Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

There is pretty substancial technological gulf opening up between the "ruling class" and the "reasonably well educated folks" out there. This could be as disruptive and problematic as the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor.

Porn filters will be of no concern whatsoever to anyone under 40 with the most rudimentary technical chops (and appetite for porn). What else will be banned? It is getting to the point where fearmongering and shameless populism and shilling for votes by politicians result in useless laws being enacted only to incriminate anyone at all, when the opportunity presents itself to make an example of somebody.

I suspect this technological gap is going to get much worse before it gets better, if it does get better at all. The types of people who participate in the game of politics have very little in common with the types of people who have an understanding of the technical world. But can that last forever? Kids now live online with few exceptions, and a technical understanding of the world will hopefully become second nature to most people, eventually.

Like most techies, you're focusing on the effectiveness. This is both missing the point and dangerously underestimating the intelligence of the people behind such measures.

Just like most of the anti-terror security theater, it's not about being effective in any way, it's about slowly getting the general population to accept increasingly repressive measures and a tighter grip of the "ruling class" on society in general.

Once filtering has been generally accepted, they can gradually start figuring out how to censor the things they really don't want us to see (and guess what, it isn't porn) without having to worry about further social or legislative hurdles.

There is no technological gap between "us" and "them". There's a gap in political savvy between "them" and "us", and we're on the wrong side of that gap.

Exactly this.

Idea 1: ignorant politicking; Idea 2: mass conspiracy. Is there evidence for either side?

IMO current democracy as a system of incentives supports Idea 1 much better than Idea 2. Weak evidence, but still.

It's not a conspiracy per se. It's more like a system of incentives that motivate this kind of behaviour. We have made the politicians into celebrities whoring for our votes so that they can get goodies from their sponsors. It's no longer about any actual politics on the top levels, politicians are trying to strike a balance between decisions that would bring them more votes and those that would bring them more benefits.

I am not saying that's true for every one of them, nor that it's everywhere like that. But I feel that this happens frequently enough to cripple the system.

I think you're looking at this as too much of a conspiracy.

This is just attempting to gain the control they had before and have now over every other media. They can prevent hard porn on TV or in the window displays of high street video rental shops. Why not the internet?

From their perspective the internet is a loophole they are trying to shut down.

Internet freedom happened incidentally as a side effect of how the technology worked. It wasn't brought around by ideology like traditional "free press" was.

> I think you're looking at this as too much of a conspiracy.

I agree, but I think that you might be looking at it a little bit too much as of a conspiracy as well.

IMO it's not even about closing loopholes and stuff; it's about increasing their popularity to make sure they get reelected / get more money. That's it. I think short-sightedness of politicians explains pretty much all of it.

Current democracy as a system optimizes strongly for popularity, and optimizes people with any kind of long-term agenda out of the system.

"Current democracy as a system optimizes strongly for popularity..."

This is what democracy has always done.

I think you're mistaking the popularity of politicians, with the will of the people and vox populi.

I agree but it's still a big simplification.

It's not one or another. It's a group of people with diverse agendas. When their interests align enough then a change is introduced in the system. There might be a predominant reason but unless you're in politic groups I think we can only make guesses. I believe that we are as disconnect to them as they are to us.

It is arguable that traditional "free press" ideas were also technology-driven.

As well as creeping scope from non-porn people, there are pleanty of anti-porn and anti-sex campaigners out there. They want to ban all porn. They'll talk about extreme porn and simulated rape porn and child porn now. Then they'll talk about default-on filters, then people/polticians/etc. will be pressured into always having it on, etc etc.

Remember there have been court cases about whether contraceptives, pornography or abortion was legal. There are people who want to go back to the "good old days" when condoms, porn and sex outside marriage was illegal.

I doubt there's a directed conspiracy on this. But I don't doubt this is how the technology will end up being used.

Yes, it is all about power and control -- but porn is very much part of what the authorities do not want people to see.

Your sexuality is the most personal, most intimate part of your life. By enforcing "morality" - the state exerts control over your sexuality; it exerts control over the most intimate part of your life; for those in authority, it is the most potent symbol of their power possible - and the most intoxicating validation of their status.

Those in power are there because they are pathologically inclined to seek it. They cannot help but expand that power, to intrude and control others to the maximum extent possible.

So, this is ... "porn theater"?

Gosh, can't understand how an MP and member of his community could possibly be in favor of that.

I suspect that this has nothing do to with filtering content, protecting the vulnerable or anything else in the "real world" - it's all about politicians who have no fundamental convictions or principles desperately casting about for any subject that might increase their visibility to earn them a promotion up the slippery pole.

Although in this case they've pegged the problem as too much access to other kinds of slippery poles :-)

It is more specific than that. Mr Cameron has recently upset quite a few very influential bigots over the gay marriage thing (something to be applauded IMO) and is now trying to sweeten them back up ready for the next time he needs their vote or party donation by tackling an issue that they care about but which won't overly irritate too many other people. The porn access issue is a gift to him in this respect.

I'm sure he knows the measures are going to be ineffective, if he doesn't he needs to sack a few advisers, but it is important for him to be seen to be "thinking of the children" on this issue.

"What else will be banned?" This is what worries me the most. If there is going to be a government approved 'blacklist' it suddenly becomes very easy to block content that the politicians decide is unsuitable. It's a very slippery slope, and Cameron is standing at the top and lacing up his ice-skates.

And given that the role of the filter is likely impossible for them to get fundamentally 'right', the cynic in me wonders how quickly acceptance of temporary blocks of non-pornographic content will happen, and how long before somebody might take advantage of that.

Indeed - and this is not even a hypothecial (i.e. it is more than that): this is what happened in Denmark, m. ore or less, afaik. [references may appear later.] This mode of thought cannot be construed as a hyperbole.

And Australia. http://www.news.com.au/news/internet-filter-threatens-warcra...

Well, porn is not banned here in Denmark. You can see a supposedly complete list here: http://www.teleindu.dk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Oversigt-o... [PDF, Danish]

As you can see, the child pornography list is missing from that list.

It was however leaked in 2008 with a date of February 2008: https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Denmark:_3863_sites_on_censorship...

And as you can tell, it contains many more sites than the official document, including a Dutch bus rental service.

"Supposedly" :)

> "What else will be banned?" This is what worries me the most. If there is going to be a government approved 'blacklist' it suddenly becomes very easy to block content that the politicians decide is unsuitable.

This will happen.

In 2008, The Finnish police have added Finnish hacker Matti Nikki's website criticizing Internet censorship to Finland’s new national child porn filter.The scan also found that the top three results of a Google search for "gay porn" are blacklisted. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Finnish_internet_censorship_crit...

In Sweden in 2007, the child porn filter also blocked the Korean Bonsai Association. Far worse than Bonsai trees, the porn filter was also used to block a political web site over a Mohammad cartoon that enraged muslims. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4700414.stm

What political web sites are blocked the child porn filter today? We have no way to tell.

Slippery slope, indeed.

Denmark has a similar filter (except less effective, it relies on corporation by the DNS providers so all you have to do is use googles DNS) the list itself is secret but it was leaked to wikileaks. On it was several CP sites that were hosted in europe and were shutdown within days, as well as a ton of gay porn and a Duch truck rental company.

The official response? We will consider adding wikileaks to the list of banned sites, for some reason this was never accepted.

Most likely the filesharing is next to be censored. I can smell it a mile away. This has nothing whatsoever to do with bad porn at all. Porn is the excuse to get the censorship framework firmly in place.

well a huge number of things are already banned/illegal: CP being one of them. do you have a problem with that? Note sure why making hardcore porn opt-in is such a big deal.

Part of the problem is that pretty much everywhere such filters have been installed, sooner or later there's been revelations of perfectly legal content being blocked. More than once this has been political speech.

They're building all the tools of a police state. With the best of intentions, mind you. But it's not them we're afraid of (we might dislike having to opt in/out of porn, but that's merely a nuisance) - with some luck they'll get voted out in a few years time.

What at least some of us are afraid of is that some day down the line someone else gets into power who decides to take full advantage of all the nice tools their predecessors have given them. Put all the tools in place, and that someone might even be more inclined to seek power, knowing the power can extended all that much easier.

Because the infrastructure required to get hardcore porn to be opt-in a) doesn't exist yet, and b) introducing it will be extremely dangerous as it will definitely be abused to filter other content the government doesn't want you to see.

This whole issue is not about porn.

You are conflating illegal child pornography with legal hardcore pornography in that sentence. Was that just poor phrasing?

Why is making legal hardcore pornography opt-in a big deal? So many reasons. First, because there's nothing wrong with it and it's something a good many of ordinary people enjoy. Second, despite the previous, in many societies it's still not considered a socially acceptable think to admit to liking even though almost everyone does, so people are far less likely to speak up in a manner that identifies them in order to protest it. Third, some of the actually banned (and not just filtered) content is rape fantasy, which is a hugely popular fantasy among women, and many object to its being banned. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, making it opt-in is a big deal because it takes a freedom and weakens it. If we have to ask the government for permission to do something, it's not a freedom, it's something being allowed by government for now, and they can change it whenever they want. This is the same reason people advocate open source tools and non-proprietary protocols—so we have our own freedom of choice and can avoid being locked into the whims of whoever holds the power. Porn is an easy place for them to start, because large subsets of society won't speak out in defense of porn, but I guarantee if this sort of filter remains in place long-term, it will be used to block more than porn. That may not even be their intent right now, but when you have a massive internet filtration system in place, it makes it extremely easy to justify adding in a few more filters blocking sites troublesome to the government in a few years.

> making hardcore porn opt-in

Such unfortunate phrasing...I think making any kind of porn is currently opt-in.

What's 'hardcore porn'?

Anything involving penetrative sex or an erect penis.

Children in the UK see softcore porn in corner stores every day - eye-level newspapers display models wearing thongs with the camera zoomed in to their ass crack on their covers, and there's a bare breasted woman inside.

Funny, our Muslim friends have a rather more "conservative" definition. Are you saying that yours is the definition that should apply across all cultures and creeds, suitable for enshrinement in national law?

> Are you saying that yours is the definition that should apply across all cultures and creeds, suitable for enshrinement in national law?

1. I'm just stating what the common definition is. 2. I personally don't even believe in this distinction at all, however my views are not common. 3. Conservative muslims would probably share the same distinction, but argue that all pornography, 'hardcore' or 'softcore', is immoral.

>Kids now live online with few exceptions, and a technical understanding of the world will hopefully become second nature to most people, eventually.

No. I've been enough debates with peers my age (17-18) who practically live online but their world consists of Facebook and YouTube. They assume content can be taken offline simply by hitting "delete". Their ignorance will shock you.

What we need is better education of how the internet works, but of course, you only learn if your interested.

You don't have to learn or understand anything to circumvent these filters

All the skills you need is to be able to mindlessly follow a guide

Just like with the blocking of the pirate bay, most people will know someone who can help them circumvent it

Well I am sure there will be a youtube tutorial about how to disable the porn filters in a couple of days after this goes into effect.

> the most rudimentary technical chops

Working as a high school teacher, I can tell you that it is far less common among kids to have those chops than you imagine...

It's a subconscious equation between "Internet" and Facebook et al. When your first click or URL is to check these, the information you retrieve is effectively white-washed by the like/retweet cycle.

I feel there might have been a gap since the introduction of Social Media which may have robbed a generation of its ability to work out the "Web" or the "Internet" for that matter. I mean, I grew up in the 90's in the days of Geocities (even before Wikipedia) and library computer access was most interesting when I couldn't reach a site.

So how do I get around that? "Proxies" says an even geekier friend and now I'm scouring forums for info on configuring Netscape to use a proxy with the included IPs. At home, I got to use IRC and that turned out to be a fountain of knowledge (still before Wikipedia).

I feel sorry for kids who never got to experience driving stick shift.

Having just worked as a system administrator for a college for the past 5 years, I completely agree with gahahaha. I'd say less than 5% of the student body had any computer skill beyond "turn it on and fire up a web browser".

Agreed. I think the difference is nowadays everything is very user friendly. There's no need for the kids to learn how to use a DOS prompt or know about IRQ values to get sound in games working. Apple's "it just works" phrase applies to so much that nobody needs to know much to get things done.

I am around kids at work and their technical knowledge is amazingly limited. Who needs to know stuff when 'there's an app for that...'?

I'd imagine they'll learn fast when properly motivated.

(Though to be honest, no-one has ever explained how this is all supposed to work. My UK 3G connection randomly stopped showing me some web sites, that were entirely non-porny, and I had to confirm my age via a credit card or something to remove this block. If you have to do the same thing on home internet then everyone will opt out eventually as the uselessness of it is pretty quickly apparent.)

Same thing happened to me. I couldn't even look up reviews of pubs.

The funny thing is, mobile porn is a killer app for 3G/4G operators, having the potential to consume so much billable data.

Only one of them needs to know how, and before you know it it will be packaged up nicely in a script or written up on web pages everyone will know about.

When I was in school, only one of my friends knew how to install Quake in the PC lab (I think he used a keylogger, to get the admin password - it was back in the days when kids weren't treated like criminals for minor stunts like this). But he wasn't the only one who got to play it.

Maybe, but as long as one kid knows how to get around it the rest will ask him.

> There is pretty substancial technological gulf opening up between the "ruling class" and the "reasonably well educated folks" out there.

Pretty sure it's been there from the start. Read up on the EFF's founding.

> Porn filters will be of no concern whatsoever to anyone under 40 with the most rudimentary technical chops (and appetite for porn). What else will be banned?

Nothing is banned.

The filters are voluntary for the end user.

The filters are stupid, but please argue against what they actually are.

The filters are voluntary OPT OUT for the end user*.

I know it seems insignificant, but it makes a big difference.

Also, I am right in thinking, this hasn't been proposed as a bill yet to the house of commons/lords? I feel as Cameron has a long history of broken promises.

Compare a filter where the user has to opportunity to opt out and thus get access to everything they have access to today, with something like the Australian filter (no opt out) or the Chinese filter (no opt out).

The filters already exist for many people using mobile technology - mobile phones with data plans or mobile broadband dongles have exactly what's being proposed.

I agree that it is a big difference that the filters are opt-out. And I have no idea what websites will be caught up. Wikipedia? (See photographs on articles like Anal Bleaching or etc etc.)

> Also, I am right in thinking, this hasn't been proposed as a bill yet to the house of commons/lords? I feel as Cameron has a long history of broken promises.

It could be pushed through as a voluntary agreement with industry. "Self regulate or we'll regulate it for you".

See the history of UK legislation around computers is scary. Reading some of the documents they clearly have clueful people giving them advice, but then you read what the politicians say and they're idiots.

But why should I even need to opt-out?

What good will come from this?

> Compare a filter where the user has to opportunity to opt out and thus get access to everything they have access to today, with something like the Australian filter (no opt out) or the Chinese filter (no opt out).

Oh hey, at least our filter wont be as bad as theirs right? Same stupid argument used with the NSA scandal.

Calm down, I've already said the filters are stupid and pointless.

But there is a very big difference between an optional filter where people can opt-out and "the government is banning things!" - the government isn't banning anything, it's just forcing filters to be opt-out.

Campaigns against the filters will be more effective if they concentrate on what the filters actually are, rather than the not-real scenarios being presented.

It's the "calm down" attitude that allows politicians to trample over our rights simply because zealots campaign for it to happen. If more people displayed the outrage they should be displaying then maybe technologically illiterate politicians wouldn't be so cocky.

It's not about banning, it's about authority thinking it can provide a moral compass as to what it deems "abhorrent".

It's about records being kept as to what exactly individual households wish to see on the net and what happens when such lists get hacked and leaked.

It's about declaring to an authority what you wish to view in a supposed free society.

It's about opposing an infrastructure of filtering and censorship which has the potential to be misused.

Never "calm down".

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