An Open Letter To UK Porn Minister, David Cameron

from the don't-mess-with-the-internet,-it-messes-back dept

Thu, Jul 25th 2013 1:14am — Mike Masnick

We've had a few posts now about UK Prime Minister David Cameron's nutty idea to censor the internet with an unworkable porn filter (complete with a "porn license" so that if you want to get around the filter, you have to "register" your desire not to be censored). Of course, this all makes perfect fodder for musician Dan Bull, whose music we've featured plenty of times. His specialty areas tend to be songs about politicians, internet freedom and video games. This one hits on two of the three, so here he is with his open letter to David Cameron, the Porn Minister.

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Filed Under: censorship, dan bull, david cameron, filter, regulate the internet, uk

19 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2013 @ 1:26am

Going around the grapevine is that this is just an effort to give the appearance of doing something without actually doing something. Hence leaked letters that were sent to the ISPs asking them to rebrand their current opt-in filters as Active-Choice so that Cameron can say he did something.

Ireland's Pat Rabbite has already said it was a stupid idea when it was presented to the Irish government by other public groups shortly after.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/active-choice-vs-default-on-how-camerons-cra ckdown-on-internet-pornography-became-a-rebranding-exercise-8710076.html

http://www.guardian.co.u k/commentisfree/2013/jul/21/david-cameron-war-internet-porn

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ rabbitte-ignores-calls-for-state-role-in-blocking-online-porn-29443620.html
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PaulT (profile), 25 Jul 2013 @ 1:40am

Re:
"Going around the grapevine is that this is just an effort to give the appearance of doing something without actually doing something."

So, a Tory then?

There's 2 options here, really. Either he's making some ridiculous noises to get his Daily Mail reader base riled up so they don't notice the real problems around them. Or, he actually believes he can do something and is doing so in the most technologically ignorant and counter-productive way possible that "just happens" to have some serious implications for government controlled censorship down the road.

Either way, typical M.O. for that lot.
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Robert, 25 Jul 2013 @ 1:58am

Modern Advertising is the Worst Child Abusing Porn
Reality is if they want a safe internet for children they need to build a separate school interconnected internet, where everyone who logs on is either a registered student or a registered guardian/parent or teacher.
Where all commercial activity is only allowed with the best intentions of the child, especially advertising.
The ludicrous thought of censoring the internet to make it fit for a child is just as crazy as saying content for a 17 year old is suitable for a 5 year old.
Reality of censoring the internet is all about political and corporate control being able to use money to silence websites at a whim and those web sites only being able to regain public access if they can afford the court case to regain it.
Reality is advertising does far more harm to the psychology of children than does pornography. Advertising specifically designed by doctorates of psychology who abuse their training to manipulate the choices and opinions of children, not for the benefit of those children but regardless of harm to enrich those create the advertising and those who pay for it, seriously sick stuff.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2013 @ 2:15am

it has nothing to do with protecting anyone but themselves.

they know they have people where they want them but at the same time they also know this internet think is exposing them for who they really are. they know that more people are aware of their shenanigans than ever thanks to this terrible thing called the internet.

before the internet came along it was all gravy for them.

one thing that bothers me is people think that the internet can't be completely crippled but it can. it's just that they want to do it slowly because they know what would happen if they did it all at once.
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Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Jul 2013 @ 2:47am

Re: Re:
So, a Tory then?
So, a politician then?

There FTFY...
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Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Jul 2013 @ 2:54am

Reality is if they want a safe internet for children they need to build a separate school interconnected internet, where everyone who logs on is either a registered student or a registered guardian/parent or teacher.
Nope, that's nowhere close to reality. Apart from the very very obvious problem of keeping out unwanted people from such a necessarily huge network, some proportion of the people that are supposed to be there will be the very ones you intended to keep out.

Reality is that the best way to protect children is to stop pretending you can shelter children from the ills of the world and teach them to make themselves as safe as is practical in the real world...
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Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Jul 2013 @ 2:56am

Re:
Gah! was supposed to be a reply to "Modern Advertising is the Worst Child Abusing Porn"
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ethorad (profile), 25 Jul 2013 @ 2:57am

Re: Modern Advertising is the Worst Child Abusing Porn
plus it's much harder to avoid adverts than it is to avoid pornography.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2013 @ 3:22am

this is just there way of making the internet more like tv. they only want you to have things that they provide.

the internet was much different back in it's early days, it was more free and so many people who didn't get a chance to watch it grow into what it is now can't see the big picture.

no offense meant by that...

I watched it go from what it was to what it is.

I don't have the right words but it's much more like tv now than it used to be and before it's over it will be completely full of nothing but the things they provide or allow, just like tv is...
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2013 @ 3:28am

Re:
it's to keep you dumbed down like you used to be
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2013 @ 4:02am

he wants to stop people from viewing images of nudity on the internet but is still going to allow people to go and buy whatever publication they want, regardless of the images of nudity being in them. this is nothing to do with nudity, sex or even the children. this is another way of bringing censorship to the UK. i'm just waiting to see what the next thing is that the fucking idiot wants to censor, because you can bet your bottom dollar, it aint gonna stop with porn. it's just the tip of the censorship iceberg. this whole porn debacle was started by, yet again, the US entertainment industries as a means to get web sites closed, even those that had no porn on them! now what needs to happen is for the true porn industry to kick up because of the harm to their industry. and remember, once the censoring starts, the police are going to have a hell of a much harder job to catch anyone involved in this. Perry is another one. she has aspirations of glory, but hasn't got the sense to understand anything. all she does is keep shouting out about whatever and screwing the consultations. perhaps if the law suit carries on against her, she will learn to keep quiet, but i somehow doubt it!!
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ReallyEvilCanine, 25 Jul 2013 @ 4:37am

Censorship?
Should I be amused or concerned that the video is flagged with a "may be inappropriate" notice at YouTube, requiring you to sign in to watch it.

That also leads me to wonder if my child longer needs "protection" once she masters the difficult task of opening a google account.
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Baldaur Regis (profile), 25 Jul 2013 @ 9:32am

David Cameron's This Might Not Be Funny
On this week's episode:
1."It takes a village idiot". As part of his probation, David is told to help clean up the internet for the children. He shows up at the local secondary school with two pieces of black cardboard glued onto sticks, with which he attempts to cover up the 'naughty bits' appearing on student's computer screens. 2."Arpeggio in B-Flatulence". Claire runs afoul of copyright law after her dog farts out a show tune in public.
Tonight at 10 PM on BBC-2
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2013 @ 10:21am

Re:
Maybe Rupert had a word about his reputation to exempt "news media publications" from this ban.

Which is the really idiotic thing about this. The Mail online has horrific stories about child abuse right next to images of 10-and-11-year-olds being called "sexy".

And you wonder why CameroNot isn't being believed except by the rabid mouthbreathers who read the Sun and the Mail?
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2013 @ 10:31am

If you can't say "fuck" you can't say FUCK DAVID CAMERON!

lol
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Violated (profile), 25 Jul 2013 @ 12:16pm

The UK's biggest wanker
I loved the part where he branded David Cameron as the UK's biggest wanker.

The Internet is a place for adults but there are children in walled gardens and young teens at 4Chan. It helps none to try to turn an adult society into a children's playground which no adult would tolerate.

Let us recall that this censorship plan began on lies when they wanted to tackle unlawful porn. Most Internet users know they are over a decade late to that party when the Internet and Police cleaned up that issue during all this decade leaving the remains on Tor Core.

So they then switched to distasteful lawful porn like lolicon which the UK High Court branded as lawful because animated meant no victim being harmed. Distasteful aside had this been the USA then this censorship would be a first amendment violation.

Now the truth is revealed as they censor everyone's connection even those who don't have kids. Sure you can remove it with an ID check thus adding your name to a pervert's list to be held liable under law when any issues crop up.

Even worse is that David "dickhead" Cameron has ignored all expert advice pointing out that it is technically impossible to achieve. Cameron pushing forward bull headed only makes him a f**king moron.

So websites come by the millions where no ISP can judge them all, or even keep updated with daily changes, to be able to do even a reasonable job. Sure they can block a few of the main sites while those small fetish sites go uncensored due to simply being unknown. The God help them trying to sort out Flickr and Imgur where porn photo can appear randomly amongst the bulk.

Even worst when we run the "protect the children" plan then porn will only be the first victim as rude words and more get banned from the UK's Kindernet. I have seen child safe filters before and they were a total failure even blocking the ASCII archive an important collection about the history of BBS systems.

Then let is not forget proxy, VPN and Tor bypass methods that any kid can master being born and raised on computers. Indeed to brand this child safe is to distract adults from the reality making the problem far worse.

The real failure here is that David "Dickhead" Cameron is trying to fix a SOCIAL problem with TECHNOLOGY instead of tackling it on a social front.

In my family the problem is already resolved without any filtering being done. A laptop for the children's use is placed in the family room with the screen facing where adults sit meaning the children can visit their desired sites without straying from the safe path.

So how much money has our retarded Government spent advertising this social solution to the general population? None is it not? Does he really love children or his great British firewall?
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Plum, 25 Jul 2013 @ 2:29pm

The twits in the world today...
Last night, this was being discussed on the radio here in Ireland, and it got so annoying I had to turn it off. There was one guy who was explaining why this is unworkable, yet a woman from the ISPCC, who clearly knew little to nothing about the workings of the internet, kept saying that there must be a way, with all the "greatest brains on the planet" (or something) working on it.

When will people learn what a fundamentally stupid and unworkable idea internet filtering is?

I'm sorry to be saying this here where people already know this, but I just had to vent my frustration about what I heard on that broadcast!
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jul 2013 @ 4:10pm

Re: The twits in the world today...
Yes it is incredibly frustrating to deal without people who don't understand technology. Its why I will never work in tech support.

My only hope is that the house of lords block this bullshit.
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David Cameron Porn, 27 Jul 2013 @ 4:05am

Secret agenda
This is not about the children, this is about control!

Mr David Cameron is trying to manipulate the wonderful
people of the United Kingdom into voting for his proposition
on blocking pornography on the internet within the UK.

David Cameron Porn
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