Fighting Toddler 'Porn Addiction,' UK Lawmakers Demand Porn Sites Include Age Checks Or Face Closure
from the you-have-no-idea-how-this-works dept
The UK's attempts to filter the Internet of all of its naughty bits are nothing if not amusing, whether it's the nation's porn filter architect getting arrested for child porn, or the complete and total obliviousness when it comes to the slippery slope of expanding those filters to include a growing roster of ambiguously objectionable material. The idea of forcing some kind of overarching structure upon porn consumption in the UK is another idea that never seems to go away, whether it's requiring a "porn license" (requiring users to clearly opt in if they want to view porn) or the latest push -- mandatory age checks.Seemingly unaware of the way the internet (or law, or the world itself) works, some UK lawmakers are now demanding that porn websites around the world include age verification systems, or face fines or closure. How exactly the UK government plans to enforce these restrictions upon a global pornography industry isn't explained. The only thing the UK is sure of is that these restrictions are absolutely necessary for the welfare of the country's tots:
"Providers who did not co-operate could also be fined. Mr Javid said: "If you want to buy a hardcore pornography DVD in a store you need to prove your age to the retailers. "With the shift to online, children can access adult content on websites without restriction, intentionally or otherwise. "That is why we need effective controls online that apply to UK and overseas. This is about giving children the best start in life."Well intentioned, perhaps, but it's yet another example of people not realizing how the internet genie has left the bottle, and no amount of thrashing or cajoling is going to re-imprison the agitated djinn. The UK's latest push is being propped up by a flood of recent scary headlines across the UK proclaiming that the country has a porn addiction problem among around a tenth of the nation's 12- and 13-year-olds. In fairly typical media fashion, the stories proclaiming this fact don't really bother to dissect the claims or hunt down the survey's origins.
If they had, they might discover that the survey in question was probably about as far from science as you can get without involving clowns and sacrificial altars:
"It turns out the study was conducted by a "creative market research" group called OnePoll. "Generate content and news angles with a OnePoll PR survey, and secure exposure for your brand," reads the company's blurb. "Our PR survey team can help draft questions, find news angles, design infographics, write and distribute your story." The company is super popular on MoneySavingExpert.com, where users are encouraged to sign up and make a few quid. Here's what that website says: "Mega-popular for its speedy surveys, OnePoll runs polls for the press, meaning fun questions about celebs and your love life." So the company behind these stats about porn addiction are known for their quick and easy surveys and promise to generate headline-grabbing stats. An unusual choice, perhaps, for such a sensitive subject."While the group behind the effort (Childline) appears well intentioned, there are surely better ways to protect children than by scaring politicians into a global charade of internet booby whac-a-mole. Like, with actual parenting perhaps. Paying attention to what your kids do online, and intelligently explaining sexuality to them before they run into age-inappropriate content would be worlds more effective than demanding the globe's pornography industry capitulate to the whims of the UK's ludditical legislators.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: age checks, filters, porn, porn addiction, uk
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
And then what?
Many sites today, even ones like Facebook or other social media sites, require 'age-checks' in the sense that the user is requires to affirm that yes, they are above a certain age limit and can legally access the content on the site. You know what stops younger kids from bypassing those?
Absolutely nothing.
All they have to do is click the little box that says that yes, they are in fact old enough, even if they aren't, and that's all it takes, and I'm guessing that terribly complicated trick would be enough to bypass a good 90% or more of the 'age checks' on various sites around the world.
The only real way you can have an 'effective', and I use that term very loosely, 'age check' system would be to tie to to something like a personal identification system, where to log in and access the internet, you had to provide some form of personal identification, like a 'driver's license' for the internet.
(You know, the kind of system that more oppressive governments either have, or dream about having, given how insanely easy it makes tracking people's online activity and how it makes being anonymous online a hugely difficult thing to manage.)
Grandstanding about 'stopping children from looking at porn, all without requiring parents to actually act like parents' may make for a nice soundbite, but I don't imagine they'd be too eager to explain how utterly the system required to do that would destroy privacy online.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sir, are you an adult?
[No]
[Hint?]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
It's depressing how transparent they are, and how easily some fall for the lies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Then perhaps those polititions should take a look at 7 illegal things to do in a British Election (youtube) and perhaps look at purdah (wikipedia)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Which is the exact amount how many brain cells UK politicians have...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
FTFY
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Really? I think you are underestimating the difficulty in implementation, as well as the lengths kids would go to to bypass such things.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Not a good idea. Lurk around long enough and you'll find hacked webcam videos of minors, some of which would anger their parents.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
that's fine though. Use webcams to perform age verification, and you'll find that the # 1 image search on google will quickly become "UK Politician" or "Member of US Senate"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Or are you suggesting some sort of automated system? 'Cause any system that would actually work even a little bit would most likely require a small fortune. Or a big one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: "crude age verification would not be too difficult"
FTFY.
And who will the camera see? David Cameron, David Cameron, and David Cameron.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: "crude age verification would not be too difficult"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I suppose people would have to check in with their face every time too, otherwise a kid might just steal their parents account! Oh, but a clever child might hold a picture of their fathers face up to the camera, better include a mandatory photo ID check as well.
After all, nothing at all scars a child more than seeing the 3% of chest and crotch modern swimsuits cover up. How ever would they come to terms with the idea of the expression of love physically? I can't imagine anyone would be in a position to explain it to them.. they'll just have to magically absorb the information through brain osmosis like everyone else did when they suddenly turned the age of majority, because we can't taint our kids with such filth!
Seriously, how long before the UK makes it a crime to have 'the talk' with anyone under the age of 20?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
By default I would never choose to have anything filtered at ISP level. If I want to filter things then I'll sort it out at PC level so that I have control. I suspect many others feel the same way or just don't care.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Leisure Suit Larry
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Leisure Suit Larry
Correction: only people of a certain age, living at a particular time, in a particular country. Some of the questions were unanswerable to a non-American, regardless of age, and many Americans would find the dated references impossible to answer now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Leisure Suit Larry
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Leisure Suit Larry
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Leisure Suit Larry
Bingo. People will always find a way to bypass such systems, and nothing inspires security bypasses like people being blocked from using their legally purchased product. Hence why DRM never works, let alone something trying to verify your age through questions that may or may not be possible for you to honestly answer.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Leisure Suit Larry
Without a human monitor of age tests, they are no better than providing a tick box for are you old enough, and only serve to keep out those willing to play by the rules. The only question is does it take no effort, or only a little effort to pass the test.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Perhaps a easier solution is to remove the puritans from power
Once sedated they could be loaded into a small leaky boat and sent out to sea again.
When a puritan stands up and spews forth its nonsense the best prevention is apply the sharp bit of a axe across its neck. Stops the crap from leaking out of them every time.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
worried or addicted?
The NSPCC's Childline program seems to me to be helpful. They are focusing on providing information to children whose only source of sex education is internet pornography. They aren't trying to stop children viewing Internet porn. Rather they are saying to them that the images in porn don't represent typical bodies and real life sex. I have to agree that sex education in a society shouldn't be coming exclusively from the porn industry.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
an obvious solution
-The main concern of the NSPCC is that children viewing porn gives them a distorted view of what sex is about. Among the potential problems:
-exaggerated and stylized male and female bodies leading to body image issues.
-seeing violent and controlling relationships as normal.
-seeing fetish, or extreme, sex as typical.
-The survey included a total of 2000 children from 12-17. One of the 11 questions was whether they had taken part in, or made, a sexually explicit video. 12% answered yes.
-The UK government is convinced that age verification is a workable solution to restrict certain age groups to certain websites.
Given this, I suggest child porn for children websites. The child porn will be made by children, starring children (no adults allowed), and only accessible by children through age verification. Clearly, this is a much healthier solution than the current situation. What could go wrong?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: an obvious solution
As "A Modest Proposal" for internet porn, this works as satire. A serious solution would be to educate families, which we're not doing. What happens is that the kids are being taught stuff that some people are opposed to on principle because religion, etc. If we educate families and carers we should see a reduction in both hysteria and in the problems listed by yourself.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Or the UK is going to start blocking porn sites left, right and center.
It's hilariously sad.
And yet somehow the UK wonders why it's classified as an enemy of the Internet by RSF.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The point is, if minors want it they can get it, the internet does not make it any easier, just more abundant.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
The UK and the US both piss me off unbeleivably. One is a culture which glorifies in violence, death, murder and brutality, but beleives consentual physical attraction is something horrible and disgusting and needs to be hidden away from the world. The other is apparently becoming a huge intollerably nanny that must cleanse and purify the world of 'filth' for its own good.
You want to know what we are teaching kids with this crap? Sex is less healthy and more taboo than violence. That showing someone a breast or penis, something roughly 50% of them have in one capacity or another, is more damaging and of greater concern than them witnissing a brutal and vicious beating administered to an unsympathetic individual for amusement.
How often do we laugh at someone getting beaten up by cops in a sitcom, cheer for the hardened hero as he guns down the last 'bad guy' in his way, or glorify the sense of strength and achivement that comes from fighting your way through hordes of enemies in a game?
But sex? Get that hippy garbage out of here!
Clearly humanity has its priorities straight.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Clueless idiots and the law
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Clueless idiots and the law
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I also have an idea for an interesting survey. Pay a bunch of teenaged boys to take multiple surveys. After about the tenth survey, I predict that you find that most of them have not only seen porn, but have actually starred in feature length movies. After the twentieth survey you'll find that 30% have injured themselves while having sex on a trapeze, while the other 70% successfully pulled it off.. with three girls at once.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Parental Controls
There's parental controls for smartphones too, but the issue is that parents need to learn what tools they have for keeping their kids safe online and/or keep them off of bad sites.
I will admit, these things can be a pain, but if you have a kid, they aren't going to make your life easy anyways. It's like with anything else, the more effort you put into it, the better the results.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Global pornography
Add them to Cleanfeed as "must block"?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ludditical Indeed!
hehehehe - even the spell check agrees that this just aint a real word - but damn its so lovely and specifically descriptive of so many of our modern morality morons it oughta be immediately adopted into the English language.
Thanks.
---
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Two thoughts
Or are laws like these okay as long as it's porn?
How would they feel if Iran decided that viewing Christian websites was amoral and decided to fine people?
2) Who are these survey people that get such respect that all of the government listens to them? Oh, that's right, they were probably *paid* by the government to come up with these results. If so, then why isn't the media asking more questions about the survey?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]