UK drops plans for online pornography age verification system
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
> The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, told parliament the policy would be abandoned. Instead, the government would instead focus on measures to protect children in the much broader online harms white paper. This is expected to introduce a new internet regulator, which will impose a duty of care on all websites and social media outlets – not just pornography sites.
Which links to: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/online-harms-whi...
.. which is almost a satire of every “think of the children” and “beware of terrorists” manifesto ever written. It’s a long document but I couldn’t find a single mention of the balance between safety and governmental overreach.. I would be surprised if e2e encryption were compatible with this white paper.
> 4.7. Reflecting the importance of privacy, the framework will also ensure a differentiated approach for private communication, meaning any requirements to scan or monitor content for tightly defined categories of illegal content will not apply to private channels.
The next sentence says that they haven't really thought about it yet: "We are consulting on definitions of private communications, and what measures should apply to these services."
Why don't we see more people with basic technical knowlege in policy making
WHY are there so many taboos around an act that provides pleasure, reduces stress and literally creates life, that is the most natural instinct and urge of practically every single creature in known existence, but we can freely show depictions of ending someone's life and glamorize death, injury and misery?
What the honest, actual, fuck.
I would be curious how people behaved wrt sex before the modern repressive religions came along.
My impression is it has less to do with religion itself but rather the culture. China under the CCP is far from a religious culture, but they’ve banned porn for decades.
>Don’t you think people are naturally more private about sex though?
The first rule of Fuck Club: don’t talk about Fuck Club.
Very crudely, my understanding is that places where food meant plowing (i.e. heavy work) almost always had a strong marriage tradition. While places where growing food was light work quite often did not -- basically places where it was possible for a woman to raise children on her own labor. (Not very sure about non-farming people.)
This situation is probably the extreme form of instinctive control over mating rights.
By denying potential competitors' access to mates, we hope to increase ours.
Did these people actually read the Bible? "So the two daughters get their farther drunk on wine, rape him, and have his children". Then the Bible moves on to the next tale, like "well, yeah, THAT just happened".
Or see the recent scandal of Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking for first world elites, or Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood's abusive underbelly. Or, closer to the topic here, the allegations of pedophilia involving UK's cream of the crop.
> The more Western culture has taken over the rest of the world, the more it's spread.
I'm from a Middle Eastern culture, where shopping malls etc literally have "No Hand Holding" signs (actually against public displays of affection) (https://i.imgur.com/WVOoTBA.jpg) so Western culture is still a lot better off, and the rest of Europe doesn't seem as stuck up about it as the UK/US.
If this is true, it would also follow that more fundamentalist regions would have stricter interpretations of those rules. I does not take much imagination to come up with a version of the US where religious fundamentalism leads to "No Hand Holding" signs, and I'm sure at least some people living in the US right now would approve of such controls (thankfully they are not the majority).
Since I first noticed one, probably 70s/80s video nasties or heavy metal played backwards causes satanism, exactly never have I actually met or spoken to anyone who wasn't having a laugh at the stupidity. (Whilst watching a 4th generation copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre with friends)
Yet, for all the people laughing at the stupids, repressive laws are somehow being made.
You need to yell instead of laugh, or those who come after you will be crying. We already have China as an example of how bad repressive censorship can stifle the way of life we currently take for granted.
Besides these things are rarely, if ever, election promises. They are far more likely to be a knee-jerk reaction to some tabloid "This is outrageous, government must _do_ something" campaign.
That's what I mean about depiction. Violence is glamorized right away from the very early stages of childhood. Toys, cartoons, comics and of course games showing weapons, fights, injuries etc but its unthinkable to show a kiss.
There was an infamous scene from some movie or TV show that I can't remember the name of right now, where they didn't want to show naked corpses so they increased the amount of blood to cover them up...
That must have been a cosmic facepalm moment where the Universe rearranged itself to put us in a corner far away from every other sentient species.
It's not just about outright sex, but some cultures repress ALL and ANY sexual and romantic expression, like couples publically holding hands, kissing someone on the cheek, females and males even shaking hands at all, flirting, dating etc.
It's signicantly easier to have sex than commit assault, it's not like the police will stop you (consent permitting, of course). Sure, you need to find a willing partner, but that isnt exactly the biggest hurdle that has ever been faced.
“The decision will disappoint a number of British businesses that had invested substantial time and money developing verification products.”
I’m devastated. Let’s hope they all follow their morals and go bankrupt.
I'd wager a good deal of money on betting that the conservative minded people pushing this legislation are also likely ones who consume a great deal of the content this legislation is aimed at.
I tend to wonder:
Do they have to buy said "passes" as well, or are they allowed to "opt out", so to speak?
I'd better the latter is more likely than the former, but it raises the question of what makes them so darn special? Of course, they'd probably claim they don't need it anyhow, as they are (somehow) of higher moral character (or some such rubbish) and would -never- consume such content anyhow...
If something like this actually gained traction and went on to become law, it wouldn't be very long until one or more of the legislators who pushed for it found their internet browsing history out in the public sphere.
Sad thing, though? Given today's seeming apathy, and in some cases acceptance and encouragement, of such activity by our public servants, likely nothing would happen to them politically or publicly.
It's a sickening form of Animal Farm we are currently living in.
Mainly the possible implementations and the thus following implications.
It enrages me how technically illiterate (insult of your choosing) conjure up these idiotic ideas and hordes of (more insults) companies jump on that bandwagon. All in the name of “save the children”. When we all know that that’s a very poor excuse but an excellent gateway for further regulation, since few people will publicly stand against it for obvious reasons.
I also faintly remember them banning various genres like bdsm and squirting. The latter because it might be simulated by pissing. I’m in to neither but it’s nobody’s business, as long as it’s consenting.
Whether or not to age-restrict porn I don’t know. I’m the wrong person to ask.
That's both the idea that wasn't workable (the original plan said ISPs have to censor the rest of the world using DNS blocking, as you may have noticed this doesn't work if you have DPRIVE, which was in fact already under development before the UK Government came up with this stupid idea) and it's the idea that makes no coherent sense anyway. Why should a Russian pornographer obey a British rule? Should a Canadian pornographer obey Chinese rules? How does "pornography" get to be special here? We have international rules, but only for things everybody (more or less) agrees are bad, like murder or piracy. We don't have such agreement as to what pornography even includes, let alone whether it should be restricted and who should get to access it.
If porn is a social ill (not sure I’m convinced, but I probably could be with some data), before we go all boot-on-face, let’s at least try engaging with minors first.
As a minor in the US I was subjected to countless classes and lectures exploring the harms of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol. If a minor in the US begins smoking, it’s not because they’ve never heard that cigarettes cause cancer.
Are youth in the UK educated about porn and its harms? I would say starting there seems smarter.
Separately, I would argue that if even one category of content should be age restricted, then internet access as a whole should be age restricted. AI isn’t ready to be a good age-appropriate filter yet.
Regarding “if one then all”: The beauty behind the porn filter is that few people (especially our stainless leaders) will publicly say stand against it for fear of being ridiculed and not reelected.
So you can get the infrastructure in place with only perverts protesting, only to then further expand that filter because terrorism | children | piracy | copyright | social credit | whathaveyou.
Good luck with that.
(all that without having really an opinion on the the topic of if and from which age porn should be restricted)
As I always said, opt-in is not an option.
Perhaps the vast majority of people don't have a good idea precisely because they have watched porn from a young age. I know that's the case with the young adults of my generation (26 years).
So to answer your question => Yes; not watching porn is much healthier than watching.
> [porn] might provide information to those who may otherwise not get it
Porn doesn't teach you how to have sex, it teaches you that sexual feelings are a commodity you can take.
I used to buy into the whole "porn addiction" idea and though I was, but when I dropped it cold turkey back in college I just found other unhealthy coping mechanisms. Until I went to a professional and got on track towards fixing my health issues, then my "porn addiction", "video game addiction", "work addiction" or "browsing memes/hn addiction" or whatever else I had just went away, and I can now do all those things without overdoing them and without damaging other aspects of my life.
As such, I don't think any kind of porn addiction is the source of problems, but more of a symptom. I think this is generally true with any kind of addiction, but substance abuse has a harsher physical component to it with withdrawal. All the other "addictions" without a physical element are rooted in attempts to get some form of pleasure (dopamine, etc.) because of other problems (stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness), and once those other problems are solved the "addiction" tends to go away on it's own, unlike with substance abuse.
(I don't think the idea of restricting access to some websites based on age is inherently bad, I just don't see a way to enforce it that isn't more harmful than useful)
This is just another typical cultural issue that people cannot agree on. My problem with these laws is that they force morals upon the population that are not necessarily widely accepted. e.g. 99% of people agree murder is wrong, but what % of people agree on what 'porn' even means?
The way I see it avoiding awkward conversations seems to be the most consistent "real goal" judging by other actions.
I'm quite sure ulterior motives explain more than stated goals, here and elsewhere.
And then they will regulate themselves.
So perhaps there should be good non-prude material for under aged people that are interested in the subject. If kids have nothing useful to watch they'll watch porn instead, right?
For example: I found a very informative book about drugs at school written by two guys that tried about every type of drugs in existence and wrote what to expect from it and what it's benefits and risks were. The section heroin basically contained the word: "NO". I don't think kids in the US had access to this type of information given what happened in the last decade with heroin because of 'protecting the kids' laws in schools.
Once you're competent in the relevant domain you can usually skim through those chainsaw and flamethrower DIY videos, find the parts you need and implement them with little issue.
Edit: and the things you should watch out for is not porn, but have you kid joined some weird religious cult or a gang - that can cause a LOT more trouble than having an awkward conversation about sex.
Update: spelling
Eh, tacking -xit onto things doesn't work nearly as well as -gate, unfortunately.
It's not illegal in the U.S. to have a porn site or sexually explicit site without an RTA header. There's no legal remedy available in the U.S. to the U.K. government against a site that intentionally decides not to use this header, nor against people providing infrastructure to that site. DNS registrars, registries, and ICANN don't require it either.
Certainly this won't solve VPN's and some proxies, but then who are we trying to block? Adults? Children? If we are thinking of the children, then an order to UK ISP's to consume the non-compliance list and block those domains (and even IP's if you want to get heavy handed) should more than suffice. Whether or not you decide to block CDN IP's is entirely up to how heavy handed you want to get. I predict CDN's would move adult sites to their own CIDR blocks if this starts occurring.
If we are trying to block adults, that is a whole other discussion as to the intention of the blocking in the first place. I would expect some countries in the middle east already know how to address this problem, by forcing all traffic through a MITM set of proxies. I believe Syria and Iran use Bluecoat proxies. China uses (or used) a heavily modified netfliter implementation. They have the distinct advantage of not having to be performant. Priority always goes to blocking first.
But isn't that already the structure of what the old proposal was going to do? UK ISPs would be expected to actively cooperate in blocking things indicated to them, most of which would be hosted outside of the country.
Don't get me wrong, I think a citizen database of porn passes would be a blast, once it leaks out from some public S3 bucket. I would tease Ricky Gervais about his habits until he turns it into a standup routine. (kidding, but it could happen) I'm just hoping one of his writers visits this site.
What you've said makes better sense to me now.
The main point however was to generate favourable headlines in the Tory press, at the time of passing the law, which is why they lost all interest in actually implementing it.
Mentioned here with no discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21270259
Why are such laws always proposed by conservatives? Aren't they supposed to be for smaller, less intrusive government?
So it's better for the patriarchs to keep porn away from the less fortunate men who might be inspired by it to demand a rule that no man can have more than one wife.
Also, to keep the peace in societies such as you described, it would probably make sense to have pornography available as outlet for repressed sexual desires.
Would you agree that say Saudi-Arabia is a "patriarchal society"? I can readily agree with your point it would probably help them as a society to legalize porn but seems like they are not going to do that any time soon:
https://www.quora.com/Is-porn-banned-in-Saudi
Why? If they did allow it the absolute power of the ruling dynasty could be questioned in other ways and that might be the end of that dynasty.
I don't quite buy into the Patriarchy mythos. For me, this is oversimplifying how societies form and develop their structure and rules.
If you want to equate "Patriarchy" with hierarchy; sure, be my guest. That's what a lot of ardent Feminists tend to do and my guess that is because it made for a convincing story if you were a privileged female member of the upper-classes of late 19th-century England. It was also probably very tempting to be able to point at any member of the opposite sex and say "It's your fault!". (At least these are my guesses why we struggle so hard to overcome the Patriachy mythos.)
I don't think that this approach has much merit to it, however.
To me it looks like a lot of what is considered "Patriarchy" are simply the remnants of cultural agreements that were made in a time when survival and reproduction where the predominant driver of the societal web. You don't send out your woman to battle war, they are the reproductive coin of your society. You send men to war, men are expendable. Our traditional social compact follows this logic.
But it was always a compact between males and females. It was never something that Men coerced Women into. It was an agreement out of necessity. Woman live in seclusion, Men die free. Sure, you are free to call these traditional, born-out-of-the-necessity-for-survival compacts 'patriarchal'. But 'matriarchal' would be just as appropriate.
So, why is pornography banned in Saudi-Arabia? Why is homosexuality considered an abomination? Howly cow, I don't know. I guess it has something to to with the tenants of the Abrahamic religion(s). Other traditional don't have that much beef with sex and sexuality. I don't think that allowing pornography would topple the regime, though it could put some strain onto the dynasty[0].
Looking forward to have a fruitful discourse!
(As a general point, in my perhaps limited knowledge, weird or appalling customs from the past tend to have economic underpinnings.)
Think about the semantics of the word 'conservative". It means keep things the same they are, conserve the status quo. Now who would support such a viewpoint? Of course those who benefit from inequality, who are on the sunny side of it.
The truth is that political ideology does not fit neatly on a continuous line from "liberal" to "conservative" and that party lines have been drawn in such a way that the original semantics of the labels no longer apply to a large set of preferred policies on either side.
Some kind of multi-axial graph or multi-dimensional matrix would be more useful. Social & Fiscal are two useful axes, and the bare minimum of what you need in order to sensibly represent modern day politics. It might actually be an interesting thought experiment to explore what other axes are most useful.
"Conservative" can be defined as a person who wants to conserve society as it is now or as it was earlier, the good old 1950s.
"Liberal" means a person who would like to liberate what is currently oppressed.
I assume that "conservatives" want to conserve their own power because who in their right mind would want to conserve a situation where they are oppressed. Those who want "liberation" do not want to conserve the current state of affairs.
No gods, no masters.