UK Prime Minister More Interested In Regulating The Internet Than Regulating Porn
from the the-internet-is-for-smiling-politely dept
By the end of next year, every person connected to the internet in the UK will be subject to a government-mandated porn filter. The filter will be on by default at the ISP level, and if subscribers wish to be unblocked, they have to contact their providers by the end of this year and opt-in. Otherwise, it's gone.
Prime Minister David Cameron also recently made a series of unintelligible statements aimed at search engines, claiming they were the third part of a "triangle" that "enabled" child porn producers to find an audience. His proposed "solution" was to make search engines (and ISPs) filter the web and search results according to a government-approved blacklist. These bold "for the children" statements ignored the fact that both ISPs and search engines already actively block illegal images and supply info on these images to investigative agencies.
Cameron has had a hard-on hatred for porn for quite some time. But when recently cornered about the Sun's notorious Page 3 topless photos, he revealed his porn concerns are strictly limited to the Wild West Internet.
David Cameron has said he would never support a ban on topless images on page 3 of the Sun newspaper, as he set out plans for greater regulation of online pornography.So, what's the distinction? Why should some offensive images be regulated and others graciously allowed to be subject to consumers' desires?
Pressed to explain the distinction between his proactive position on online pornographic images and his laissez-faire stance on topless images in newspapers, he said that it was up to consumers whether or not they wanted to buy the Sun.
"This is an area where we should leave it to consumers to decide, rather than to regulators," he said in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.
"We have to always ask the question where should we regulate and where shouldn't we regulate, and I think on this one I think it is probably better to leave it to the consumer," Cameron said. "In the end it's an issue of personal choice whether people buy a newspaper or don't buy a newspaper."If that question actually gets asked as often as Cameron makes it sound, I'd be surprised. And if it does, the first question receives a lion's share of the affirmative answers. And he's right, it is a personal choice if people decide to purchase a newspaper containing gratuitous nudity. It's also a personal choice if people decide they'd rather have unfiltered access to the web. But only one of these choices is being actively limited by the guiding hand of government.
If Cameron wants to be against porn, then he should be consistent in his views. If he wants to be for letting the public decide, then he should do that across the board. Hypocrisy is annoying enough without the weight of a government mandate behind it.
It could be argued that "opting-in" for open online access to porn is equivalent to making the decision to purchase the Sun, thus leaving the fate of both strictly in the consumers' hands. But this argument is wrong, even if the difference between the two is barely noticeable to the consumer. Dropping a mandatory porn filter on ISPs adds an extra expense and a regulatory/liability burden these companies didn't have previously. Associated costs will be passed along to subscribers and whenever something goes wrong with the filtering software, it will be the ISP, not the government, that has to deal with it.
Meanwhile, porn is available at newsstands (and browsed at the parliamentary estate), unrestricted by Cameron's anti-porn crusade and free from regulation. Choosing to ignore one form while using the other as a whipping boy just sends the message that Cameron's more interested in controlling the internet than solving the porn "problem."
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Filed Under: david cameron, internet, porn, regulations, uk
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Not only that, but these filters do not block the porn adverts that you see littered around the web, they cannot address tor, vpn access, usenet, web proxies etc..
This plan of Camerons is just another wasteful use of taxpayers money - it could be used far better to chase and prosecute those who put the illegal (child porn, bestiality etc) images on the internet in the first place.
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Only *deliberately* do so. If you think there won't be mission creep ("but there's this Islamic site that offends us...", enforced methods that overblock content or simple moral panic (the video nasties happened last time these clowns were in power), you're sadly mistaken.
"Meanwhile I am pretty sure that the Torries will get politically obliterated if they did go that far."
No, the people who swallow the propaganda in the British press and believe whatever the Daily Mail bothers to print in between rants about immigrants and hoodies. They'll either not realise it's happening, blame some 3rd party or be convinced that it's somehow for their benefit to have their rights removed. It's worked on them before.
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(Gwen Stefani said it better.}
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Censorship
Of course given some months in court you can get the censorship lifted but then it accidentally happens again.
It doesn't take too long and that political protection extends out to corporations and the rich and greedy.
Basically mandatory censorship is the means by which the cost of publishing on the internet can be pushed out of reach of the majority, simply by burdening with the legal costs of having censorship lifted after it has been arbitrarily applied without penalty for abuses.
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What amuses me about these conservative governments is that they claim to be all about smaller government. They say that they want to minimise government intrusion into people's lives but they want to monitor and control everything we do on the Internet.
This is just one example of how incompetent his government has been.
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I don't know much about the intricacies of UK politics, but in the US, this is evidence. I regularly hear about how conservatives want smaller government, but I have yet to see any behaving as if that's what they want.
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In reality it's just a way for them to offload responsibility for systemic failures.
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The problem is you're missing the implied asterisk, that notes that the 'smaller government' only applies to business concerns and matters, as they seem to have no problem with a more intrusive government in non-business matters.
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Her site was recently hacked in response to Cameron's proposal and in turn this e-illiterate woman accused a reporter of sponsoring the hack because he wrote about the site's defacement.
No wonder Cameron's proposal is ludicrous.
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When you add "On the Internet" to something, you multiply the effect by 10000. That's why boobies on the internet is much, much worse than boobies on the newspaper.
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Internet is one of the biggest threats to the classic notion of nationality. Breaking down boundaries will force competition in an area where the western world is inherently uncompetitive. Therefore western governments dream of a more politically submissive setup where they can legislate it into oblivion.
Since their latest effort with using ITU was hijacked by a russian and chinese "national value" definition the western world do not accept (heavier censorship and to enforce it, DPI), it is getting more and more of a priority to gain international control of the internet.
The biggest problems about internet regulation is that USA and EU fundamentally have different agendas on especially data protection (hello NSA) and how to regulate (EU wants a far more extensive regulation than USA)!
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Monty Cameron's Flying Circus
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So only the technology illiterate will be blocked from porn and other stuff.
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THEY are scared it leads to democracy and freedom for all
THEY do not wish this and wish to continue there lil royal babies and lil yacht trips and golf games with other rich wealthy lazy fucks
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To be able later to make it illegal to access distributed search engines that have no way to censor anything?
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Cameron may have already have hoisted himself on his own petard
When he says something will or won't be censored, this means nothing. He has no say over the details of how each ISP runs their censorship. He's just saying whatever seems like the right answer to him at the time that will keep him in power.
In this article in The Sun today they are clearly firing a warning shot across his boughs. He's lost their support even though he's saying The Sun won't be censored.
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and we all know why, because the next step will be to ban music downloads, then movie downloads then something, anything, everything else! and all to please the USA government that is hell bent on dictating what can and cant be available, on the internet, that the entertainment industries produce and want stopped! this is just censorship, plain and simple, brought on by an industry that wants to run the internet in it's own fucked up image, making as much money from it as possible, with as little concern for the customers as it has had from day one!!
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Big guy little guy
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shocking
SHAUN.M
regulate
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