Sky to block pornography by default
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
http://www.dailydot.com/business/david-cameron-porn-firewall...
How are they shaming people who choose to remove content filters? It's entirely private is it not.
So less a draconian measure and more a market differentiator perhaps? Plenty of families would voluntarily sign on to this feature for the peace-of-mind.
(With the exception of the 'Cleanfeed' filtering which is supposed only to prevent access to verified child pornography and seventies rock album covers)
There are the court ordered blocks of some torrent sites. Any ISP that receives valid court documents has to implement these blocks, but they're easy to bypass.
There are the Internet Watch Foundation cleanfeed blocks which only block images of child sexual abuse and sites with those images; or images of criminally obscene material (which is a tiny subset of porn). Most UK ISPs comply with this with I think only A&A not.
Then there are the optional usually opt-in filters that cover whatever the ISP / customer wants - these are usually granular with a bunch of options for different content filtering. Mobile phones have had this for years, and it's been opt-out on mobile since introduction.
It's important to know the difference so that complaints againstthe blocking are more effective.
It's been harder to access age restricted content from other providers like Three for over a decade. Access to adult content through the Three network requires you to sign up with a credit card to prove your age for example.
Neither of these situations are ideal, nor are they catastrophic. Just retain a little perspective and afford these companies the courtesy of believing the intent is well meaning.
Of course there are slippery slopes and changes throughout the years, but also remember we're an 800 year old democracy (almost), that's _probably_ not going to change and it's good to keep a level head about this stuff.
Anyways, the problem with requiring affirmative consent to unblock is that the people running the filters are just a
select name from subscribers where filter = falseIt's best that they not have that information in the first place, and that's before we get into the question of if "protecting children" is worth all this trouble anyways.
I'm going to go with 99.9% accuracy as my first guess.
An IP requesting access to a porn site does not - ads can easily contain pornography, malware can use computers to access anything, and anyone who can connect to the network can be the one requesting the porn site.
There is very little you can determine in the real world from a public IP requesting a porn site
No, no, this is actually quite catastrophic. Someone else is deciding what is and isn't acceptable for you to consume by default. Establishing the precedent that someone else knows better than you, what content is acceptable for you to view. That's absurd.
Christopher Hitchens had a very poignant[1] part about why the path to hell is paved with censorship, and I think it's worth a watch.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY&feature=youtu.be...
That precedent was set many years ago with the BBFC. Also with governmental meddling in the BBC, C4, etc.
I think it's a stretch to compare using geolocation to make a good assumption about linguistics or using natural language processing to make a good assumption about a search completion, to using political rhetoric to make an objectively regressive default.
I suppose if you considered the filter being on by default a "suggestion" (in the way that a language is suggested or a search term is suggested) then I could see the comparison, but that's a policy decision, and you as well as every other adult on the planet should be capable of self-policing.
Oh goody. Glad to hear it's easy to get your name on a list of filthy perverts. What's the worst that could happen?!
Watching adult content isn't really something that "filthy perverts" do, nor is it considered as such thing.
If someone with access to that data (IPS, government, etc) wanted to know whether you watch porn or not they could just look at your web history.
Or just type the name of a sex-act in to Google on your phone. At least that worked for me, on Three, when I tried it just now.
To be honest, I would expect many studies to have rather a moralistic bent, since it's getting into issues of right and wrong, cultural issues rather than strictly behavioral ones.
That said, I do think there is something to the idea that early exposure to porn does change one's expectations when it comes to sex. Sure, you could view like a "action movie" version of the act, but all the same it could taint somewhat one's ideas of how it's done, what the opposite (or same for that matter) sex is like in or out of bed, etc.
Banning it is, of course, ridiculous and impossible, so I wouldn't support it even if I thought it was morally justified (precious little is).
From the grandparent:
> like seeing bomb victims on nightly news or ISIS beheadings on Facebook
That's an interesting point to bring up. Maybe if you raise hell to the members of Parliament, they'll act to ban that stuff too?
Of course they won't, wide dissemination of that stuff suits them just fine. Think of it like a partnership.
This is not a strong line of argument. We don't have to fix things only in order of harm.
IF it is considerably harmful, we should do something about it. It doesn't really matter if it is the most harmful.
Is it a reasonable argument to say that the USA's carbon emissions do not need to be worried about, because the USA does not emit more carbon than anyone else? China produces about 40% more carbon than the USA.
Society hasn't collapsed just because kids have had access to internet porn for a few generations. A more libertarian perspective would be "unless you can prove something is causing demonstrable, serious harm, the government should not be involved in it at all, because at best you're wasting resources on something insignificant, or at worst you're unintentionally causing actual, demonstrable damage to society in pursuit of a misguided goal."
Not that it really matters in this case, it's obvious that Cameron doesn't give a shit about porn and is just using this as an excuse to curb civil liberties and justify surveillance.
[0] http://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/millennials.jp...
I think you took my mention of societal collapse way too literally, but if you want my serious opinion on that, the real problems afflicting millennials are all directly caused by economic woes, while the moralistic whining about attitudes and porn and snapchat etc. is part out-of-touch curmudgeons being curmudgeons as they have always been, and part governments and their media lapdogs trying to point the finger away from said economic woes. See Japan, where porn and "parasite singles" are constantly blamed by the media for the nation's low birth rates, when the more logical answer is that Japan never fully recovered from its bubble and most people simply can't afford to get married and have kids these days.
I had hoped "IF it is considerably harmful" covered that, but I guess I wasn't verbose enough.
Please don't assume that, because I object to my parent's argument, I support the decision.
>we should do something about it.
because I believe governments and societies generally function better when they err on the side of permissiveness whenever possible. Even if we did agree that pornography is "bad," not every "bad" thing should warrant a response.
Also, I think you were wrong to object to your parent commenter's argument, because there is a big difference between "us" choosing between "stopping" internet pornography or violence on the nightly news, and the government and media hypocritically attempting to censor one kind of (allegedly) traumatizing material while flaunting and sensationalizing an arguably much more traumatizing kind.
Of course, we would need to create filters for ASCII pr0n, lest the kiddies on a BBS suddenly become paralyzed by a boob made out of markup.
In the cast of overreacting to nudity, uh, maybe you risk weird sexual hangups later in life that can interfere with intimacy? On top of negative effects that happen when you get as far as censorship.
Next thing you know, the government is going to tell me who to vote in and out the office.
That's a lot more sites than you might think.
But I'm not surprised it's already on the cards - this has been coming since the early 00s (e.g. the "usenet is CHILD PORN!!!!1!!" newspaper outrages, the Sexual Offences Act 2003, etc.)
Banning it would only make it slightly harder to find and would make parents believe their child/teen is "safe" and will never see porn... WRONG. Kids have plenty of time to find what they want.
Sex education is the only solution.
government IS NOT your childs caretaker
First, there a major difference between restrictions placed on convicted criminals, and restrictions placed on every citizen of an entire country.
Second, one represents a danger to the physical safety of others, and the other represents something that you would prefer your child not to see - do you not see a stark difference between a child being kidnapped and raped, and a child accidentally clicking onto a pornographic website?
Its not that complicated - we punish those who have committed crimes, we do not do so preemptively to entire populations.
People shouldn't try to learn about martial arts from kung fu movies, and shouldn't try to learn about sex from porn.
Of course, this filter will also try to block you if you're trying to learn about hacking, or seeking anonymous advice about self-harming. Don't fall into the trap of thinking this is just a porn thing.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21117979#
Its unfortunate so many people here are mixed up about first amendment, liberty and ease of watching Porn. I will not hold that against you, few years ago, I was you.
I'd also like to see some properly collated evidence.
And not all porn is like the porn you're describing. Erotic literature and comics are quite popular with the younger generations, which manage to depict outlandish fantasies and fairly normal sex within caring relationships with surprisingly similar frequency. Not to mention, if you consider things like crossdressing and transexual porn, one person's kink can be another's lifeline. To censor all porn, apart from being reprehensible on the grounds of freedom of speech, is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
As for 4 year olds, I actually don't think they need to be worried about. I grew up with the internet, so naturally I stumbled across porn a few times before I hit puberty. I remember being quite surprised at first, but I got over it pretty quickly. I said "gross," clicked back, went back to surfing the web and playing video games, and never really thought about it or sought it out again until the hormones kicked in. Of course that's an anecdote, but I think finding porn as a kid is about as inconsequential as walking in on your parents having sex.
What people should be fucking terrified about is the popularity of camera and GPS-equipped smartphones that your naive kid can use to post geotagged selfies up for the entire world to see, making it trivial for predators to stalk them. But few parents are aware of the danger of this, and a firewall wouldn't help it anyway.
If one wanted to view porn, and did not want to deal with getting it "enabled", would it be possible to switch to another ISP?
In my opinion, "peak Internet" occurred sometime around 2010-2011. That is when the largest number of people had access to the most open, monolithic network.
Strongly recommended if you're in the UK and if they can get you a good connection (if Sky can, they definitely can).
Meanwhile, it's considered perfectly OK to depict all kinds of murderous mayhem, demonic possession, mutilations and so on even in early-evening time slots.
In truth, no part of this was a good idea. A very disappointing mistake. I did warn them, loudly. I'm not sure what more I can, or ought to, say, except that the filtering infrastructure is: beyond their control; vulnerable (no further comment); and, already in a uniquely-privileged network position on all Sky broadband connections regardless of settings (operating the blocklists you can't opt out of - the Internet Watch Foundation child porn blocklist, the court order ones like the Pirate Bay block, for example - something the High Court only felt themselves able to order because the blocking infrastructure was already there! - and shortly the 'hate site' blocklist).
This move is a complete U-turn from what was said at the meeting with Claire Perry MP - with whom I have some quite potent disagreements - that it would never be on by default. I wonder why that could be.
Disclaimer: I work in an affected industry, and I really don't like censorship. But it's not just "pornography and adult" this blocks: they're defaulting to the "13" age rating, which also includes blocks on categories including: "dating"; "anonymizers, filesharing and hacking"; "suicide and self harm"; "drugs and criminal skills"; "weapons, violence, gore and hate"; and "phishing, malware and spyware". There was a "cyber bullying" category as well, but that's gone now and is now included in the "social networking" category (not in the default blocklist). But remember: there are two, shortly to be three, lists you can't turn off, so the system is still in-path, and still vulnerable…
If you have it on by default, you create an exception list of porn viewers.
Which of the two list carries higher privacy concerns?
(FSVO "glory")
What else are they (or their friends) up to that they're trying to distract attention from?
The single and only thing that Sky have done today, is changing that "If you don't answer, we'll assume no (filtering)" to "If you don't answer, we'll assume yes."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615162053?ie=UTF8&tag=pros...
http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/abstinence-only-educati...
Water has also been linked to human rights abuses in the form of waterboarding.
A better argument would be quantifying the negative impact, weighting it compared to positive impact, and then using that weight to judge the merit, both in absolute and relative to other thing we decided to ban or not ban.