to under-10s, or even under-8s about porn, consent and sexuality, and that the focus is all on sex not on relationships. They definitely don't like the idea of pre-pubescent children being encouraged to "explore their sexuality"
It seems like the things being requested are already part of modern sex-ed, but they don't seem to stop modern kids growing up with the impression that spaffing on your GF's face is a respectful relationship as long as they consent to it.
And yet the Netherlands begins Sex and Relationship Education in primary school, but *they* don't have problems, because they've not been brought up with the "think of the children" and "sex is wrong outside marriage" BS that the Mary Whitehouse Brigade have tried to force on us all.
And yet the Netherlands begins Sex and Relationship Education in primary school, but *they* don't have problems, because they've not been brought up with the "think of the children" and "sex is wrong outside marriage" BS that the Mary Whitehouse Brigade have tried to force on us all.
The problems incumbent on the Netherlands attitude towards legalising prostitution are linked with this in a significant manner. On the one hand, you might say, "allowing women to sell their bodies empowers them". On the other hand, allowing pimps to coerce and control women legally, and Johns to treat women's bodies as a commodity isn't exactly a shining example of empowerment and equality. So, I'd question whether they have problems with their approach towards sex education in the Netherlands, which almost certainly normalises this harmful attitude towards women.
"The problems incumbent on the Netherlands attitude towards computer programming are linked with this in a significant manner. On the one hand, you might say, "allowing coders to sell their minds empowers them". On the other hand, allowing managers to coerce and control coders legally, and users to treat coder's minds as a commodity isn't exactly a shining example of empowerment and equality. So, I'd question whether they have problems with their approach towards IT education in the Netherlands, which almost certainly normalises this harmful attitude towards coders."
Works for many other professions to.
> The problems incumbent on the Netherlands attitude towards legalising prostitution are linked with this in a significant manner
Try talking to sex workers and you'll find that they DO NOT want prostitution to be "legalised", they want it to be *DECRIMINALISED*.
Legalisation just turns the Government and Police into Pimps, giving them the right to tell sex workers what they can do and when and how and with whom and then interefere in private matters on the spurious grounds of "checking licences" or "safety inspections" etc.
In the Amsterdam, "Window Girls" already have a stringent set of regulations they have to obey, but now the authorities are trying to introduce more restrictions, very possibly in an attempt to "gentrify" the Red Light area. What this does, of course, is force the women out of there and into areas which may well be *less* safe.
Sex workers just want the protections that all other workers enjoy, the right to be treated fairly, the right to be protected from assault or intimidation, the right to choose how and where and when they offer their services and to whom and, importantly, work together and employ security staff for their own protection *without* being accused of "running a brothel" or the security staff being called pimps.
PS In other forms of work, workers have people who manage their money and find them employment. In music and acting, they're called Agents...
They say they do, but that any actual restrictive mechanism is likely to be harmful. Do we really believe them... genuine question? Do we think pornographers are good citizens running legitimate businesses, or dodgy types who - like cigarette makers in the past - are more than happy to get the next generation hooked?
Do we think pornographers are good citizens running legitimate businesses
I'd guess, Like any Industry, some play by the rules, some don.t.
Almost all paysites will already be using CC for payments anyway. It's the ones running on ad revenue with no gateway that will be affected.
But here's the rub (oo-er). The 'free' ad revenue driven ones are the type often used by the minimal to occasional user.
There's a good chance this requirement is going to push them to paysites with renewing subs and higher usage levels as well as other side effects previously discussed.
First of all you're conflating entirely separate issues here.
Mechanisms like Age Verification will affect *everyone*, whether or not they have children, and remember the majority of households in this country *don't* have children, so why do we all have to be "protected" from this stuff?
Secondly, the idea that porn is "harmful", cf the American States who are claiming it's a "Public Health Crisis" is nonsense. Provided kids are taught respect and consent from an early age and understand that porn is not a "how to" guide (cf the Netherlands) there's much less of an issue with sexual offences or, indeed, teenage pregnancy.
Thirdly, your statement of getting the next generation "hooked" seems to be based on the claim that porn is "addictive", yet proper scientific studies have shown that "porn addiction" doesn't exist, the effects of porn are nothing like the effects of drugs.
So the idea that porn producers have some sort of nefarious designs simply does not stand up to scrutiny, they simply want to get on with being allowed to distribute adult material to consenting adults and let *parents* be responsible for bringing up their children and preventing access to adult material.
"[...] or, indeed, teenage pregnancy."
Surveys regularly indicate that areas that have the most "moral" opposition to sex education are the ones that have the highest levels of teenage pregnancy.
Some such States in the USA are still resisting reforming their laws that currently allow effectively a forced marriage in cases of unwanted pregnancy as low as age 11.
Ye Gads!
From AC's link:
In half of US states, there is no legal minimum age for marriage; a 40-year-old man can, in theory, marry a five-year-old girl. But Florida may soon ban the practice for under-18s.
===================================
Sherry Johnson was 11 when her mother told her she was going to get married. The bridegroom was nine years older and a deacon in the strict apostolic church that her family attended. He was also the man who had raped her and made her pregnant. “They forced me to marry him to cover up the scandal,” Johnson says. “Instead of putting the handcuffs on him and sending him to prison, they put the handcuffs on me and imprisoned me in a marriage.”
" the majority of households in this country *don't* have children, so why do we all have to be "protected" from this stuff?"
Because the children might get on the net via your unprotected wifi signal.
1."Mechanisms like Age Verification will affect *everyone*, whether or not they have children, and remember the majority of households in this country *don't* have children, so why do we all have to be "protected" from this stuff?"
What kind of argument is that? It's not about protecting adults, but checking users are adults. Where have you got the notion this is about whether we have kids from? Besides, the idea a rule is needed only if it affects the majority is clearly nonsense. I submit you're just acting out of self-interest that YOU don't want to have to jump through hoops.
2. I (deliberately) never made any comment on porn being harmful but I'd hope we agree it's not a great idea for pre-pubescent children to be exposed to hard-core porn, or to explicit sexualisation in any sense.
That said, "it doesn't do anyone any harm" is just a load you've swallowed (ahem). Whether or not it harms the consumer, it is a matter of fact that porn is linked to abuse and trafficking. It is very hard(!) for you to know if the stuff you're consuming is legit when it's just a stream on some website. Some people might go out of their way to source "ethical porn" but most just type some search term into Google.
But while we're on the topic, I refute your claims it's harmless. It just smacks of tobacco companies funding research showing smoking wasn't bad for you. Whether it has a negative affect on mature adults, to suggest that children who grow up consuming porn before they start interacting with the opposite sex in real life won't be affected AT ALL is a very bold claim. It's not like there is any line between soft and hard stuff so a curious 10yo is just as likely to come across(!) some really dark stuff. It has also been shown that porn is on average getting harder. Maybe we grew up thinking a topless woman was pretty exciting, these days content very typically includes violent overtones, dominance, etc, not two people having a fun consensual time together.
1) What kind of argument is that? It's not about protecting adults, but checking users are adults.
A very good argument against censorship. I don't have children. No children have access to my computer, why should *I* have to prove that I am an adult to access legal material in my own home?
I am not the parent of your children. The responsibility for protecting those children lies with you, not me.
"Think Of The Children" is not a good argument for anything!
2) I'd hope we agree it's not a great idea for pre-pubescent children to be exposed to hard-core porn, or to explicit sexualisation in any sense.
Do you read the Daily Mail a lot?
Here's a bit of history: For the vast majority of the existence of the human race, entire extended families, fathers, mothers, children, grandparents and maybe even aunts and uncles lived together in *single* room dwellings. Do you think mummy and daddy got all the kids out when they wanted to make a new baby? Of course not.
Also, don't forget that, in agricultural societies, kids would be perfectly familiar with where piglets and lambs and calves came from and how. So the idea that children would somehow be irreparably damaged by images of sex is complete nonsense.
Back in the present day, what we *SHOULD* be doing is teaching children proper Sex and Relationship Education, not the coy, embarassed, Daily Mail pleasing rubbish they get at the moment and that *includes* an understanding that porn is not a "how to" guide, any more than cartoons or movies are representations of real life.
(PS Oh and please look up the difference between "refute" and "reject"...)
Okay so there is quite a lot of discussion on porn for obvious reasons. Whilst I agree one should be able to watch porn without passing over their PII to a third non-trusted party, I truly think there should be some limitations on the ability to watch porn, at the very least on how extreme the porn is —though to rate the extremity of porn would not be feasible.
As a teenager I remember I had limits on what porn I watched but eventually kept surpassing them, although this is more a reflection on my personality than anything else. So I think it would be good to request age verification for anything more than softcore porn with the ability to opt-out, although how to safely implement it is another question.
With all the talk of porn though, shouldn't we be also asking about reducing/eliminating sexuality in tv/film. There are times when sex scenes help the plot along, but for the most part they (along with all the snogging) is way over the top. I don't give a toss if you two+ wanna do each other, get to the point of the movie. Why are your tits hanging half out? Just because you're Katy Perry? It's only sesame street.
But I digress, back to porn topics.
Curiosity about sex is engrained in your genes. At puberty hormones change you. You become interested in sex. It is a natural part of growing up. Most organisms on the planet engage in sex, it is what creates the next generation and keeps the species alive. Some people find it distasteful and embarrassing but that is their problem. The day that Politicians or Doctors 'cure' kids form looking at porn, that will be the day the human race dies. The Porn industry need do nothing to promote sex.
Nobody has died looking at other people have sex. No body has be traumatised by looking at porn, no matter what the experts say. Parents should get a clue and educate their kids and expect them to get interested in sex as they age. It has been happening for millions of years.
It's happened before.
1999 in the US, a company called Landslide, providing adult verification services, involving credit-card payments as authentication.
Trouble was, some of the site using the service were making child porn available, and there was a lot of credit card fraud mixed in.
The operators of the site ended up in jail, with one of those crazy multi-lifetime sentences.
The names of credit-card holders in the UK were passed to the UK Police, who appeared to assume that every credit-card use was genuine and was linked to accessing child porn.
I remember, in my early years on Demon, the struggles there were against the misconceptions of people in power, the tendency to assume everything on the internet was illegal and dangerous. It's hard to avoid wondering how much of this has the same roots, particularly people who have to deal with the genuine bad stuff: the dangerous idiots were, in those days, a part of the Metropolitan Police called "Clubs & Vice".
That outfit, and later the NSPCC with "Satanic Child Abuse", had a reaction I can understand, but they came across as gullible, suffering from some sort of institutional PTSD that had them starting at shadows.
I don't think their solutions are any better.
Ah, yes, good old Operation Ore.
Anyone who'd used their card to access adult services was automatically considered to be downloading child porn and the Police were basically telling them "Look, you have a choice, accept a caution and we'll drop this now or we'll drag you through the courts and ruin your life and your career and your reputation, even if (or when) you're found not guilty".
Of course they didn't mention that these people would also end up on the Sex Offenders Register which would, in itself, have a knock-on effect in the future. But why should the Police care? They could say to the media "Look, we've arrested X many child pornographers, aren't we great?!"
They could say to the media "Look, we've arrested X many child pornographers, aren't we great?!"
Promotion and political approval are also incentives. I saw the workings of one such police operation. The officers were boasting that they had as big a catch as Operation Ore - and they invested much effort in the wild goose chase. In reality the courts threw out the few charges they finally brought against innocent people - on the grounds of unconvincing evidence and incompetent "expert" witnesses.
Operation Ore was even more insidious in that the operators of that porn site, which offered various images of various fetishes of a legal but strictly niche interest, were criminals. They reasoned that if they deducted extra money from their customers' credit cards to buy illegal porn, the customers thus defrauded wouldn't complain, and since that site was the only place they could find their particular kink, nor would they go away; they would simply put up with the fraud.
So, whilst the site records showed that a long list of customers had purchased child porn, quite a number of these customers hadn't themselves made that purchase, nor had they looked at or even known that they had bought the illegal porn. The police, by contrast, worked on the principle that the criminals operating the site were honest and kept honest records of everything, and so used the purchase records as evidence to accuse people of viewing illegal porn.
Several suicides resulted from these wrongful accusations.
"[...] the dangerous idiots were, in those days, a part of the Metropolitan Police called "Clubs & Vice"."
IIRC such units often fall prey to corruption. Google throws up several instances for the Metropolitan Police.
You don't have to be a cynic to recognise that many fervent "moral" campaigners are often trying to exorcise their own predilections in thought or practice. They may even have followed that path in order to gain access to that which they vociferously campaign against.
The list of those exposed as hypocrites is endless.
Surely this will not cover websites the purpose of which is to educate or similar?
Like all those "principles of adult entertainment production" courses that (are about to) pop up? And what about documentaries such as "a day in the life of a plumber", "my career as a private music teacher for adolescent girls", "TV repairman: the film", etc.?
...Surely this will not cover websites the purpose of which is to educate or similar?
Like ......documentaries such as "a day in the life of a plumber"...
I think you have a warped view of modern education.
Videos showing normal hetrosexual mating activity are heinous crimes, opressing all these brave LGBTQWERTY minorities.
Conversely, any bum action is highly commended, and ALL children should be provided with full and detailed explanations, together with pictures and opportunities for practical experience. That's why schools are changing all the signs on the toilets....
"It's hard to say what the overall effect will be on porn-viewing habits in the UK. Some might opt for text-based porn (which isn't covered in the legislation), or cut it out entirely"
Are they going to be using the same tired old DNS blocking that most other non-Chinese countries use for this kind of censorship? In that case it will be a matter of days at most before all the kiddies have worked out they need to use a foreign based DNS.
If that doesn't work there'll be a massive uptake of VPN services.
Have brick and mortar sellers of age-controlled material sell branded USB sticks w/one-time codes on them to give out to a age-controlled website. The seller already, presumably has to check age of customers for printed material or alcohol, for example. Customers can show ID and pay in cash, w/no record of who was on the ID (anymore than for, say, alcohol sales). The USB stick would contain some large number of 1-time use numbers that could be used at a site requiring age-verification. Once verified at a site, no further numbers would be required, though periodic re-verification would be possible if needed.
Since each site should get a separate number, cross-site checking for a given user shouldn't be a problem.
That describes one of the potential solutions — AVSecure — pretty well:
"Age verification cards will be obtainable at over 30,000 retail stores across the UK. It will allow face-to-face age verification to be completed at the point of sale. If you don’t clearly look over 18, you will be asked to show ID to the cashier in the same way you are asked when buying alcohol or cigarettes."
I'm not sure about the OTP bit though, although I *think* I've heard that mentioned...
Meanwhile, of course, everyone else has to go into a shop and say to the assistant "excuse me, can I buy a porn card, please..."
Remember all the sniggering when Firefox et al introduced "Private Browsing" and people were going "Hah, we know that's really porn mode..."?
> It will allow face-to-face age verification to be completed at the point of sale.
And the kids who are 16 or 17, but *look* 18 will be able to make money buying porn cards for their younger mates...
> The USB stick would contain some large number of 1-time use numbers that could be used at a site requiring age-verification.
And then dodgy market traders will start selling copies cheaper than official ones, but, for all you know, they may have malware or spyware loaded onto them...
All these options fail to ask the question “How old do you have to be to work out how to install Tor browser or a VPN client on an iPad ?
The only real answerr I can see is to use the cost of buying a laptop to mean thats an adult. You could then legislate that all laptops are sold with some kind of child protection software enabled (ideally AV software) - which includes a wizard to setup a password and optionally an account for kids in the house. Users can of course change this, but you would expect parents to have some level of control/responsibility...
Its not perfect but seems a sane compromise ...
This post has been deleted by its author
Yes of course we should protect kids from bad/illegal stuff. But... the majority of porn on the web that they are trying to regulate does not involve kiddie-porn, donkeys, dead people, mutilation, etc...
I started looking at porn when I discovered my brother's cache of magazines at the age of 10, I've consumed it ever since. As far as I'm aware it didn't do and still isn't doing me any damage.
In fact, it helped - my uncle sexually abused me as a teen on many occasions and this caused me a lot of anguish - porn helped me through that in better understanding where my sexuality lay.
So is it really harming our kids?
When I was 15, if I'd come across (pun intended) a site that asked me to click a button to confirm I was over 18, my reaction would have been 'Hell yes, show me the titties!'. Kids who are looking for porn already know they're doing something naughty, what meakes these idiots assume that having to tell a little lie will be any deterrent?
Today's news.
"Scotland Yard has admitted Special Branch officers passed information to a controversial network that blacklisted construction workers." (for their political views).
I found it really hard to find porn on the internet many years ago when I got my first computer, in fact the effort nearly made me go blind.
When the wife and I eventually found a page offering hot dick in our area, we contacted them and within the hour a sweaty heating engineer called Richard was on our doorstep.
I'm here all week.
Children are our future, our hope, we should care enough about them to have an adult assigned to each one to help and protect them from some hazards and have them grow from others, they could even tuck them in at night and maybe comfort them when they scratch their knee.
These adults could act as guides and guards. Not sure who we would get to do such an important job or what we would call them but it seems like a new and novel response that might be worth looking into improving and developing.
(this post and discussion is subject to covert censorship including post deletions and pre-moderation)
"Cue men downloading Gigabytes of Pr0n [...]"
Women watch pr0n too. Judging by the popularity of "Fifty Shades of Grey" they would be likely to be into the portrayal of such activities.
Nancy Friday's book "Women on Top" was about women's mental fantasies when day dreaming or to spice up having vanilla sex. Many of them involved activities that they would not countenance doing themselves in their actual sex lives.
"[...] did some weirdo puritans took over the government?"
Not just the UK. There seems to be a trend in many Western countries. Demagogues are playing on the fears and failed aspirations of a large number of people. It looks somewhat like a rerun of the 1930s on many fronts.
In many cases conservatives are trying to turn the clock back to when their religious dogma was effectively the law of their land.
Ok, let me see if i understand this correctly.
A contingent of alterkakes who manifestly know almost nothing of anything even vaguely tech-related seriously think they can orchestrate and/or vet & oversee those they hire to orchestrate a system of age verification that will prevent a 15 year-old from finding online skin.
If this is correct, her majesty's government's clearly been spendinf too much time with us yanks.
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