Pornography to be blocked by default in the UK

[Thanatos Telos]

Most households in the UK will have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless they choose to receive it, David Cameron has announced.

Just read about this on Reddit. According to Cameron, ISPs will force people to have to opt-out to watch pr0n. And boy, that's not all.

Other measures announced by the prime minister included:

• New laws so videos streamed online in the UK will be subject to the same restrictions as those sold in shops
• Search engines having until October to introduce further measures to block illegal content
• Experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre being given more powers to examine secretive file-sharing networks
• A secure database of banned child pornography images gathered by police across the country will be used to trace illegal content and the paedophiles viewing it

A nice summary of these:
Annoying, not unreasonable, good, and smart.

So, to sum it:
ISPs make you automatically opt in for no pr0n, and you have to manually opt out, resulting in what I assume to be a list of people who opted out, which will presumably be leaked some time soon.

In other news: Underage use of VPN and proxies have skyrocketed in the UK.

Source

Sorry, if this is plagiarism, incorrectly formatted, or something, but this is my first time writing news. If something's up, feel free to edit it, mag. staff.

EDIT: Formatting and obligatory pun: Nothing 'Great' about this.

 

[Armadillo]

What a prick, that is all.

 

[Foxi4]

No offense to Mr. Cameron but that's just stupid. We've been through this on numerous occasions, politicians - do not block free exchange of information via the Internet, no matter what that information might be. This encompasses pornography.

 

[Black-Ice]

Thou shalst not deny my basic right to sexual interactions with my hand.
That's immoral

#VoteLabour

 

[Thanatos Telos]

Also, consider this:

If you live with your parents and can access it, you know your dad is doing the dirty with his hand. Also, if you rent, you have to let your landlord know about it, which is fucking creepy as hell.

Obligatory:

 

[smile72]

Eh....why are conservatives so against people having sex and choosing to video tape and perhaps make money off it, I thought that was part of capitalism? But i guess he's still hundreds to millions of times smarter than our conservatives.

 

[Rydian]

These people probably have no idea how the internet works, and assume that everything that gets on the internet is like stuff that gets on TV, it has to be under contract and reviewed and rated by an official legal board, etc.

 

[Foxi4]

Thou shalst not deny my basic right to sexual interactions with my hand.
That's immoral

#VoteLabour

To me it's not about whether this concerns pornography or baking cupcakes - the point is that information a metaphorical user may be willing to access is being withheld not because it's illegal but because it's encompassed by some idiotic system of restrictions.

If they want to chase child molesters, go on ahead and chase child molesters, but not at the cost of restricting access to all kinds of pornography, legal or not.

This is the equivalent of fighting drug abuse by restricting access to all kinds of drugs, regardless of whether they're legal, medicinal drugs like Paracetamol or recreational drugs like cocaine.

These people probably have no idea how the internet works, and assume that everything that gets on the internet is like stuff that gets on TV, it has to be under contract and reviewed and rated by an official legal board, etc.

Technically they could use a search engine and blacklist phrases like "lethal deepthroat" or "group anal bombardment" to block the sites, they don't necessarily have to be reviewed or approved to be blocked - you can block them on the basis of their content (tags and whatnot).

That being said, yeah, good luck implementing this without accidental casualties, aka someone calling another person "a dick" on an Internet Forum.

 

[Haloman800]

If an adult wants to view this type of content, he calls his ISP and within half an hour he's browsing away, but if it's just kids in the house trying to look at this stuff, it's blocked by default. I think this is good news.

 

[DinohScene]

Like OP said, Hello VPN!

 

[Thanatos Telos]

To me it's not about whether this concerns pornography or baking cupcakes - the point is that information a metaphorical user may be willing to access is being withheld not because it's illegal but because it's encompassed by some idiotic system of restrictions.

If they want to chase child molesters, go on ahead and chase child molesters, but not at the cost of restricting access to all kinds of pornography, legal or not.

This is the equivalent of fighting drug abuse by restricting access to all kinds of drugs, regardless of whether they're legal, medicinal drugs like Paracetamol or recreational drugs like cocaine.

#VoteFoxi4

Haloman800, look at my post earlier about other circumstances.

 

[The Catboy]

It's like one minute I am all like, "I wanna live in the UK!"
Then I read this news and I am like, "I guess I can stay and fap in the USA" .-.
Seriously what happened to options or parents or not butting into people's personal lives? Not to mention how awkward it's going to be to call them up to ask them to turn your porn back on. This is a pointless feature that I doubt will be staying for very long.

 

[trumpet-205]

But then they'll have the list of people who opt for pornography, don't they? That's effectively keeping track of online activity.

 

[Haloman800]

#VoteFoxi4

Haloman800 , look at my post earlier on about other circumstances.

Your ISP already knows if you access pr0n or not, they obviously have access to the websites you visit, so "you'll be put on a list" is a moot point.

I'm not equating child molesters with watching pr0n, like the post says, you can opt in with a simple call it looks like and you'll be good to go. Most parents are too tech illiterate to block pr0n on their own, so this is great to protect young children from being exposed to this type of content.

But then they'll have the list of people who opt for pornography, don't they? That's effectively keeping track of online activity.

Your ISP can already view your web traffic, and looking at pr0n is not illegal, so even if they had such a list (which they do now, with your web traffic) they couldn't do anything to you.

 

[Foxi4]

It's like one minute I am all like, "I wanna live in the UK!"
Then I read this news and I am like, "I guess I can stay and fap in the USA" .-.
Seriously what happened to options or parents or not butting into people's personal lives? Not to mention how awkward it's going to be to call them up to ask them to turn your porn back on. This is a pointless feature that I doubt will be staying for very long.

You can already block access to sites - you can inform your ISP about the ones you're unwilling to display, you can change your router settings to restrict access to given IP's, you can install screening software. All this changes is the "default option" on the ISP side, meaning it creates unnecessary hoops for those who do not wish to be encompassed by such restrictions and it's implemented because parents are technologically-illiterate, not because it's necessary.

It'd be ten thousand times better to just order ISP's to offer screening, be it software-based or ISP-controlled alongside their standard services. It takes one checkbox on the agreement and it magically produces additional revenue for screening software developers - that way everyone's happy. But no, let's make it complicated and convoluted because hey, 21st century.

If an adult wants to view this type of content, he calls his ISP and within half an hour he's browsing away, but if it's just kids in the house trying to look at this stuff, it's blocked by default. I think this is good news.

No, it's not "good news" because it creates a legal precedence. You don't know what kind of content will become restricted ISP-side in the future if this passes.

One of those days you might end up not being able to log on GBATemp because the site is potentially dangerous, meaning, gives you hints on how to launch "illegal backups", ergo it's very naughty and bad for the children.

In that case, if you choose to log on either way by unblocking it, you end up listed as a potential copyright infringer regardless of whether or not you infringe copyrights. What follows next is monitoring you.

Fun prospect, isn't it?

 

[Depravo]

Meh. Certain torrent sites are also blocked by default in the UK. I still use them.

 

[Thanatos Telos]

Your ISP already knows if you access pr0n or not, they obviously have access to the websites you visit, so "you'll be put on a list" is a moot point.

I'm not equating child molesters with watching pr0n, like the post says, you can opt in with a simple call it looks like and you'll be good to go. Most parents are too tech illiterate to block pr0n on their own, so this is great to protect young children from being exposed to this type of content.

Look at the landlord part. Also, this is censorship, which is no different than China. Just look at Foxi4's posts. Those sum up my argument. Not that children should be watching pr0n, but why shouldn't their parents be supervising them? The internet, like TV, isn't a parenting replacement. Finally, think of the people living with their parents while in college.

 

[The Catboy]

You can already block access to sites - you can inform your ISP about the ones you're unwilling to display, you can change your router settings to restrict access to given IP's, you can install screening software. All this changes is the "default option" on the ISP side, meaning it creates unnecessary hoops for those who do not wish to be encompassed by such restrictions and it's implemented because parents are technologically-illiterate, not because it's necessary.

It'd be ten thousand times better to just order ISP's to offer screening, be it software-based or ISP-controlled alongside their standard services. It takes one checkbox on the agreement and it magically produces additional revenue for screening software developers - that way everyone's happy. But no, let's make it complicated and convoluted because hey, 21st century.

I may have misread the article, I was put back on some pretty strong pain meds, so my mind isn't quite up to speed like it should be, so if my responses seem a little off, they are off and that's why.
But honestly my issue is that is that they are blocked by default, it just seems to me they made up your mind for you. I would rather it thought out more before enacting it.

 

[trumpet-205]

Your ISP can already view your web traffic, and looking at pr0n is not illegal, so even if they had such a list (which they do now, with your web traffic) they couldn't do anything to you.

This isn't about whether pornography is legal or not. By compiling a list of people who opt for pornography, you are effectively doing internet surveillance. You are now spying on your own people, whether or not there is a probable cause or court order.

 

[Foxi4]

Meh. Certain torrent sites are also blocked by default in the UK. I still use them.

That's because governments are technologically-illiterate.