MPs urge UK.gov to use 1950s obscenity law to stifle online stiffies

In other news,

Teen pregnancy is at a 40 year low.

Just thought I'd mention that detail.

So...

.. If Mr Smith gives little Johnnie a computer with no parental controls on it and allows him to use it unsupervised is he guilty of distributing pornography to a minor or at least aiding and abetting said distribution?

Another belch from the clueless

Whilst I totally agree that we need to ensure some level of protection for children, this is just another load of hot air from the clueless. Potentially anything on the internet could contain porn. Not just actual porn sites, but forums and all sorts, sometimes as a main theme and sometimes just single pieces. After all, people publish their own amateur home made porn now. So, just thinking about websites that do porn and nothing else is somewhat missing the point.

There may be some technical things that can be done both inside and outside the house to give some degree of protection, but ultimately, it is the responsibility of the parents. However, governments seem determined to take the role of parents and in some cases, parents simply don't care. You spend hundreds of pounds on technology, but won't spend tens of pounds on products to reduce this risk. Alternatively, you could always have the computer etc. in public places, rather than in their bedrooms etc. You know, actually take an interest in your kids.

But no, this committee seems to think they can legislate or technically get round the problem and seek to ignore the role of parents and good parenting in all this. They also don't seem to have realised that times have moved on since the 1950s, even though their own habits and that of others working in the Houses of Parliament suggest this (given the latest information on porn site access from said location). Of course, I'm sure this is all 'research' and has no gratification value at all!!

Not sure when they'll realise all these committees actually need members who actually have some clue of the subject matter they're trying to deal with.

The politicos said that grumble flick websites should require a credit card

Yeah let's encourage people to hand over their credit card details to pornographers, what could possibly go wrong?

Speaking as an M.P. I think the plebs should have to have a doctors note to look at smut.

I will be checking the smut to see what the plebs should be protected from of course.

The News

What is hard for a parent is trying to censor what news your kid picks up, I dread news reports on the radio when we are on a family outing. In the ever more "Drop The Dead Donkey" and "Brass Eye" style of news reporting stories get whipped up, sensationalised and all the gory details laid bare. I've had some very awkward questions posed to me by my daughter of the "Jimmy you know who" stories. Sometimes I wonder if news organisations deliberately want us to constantly live in fear and paranoia of the world at large.

1950s obscenity law

It's a good job that all these websites are in the UK. Oh...

Porn filters?

Hear hear, I say!

It's so hard to find all the good porn these days.

I can never find the good "spank-me-nanny" sites when I need them.

Let's filter it, eliminate all the bad sites.

An MP

MP's Members Interests Phnaaar Phnaaar

I take it this has been dug up (let em use a credit card to verify age)

due to some member or their family/old skool friend/ etc.

Buying a large amount of shares in "smut peddlers and Grumble flics Ltd." Other Porn merchants are available.

Accross the ocean in Denmark

Here in Denmark, were porn is legal this is not an issue. It also doesn't appear to do any harm to any children far as I know.

As far as I am aware...

It's not in the best interests of the government to allow the parents to do the parenting in this case. What better solution for them is there than by pandering to the bored Netmums minority than to introduce a technological filtering solution, and that once all of those annoying civil liberties campaigners have got bored, and once the media hoo-haa has died down, can then be expanded to block other so called "problem" areas of the internet.

You might think that this is all a mish mash of unplanned and ill considered initiatives by Govmt. - but I assure you it is nothing of the kind. It is direct and planned censorship, and we are all complicit. 10 years down the line we will have the same restrictions as China. Although in our case I bet everything will be blocked except that which brings in some form of revenue via a Google, Twitter or FB tax.

Add metadata to the headers?

Um... they are aware that the entities running these sites are under no obligation to follow UK law if they aren't (1) British Subjects, and (2) in the UK, and that the internet does NOT stop at the 12-mile territorial limit, right?

I-Spy

I have just opened my "I-Spy book of porn lobbying" so let's see if we can spot any of the following people or groups.

* People who own subscription based porn sites.

* MPs no-one has heard of looking for publicity.

* Thinly disguised Christian organisations.

* The mumsnet lunatics.

* Porno Perry.

* Jim Gamble.

MPs

I wouldn't care much about what they say or do, if it wasn't for the odd coincidence, that they're also the very same people who make the laws. Worse still, they even have the cheek to claim this is

- what I want ("our constituents strongly demand..."

- what I need ("our citizens have the right to feel something's done to protect their children")

Headline grabbing

To my mind this definitely smacks of headline grabbing rather than an attempt to protect children.

Having told us that the network level filters are necessary and will solve everything, now they're saying that they need additional protections.

If they really want to protect children then I'd have thought the obvious place for them to look first is at helping to make the network level filters and home based filters more accurate. Rather than dumping costly requirements on anyone hosting a site featuring adult content, surely the simpler method would be to come up with a universal way to identify those sites. For instance agree on a collection of tags, for instance Adult, Porn, NSFW etc, which could simply be added to the meta data of any adult oriented websites. The filters can then easily look for those tags and immediately restrict access to those people who don't want that material visible.

You'd obviously make it clear that should sites fail to implement those simple fixes then more stringent legal action may follow, but start with the carrot and move to the stick only when required.

Better Idea

Instead of various misguided attempts to try to make the Internet "family friendly", why not just accept the fact that (1) it isn't, (2) it never has been and (3) it never will be?

There are plenty of places in The Real World where you can't take a child, and people generally seem OK with that. Why does anyone expect it to be different on the Internet?

"MPs want Britain's network-level filters to do a better job of censoring access to pornography sites to keep the content away from the prying eyes of children. But, to do that, perfectly legal online smut peddlers need to cooperate."

Lets start at the beginning. The parents!

Lets start locking them up/fining them if their 'net access to weak and unfiltered.

After all, it starts at home.

The parents are responsible. Of course the 'glish are great at passing the blame. If the time wasted passing the blame was used to learn how to filter 'net traffic, most kiddilies wouldn't be eyeing p0rn.

Who else is to blame? David Cameron, Barbara Striesand, yo momma?

Grow up parents and do your job properly.

A solution

The Govt funds a filter application that anyone can, if they desire, download and install on their device. The contracted developers keep an updated list that said software uses to update. This shouldn't cost very much, a proxy is not rocket science.

I carry on as I do now, which incidently, is to filter adverts. Other people can do want they think appropriate. The Govt should filter their own Internet connection if dangly bits offend them and stop telling me what to do.

Errr........

Either the MP's concerned have had a brain fart or they are thinking outside the box......

Deny people access to pr0n and watch a new generation of hackers born, certainly one way to make sure kids grow up computer savvy?

1950s obscenity law to stifle online stiffies

An obvious solution is to turn back the tide of 60s permissiveness and reintroduce the Lord Chancellor Office. Then you just need to get approval of the publication of each new website.

Is there evidence porn harms kids?

The same prudes who want to restrict porn also want to limit sex education. Like many of my generation the only formal sex education we received was so couched in indirectness that the teacher never uttered the word "Sex".

Going back to this standard will increase, not decrease teen pregnancy, even among "faith-based abstainers".

This is a bit like forbidding your kids to use the Internet or watch TV after 9PM, while admitting in private you "borrowed" your dad's copy of Playboy, and that you had sex by the time you were 16! Mostly political hypocrisy!

I imagine this would be fairly easily implemented by getting the card processors like ccBill to require some kind of "R18" style meta tags on your pages or refuse to process for you. That'd get 99% of the legit pr0n sites and just leave 1% of lazy/non-plussed/confused folk and 100% of the dodgy ones. Solved!

:-/

They just don't get it do they...

GCHQ Porn, any buyers?

Maybe the gov just wants in on the deal.

Make pr0n hard to get, then start serving up that 'inapropriate nudity' thay've been collecting the last few years.

That'll help the budget deficit.

I suppose the existence of the Obscene Publications Act is a sign that we don't need new laws, but I am reminded of what happened in 1996, and of the confusion over just what is "extreme pornograpgy".

"During 1996 the Metropolitan Police told the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) that the content carried by some of the newsgroups made available by them was illegal, that they considered the ISPs involved to be publishers of that material, and that they were therefore breaking the law. In August 1996, Chief Inspector Stephen French, of the Metropolitan Police Clubs & Vice Unit, sent an open letter to the ISPA, requesting that they ban access to a list of 132 newsgroups, many of which were deemed to contain pornographic images or explicit text."

That affair did lead to the creation of the Internet Watch Foundation.

The sticking point for me is that the French letter had a very wide-ranging list of newsgroups, some of them rather blatantly titled to invite illegal content, and many not. It raises the question of who we trust to make the choices. Often, cases that reached juries have ended with acquittal, but the Police and CPS have been known to choose criminal charges which are not heard by juries, or to have hidden part of the evidence.

The whole business of "making" child porn images is an ingenious interpretation of the legal detail which was aimed at photographic darkrooms and printing presses.

As a safeguard, a jury trial is a good thing, but the cost to the accused, emotional and financial, is high even for an acquittal. There's something ugly about the idea of going back to this old law, which is a struggle to fit with the era of the internet. Looking at how the laws have been used, and at the reputation of the Police, having these people say we can trust them just isn't enough.

It also means GCHQ gets to know not just which internet connection was used to view porn (lots of good blackmail material there - no doubt only used in the national interest) but also who paid for it (even more material).

The Real Question

Is whether porn should be kept away from children in the first place.

When I was a lad, I used to obtain my own porn by scavenging the dumps and other places likely to have discarded Playboy back issues. I also had to keep them well hidden outside my parents' property.

On the other hand, I had a friend who could peruse his dad's smut collection whenever he wanted (as long as mum wasn't in the house--least she find out that dad was into smut). He seemed a lot more casual than most of us about the whole sexuality thing.

One day, during a medical check-up at the local swimming pool (you had to have one to be allowed in, in those days) the doc noticed that I had some sort of penis infection--not sexuality transmitted since I was a virgin at the time, probably from public toilets or the like.

Because of the way I perceived my parents appeared to treat (or rather, avoid) the subject of sexuality, I couldn't really go and tell them "could I please get an appointment with the GP to look at some scabs in my dick, mum?" So guess what, I went and spoke to my friend's dad, the one with the smut collection, who made me feel very comfortable about the whole thing, set me up with a physician friend of his, and taught me how to tackle the subject with my own parents in a way that I feel made me grow up ten years in one day.

If you're uncomfortable with the idea of your kids watching porn with your knowledge, please keep the above story in mind.

Up with this sort of thing

Let the young rascals find their porn in the woods like we used to!

Gie My Bank Details to Some Foreign Crim. Not Lightly!!

Would I really want to give some unknown foreign website all my bank details??? More than lightly they would turn up on a list of banking details being sold of cheap to criminals. If GCHQ also got hold of them en route, there records would be put out in their dustbins, unencrypted and not shredded, ready for the dustmen to use!

Whatever happened to parents overseeing their childrens activities on the net?

Safety?

The Obscene Publications Act 1959 makes no mention of "safety", probably because every kids growing up seeks out porn, and is not harmed by it. On the other hand, 18-rated horror films gives countless kids nightmares, and no-one (I have NEVER seen any criticisms of horror films), complaints.

This has nothing to do with safety, but the embarrassment of adults to teach kids about porn in context.