To be fair, it's not just us Americans. I believe the UK has a universal opt-out pornography filter. Somewhat less savory comparisons are to some of the autocratic middle eastern nations.
I never thought of the UK as being particularly puritanical or me as being particularly kinky, but I've participated in a surprising number of the acts on that banned list, and most of them seem pretty tame.
I die a little bit inside when I see stuff like this, I mean, what sort of cowards are afraid of free speech? Geez.
As long as everyone is consenting, it's all fair. In fact, my guess is this crap does more harm than good by pathologizing sex. There's enough people out there shamed by their sexuality. We don't need more.
And how did they come up with such a weird list? Caning, female ejaculation, and facesitting in the same list? ???
> they also have explicitly banned certain sexual acts like spanking [0].
Not just that, but they've banned the sale of a whole variety of porn that would be considered pretty tame in the US.
For example, it's pretty much illegal to sell porn filmed outdoors in the UK. You can do it, technically, but you have to prove that there is literally no chance that any minor could possibly have been within eyeshot of the scene at the time it was filmed, and the burden of proof for this is so high that it's impossible to satisfy. (Which was the intended goal of the act).
This ban applies both to physical media as well as online streaming sites, as noted in the article.
I had never heard of a filter (at the government or ISP level) until now. Regardless of how Americans tend to treat the subject, they have in the past valued freedom of information on the matter.
Thanks, I did not know about that one. I suppose it says something about US precedent that it was ruled unconstitutional, and also says something (quite different) about our representatives in Congress.
Some religious sects regard masturbation as a severe sin, and various people have spun that into claims that it causes all sorts of criminality/degeneracy, health problems, insanity, teenage rebellion, homosexuality, and so on. Production of such propaganda has declined over the years, but it's still around (e.g. Fight the New Drug / Porn Kills Love [1] [2] [3], which isn't technically a project of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). However, your likelihood of direct exposure to such stuff depends heavily on where and in which sect you were raised.
+1 They should design a custom chip to perform pornography detection realtime. Even smartphone manufacturers could add something like this to every phone. Now the question is how will they apply different thresholds which define what porn is in markets around the world? /s
I am so glad they put a lot of resources into this. It will solve all of Alabama's problems from Education, to Homelessness, to cleaning up their beautiful coast.
An internet access device would require a "filter to block out obscene material, child pornography, images used for sexual cyber harassment, or sites used for human trafficking."
To expand on that, Huntsville, Alabama is the home of Marshall Space Flight Center, which was the design center for the Apollo space program among other things. Also, for those who grew up in the 80s, it's the home of Space Camp.
This is good. Porn is one of the most powerful weapons in the psychological warfare armory. It interrupts the risk-reward cycle of the human brain, thus disrupting the functioning of society generally. For example, Israel broadcast porn on major television networks when occupying Palestine in 2002 [1].
Maybe the traditional "functioning of society" itself is flawed? When you're talking about human society, arguing for the status quo isn't necessarily a strong persuader.
For one thing, I would much rather live in a modern liberal society (where porn is legal) than any of the many repressive countries where porn is expressly forbidden.
Regardless of whether or not man has agency, I'd still rather live in a liberal society!
We may have our problems, but it's better than goose-stepping in uniform, getting caned for sexual deviancy, being burned at the stake for heresy, etc.
(Also: life has got to be about more than lamenting the fate of some imagined "golden culture" that frankly never existed. Live a little!)
Thats great, but certain populations are being demonstrably soft-genocided in that their birth rates are below replacement level, and internet porn is a leading cause.
> Thats great, but certain populations are being demonstrably soft-genocided in that their birth rates are below replacement level, and internet porn is a leading cause.
So, by deciding not to have children, people are guilty of "soft genocide"?
I've seen some crazy beliefs and weird moral systems on HN but this one takes the cake.
Yes, a bill requiring adults to pay $20 and send in a written request just to be able to use their "internet access device" normally is brilliant. I'm not sure why this wasn't implemented sooner.
It just seems so obviously good, especially when you consider that historically, adult content filters have a false positive rate of 0%.
>Porn is one of the most powerful weapons in the psychological warfare armory.
46 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 14.6 ms ] thread[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-act...
Spanking
Caning
Aggressive whipping
Penetration by any object "associated with violence"
Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of if consensual)
Urolagnia (known as "water sports")
Role-playing as non-adults
Physical restraint
Humiliation
Female ejaculation
Strangulation
Facesitting
Fisting
As long as everyone is consenting, it's all fair. In fact, my guess is this crap does more harm than good by pathologizing sex. There's enough people out there shamed by their sexuality. We don't need more.
And how did they come up with such a weird list? Caning, female ejaculation, and facesitting in the same list? ???
Not just that, but they've banned the sale of a whole variety of porn that would be considered pretty tame in the US.
For example, it's pretty much illegal to sell porn filmed outdoors in the UK. You can do it, technically, but you have to prove that there is literally no chance that any minor could possibly have been within eyeshot of the scene at the time it was filmed, and the burden of proof for this is so high that it's impossible to satisfy. (Which was the intended goal of the act).
This ban applies both to physical media as well as online streaming sites, as noted in the article.
[1] http://fightthenewdrug.org/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_the_New_Drug
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/3xhv6a/anti_porn_...
These criteria are not decidable by humans.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1] http://www.news24.com/xArchive/Archive/Porn-the-new-weapon-o...
But please don't impose your Puritan world view
For one thing, I would much rather live in a modern liberal society (where porn is legal) than any of the many repressive countries where porn is expressly forbidden.
We may have our problems, but it's better than goose-stepping in uniform, getting caned for sexual deviancy, being burned at the stake for heresy, etc.
(Also: life has got to be about more than lamenting the fate of some imagined "golden culture" that frankly never existed. Live a little!)
So, by deciding not to have children, people are guilty of "soft genocide"?
I've seen some crazy beliefs and weird moral systems on HN but this one takes the cake.
Yes, a bill requiring adults to pay $20 and send in a written request just to be able to use their "internet access device" normally is brilliant. I'm not sure why this wasn't implemented sooner.
It just seems so obviously good, especially when you consider that historically, adult content filters have a false positive rate of 0%.
>Porn is one of the most powerful weapons in the psychological warfare armory.
Maybe PornHub is secretly a DARPA project!