This is big news, but unfortunately, it sounds like it was dropped due to implementation issue as opposed to the fact that it is censorship and, moreover, an invasion of privacy.
Requiring that people buy a "porn pass" (a nice way of saying license) in order to view porn is moronic. I also have reservations on how peoples information is collected and stored when they buy said porn pass which could have far reaching negative consequences.
My family has being hounded by BBC goons in the past for ceasing to pay for the TV license. They even had the "TV detector van" come out and hang around their home before a women hired by them try to forcefully gain entry by pushing past them at the door.
It's an entirely optional license fee and those who don't own a TV are not required to pay for it. They employ scare tactics and harass people into paying up.
> I also have reservations on how peoples information is collected and stored when they buy said porn pass which could have far reaching negative consequences.
I'd wager a good deal of money on betting that the conservative minded people pushing this legislation are also likely ones who consume a great deal of the content this legislation is aimed at.
I tend to wonder:
Do they have to buy said "passes" as well, or are they allowed to "opt out", so to speak?
I'd better the latter is more likely than the former, but it raises the question of what makes them so darn special? Of course, they'd probably claim they don't need it anyhow, as they are (somehow) of higher moral character (or some such rubbish) and would -never- consume such content anyhow...
If something like this actually gained traction and went on to become law, it wouldn't be very long until one or more of the legislators who pushed for it found their internet browsing history out in the public sphere.
Sad thing, though? Given today's seeming apathy, and in some cases acceptance and encouragement, of such activity by our public servants, likely nothing would happen to them politically or publicly.
It's a sickening form of Animal Farm we are currently living in.
Mainly the possible implementations and the thus following implications.
It enrages me how technically illiterate (insult of your choosing) conjure up these idiotic ideas and hordes of (more insults) companies jump on that bandwagon. All in the name of “save the children”. When we all know that that’s a very poor excuse but an excellent gateway for further regulation, since few people will publicly stand against it for obvious reasons.
I also faintly remember them banning various genres like bdsm and squirting. The latter because it might be simulated by pissing. I’m in to neither but it’s nobody’s business, as long as it’s consenting.
Whether or not to age-restrict porn I don’t know. I’m the wrong person to ask.
The specific moronic idea here was that the UK, a relatively small country that's nowhere near as powerful as it once was should get to enforce this rule for the entire globe.
That's both the idea that wasn't workable (the original plan said ISPs have to censor the rest of the world using DNS blocking, as you may have noticed this doesn't work if you have DPRIVE, which was in fact already under development before the UK Government came up with this stupid idea) and it's the idea that makes no coherent sense anyway. Why should a Russian pornographer obey a British rule? Should a Canadian pornographer obey Chinese rules? How does "pornography" get to be special here? We have international rules, but only for things everybody (more or less) agrees are bad, like murder or piracy. We don't have such agreement as to what pornography even includes, let alone whether it should be restricted and who should get to access it.
I would say, it’s a horrible use of taxes to have the government attempt the Sisyphean task of classifying every site on the Internet and keeping it updated.
If porn is a social ill (not sure I’m convinced, but I probably could be with some data), before we go all boot-on-face, let’s at least try engaging with minors first.
As a minor in the US I was subjected to countless classes and lectures exploring the harms of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol. If a minor in the US begins smoking, it’s not because they’ve never heard that cigarettes cause cancer.
Are youth in the UK educated about porn and its harms? I would say starting there seems smarter.
I wouldn’t call the general idea “moronic”, however the attitude of the UK government seemed to treat “website” as equivalent to “publication” without any awareness of how much larger the current film classification board would have to become for that to work.
Separately, I would argue that if even one category of content should be age restricted, then internet access as a whole should be age restricted. AI isn’t ready to be a good age-appropriate filter yet.
Regarding “if one then all”:
The beauty behind the porn filter is that few people (especially our stainless leaders) will publicly say stand against it for fear of being ridiculed and not reelected.
So you can get the infrastructure in place with only perverts protesting, only to then further expand that filter because terrorism | children | piracy | copyright | social credit | whathaveyou.
I wonder who would stand up and say how much tax payers money were wasted here? Someone should, right? At least for Pornxit a decision was made. Brexit to follow...
> Although the age verification policy was first proposed by the Conservatives during the 2015 general election, it took years to develop and make it into law.
Why are such laws always proposed by conservatives? Aren't they supposed to be for smaller, less intrusive government?
Right. In the patriarchal society the patriarchs, the Abrahams, can have many wives. That means there are many men who can not have any wives. Now if those wifeless men had access to pornography they might get the idea that they want a wife too.
So it's better for the patriarchs to keep porn away from the less fortunate men who might be inspired by it to demand a rule that no man can have more than one wife.
Since the UK is not a patriarchal society, this comment contributes nothing.
Also, to keep the peace in societies such as you described, it would probably make sense to have pornography available as outlet for repressed sexual desires.
In my opinion UK is, more or less, "patriarchal society". All societies are, more or less, no?
Would you agree that say Saudi-Arabia is a "patriarchal society"? I can readily agree with your point it would probably help them as a society to legalize porn but seems like they are not going to do that any time soon:
I'm sorry if I don't answer your questions directly but approach them from a tangent.
I don't quite buy into the Patriarchy mythos. For me, this is oversimplifying how societies form and develop their structure and rules.
If you want to equate "Patriarchy" with hierarchy; sure, be my guest. That's what a lot of ardent Feminists tend to do and my guess that is because it made for a convincing story if you were a privileged female member of the upper-classes of late 19th-century England. It was also probably very tempting to be able to point at any member of the opposite sex and say "It's your fault!". (At least these are my guesses why we struggle so hard to overcome the Patriachy mythos.)
I don't think that this approach has much merit to it, however.
To me it looks like a lot of what is considered "Patriarchy" are simply the remnants of cultural agreements that were made in a time when survival and reproduction where the predominant driver of the societal web. You don't send out your woman to battle war, they are the reproductive coin of your society. You send men to war, men are expendable. Our traditional social compact follows this logic.
But it was always a compact between males and females. It was never something that Men coerced Women into. It was an agreement out of necessity. Woman live in seclusion, Men die free. Sure, you are free to call these traditional, born-out-of-the-necessity-for-survival compacts 'patriarchal'. But 'matriarchal' would be just as appropriate.
So, why is pornography banned in Saudi-Arabia? Why is homosexuality considered an abomination? Howly cow, I don't know. I guess it has something to to with the tenants of the Abrahamic religion(s). Other traditional don't have that much beef with sex and sexuality. I don't think that allowing pornography would topple the regime, though it could put some strain onto the dynasty[0].
Besides this being completely irrelevant to the present-era UK, keep in mind that those societies warred a lot, which meant men died, skewing the gender balance. Provisions for polygamy worked as a rudimentary social safety net for widows.
(As a general point, in my perhaps limited knowledge, weird or appalling customs from the past tend to have economic underpinnings.)
You're mixing fiscal/government conservative with social conservative. Most conservatives are both socially and economically conservative so in most places the right-libertarian is relatively small and doesn't hold much power.
They're different, but American Republicans abandoned the idea of limited government a long time ago. It'll come up as a talking point, but only if it supports what they want anyway, not because they actually want to limit it on principle.
Conservatives are the Big Brother. They like to watch over you and control you. They are not "liberals". Liberals are the opposite of conservatives. Liberals are happy to give you permission to enjoy your life.
Think about the semantics of the word 'conservative". It means keep things the same they are, conserve the status quo. Now who would support such a viewpoint? Of course those who benefit from inequality, who are on the sunny side of it.
This is a overly simplistic and (sorry) borderline childish point of view.
The truth is that political ideology does not fit neatly on a continuous line from "liberal" to "conservative" and that party lines have been drawn in such a way that the original semantics of the labels no longer apply to a large set of preferred policies on either side.
Some kind of multi-axial graph or multi-dimensional matrix would be more useful. Social & Fiscal are two useful axes, and the bare minimum of what you need in order to sensibly represent modern day politics. It might actually be an interesting thought experiment to explore what other axes are most useful.
I'm thinking more in terms of one such (possible) axis conservative-liberal, not in terms of two-party politics. So while there are countless numbers of ways we could categorize people I think conservative-liberal is a rather well-defined and by necessity over-simplified characterization.
"Conservative" can be defined as a person who wants to conserve society as it is now or as it was earlier, the good old 1950s.
"Liberal" means a person who would like to liberate what is currently oppressed.
I assume that "conservatives" want to conserve their own power because who in their right mind would want to conserve a situation where they are oppressed. Those who want "liberation" do not want to conserve the current state of affairs.
The plans were also dropped by conservatives. I seriously doubt Boris Johnson cares about banning pornography, he has a girlfriend 24 years his junior (not that there's anything wrong with that), he is about as far from vicar's daughter May as it's possible to get.
I don't think it's necessary to prevent minors from accessing pornography. 17 year old teenagers have a sex drive, it's time that society gets over it.
Given that I've not heard a proposal that wouldn't have also helped my parents hide the existence of gay people until I went off to university (and they tried!) - I wouldn't.
I'm quite sure ulterior motives explain more than stated goals, here and elsewhere.
It's not plausible to do that. So teach them what it is and that it's stylized and unreal. Tell them that you don't want it on the family computer or the family wifi. Teach them to identify and despise misogyny. Teach them how to resist peer pressure. Teach them that society has weird ideas about what counts as real sex, or improved or advanced sex, when in reality it's just a thing adults do to express closeness and have fun.
Porn is to real sex like every YouTube movie about home improvement would only feature chainsaws, flamethrowers and jackhammers: it looks great - no doubt - but it's useless if you're looking for practical information how to fix your leaking roof.
So perhaps there should be good non-prude material for under aged people that are interested in the subject. If kids have nothing useful to watch they'll watch porn instead, right?
For example: I found a very informative book about drugs at school written by two guys that tried about every type of drugs in existence and wrote what to expect from it and what it's benefits and risks were. The section heroin basically contained the word: "NO". I don't think kids in the US had access to this type of information given what happened in the last decade with heroin because of 'protecting the kids' laws in schools.
>Porn is to real sex like every YouTube movie about home improvement would only feature chainsaws, flamethrowers and jackhammers: it looks great - no doubt - but it's useless if you're looking for practical information how to fix your leaking roof.
Once you're competent in the relevant domain you can usually skim through those chainsaw and flamethrower DIY videos, find the parts you need and implement them with little issue.
Nothing. If your kid actively seeks out porn then chances are that he is already mature enough for it. Thus the problem does not exist.
Edit: and the things you should watch out for is not porn, but have you kid joined some weird religious cult or a gang - that can cause a LOT more trouble than having an awkward conversation about sex.
> The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, told parliament the policy would be abandoned. Instead, the government would instead focus on measures to protect children in the much broader online harms white paper. This is expected to introduce a new internet regulator, which will impose a duty of care on all websites and social media outlets – not just pornography sites.
.. which is almost a satire of every “think of the children” and “beware of terrorists” manifesto ever written. It’s a long document but I couldn’t find a single mention of the balance between safety and governmental overreach.. I would be surprised if e2e encryption were compatible with this white paper.
Interestingly enough, it (encryption) may be fine:
> 4.7. Reflecting the importance of privacy, the framework will also ensure a differentiated approach for private communication, meaning any requirements to scan or monitor content for tightly defined categories of illegal content will not apply to private channels.
This is a very broad point. It's compatible with everything from "anything goes as long as you connect via HTTPS" to "Big Brother is watching if you don't turn off all electronics nearby and talk quietly".
The next sentence says that they haven't really thought about it yet: "We are consulting on definitions of private communications, and what measures should apply to these services."
Quite a few years ago I recall watching a presentation by a leader of a child advocacy organization that was dealing with the various governments in the EU and providing technical guidance to them. They were very close at the time to moving forward with a plan to require video card manufacturers to build things into their firmware to check every single image before it is displayed on screen against a database of known illegal imagery. The crux of the talk from the advocate was that they, child advocacy organizations, spend an awful lot of time and resources fighting against these sorts of high-profile attacks against imagery because it is known to not actually help kids in abusive situations. I keep expecting that sort of policy to re-appear. As technical people, we know that the technical aspects of such a proposal are insane and impractical, but that often doesn't constrain policymakers.
Policy making is about turning public money into your money. Finding reasons not to spend wins you no friends in government. How did the uk government manage to warrant a 20 billion pound daily budget? By finding new ways to spend it, and ensuring it is illegal for them not to have it. They need more money.
I would instead ask if watching videos of women being raped and beaten up (even if fictional) harms children or sets up teenage boys with unreasonable expectations of what sex is like.
Too be honest, as a (probably still) dumb boy, I'm not sure NOT watching said content sets us up with any better expectations. The vast majority of people just have no freaking idea when it comes to sex; porn, erotica, wikihow articles or not
I recall speaking with someone who became addicted to porn at a young age. It destroyed his life, his relationships and he became severely depressed. Furthermore, the porn industry has one of the highest rates of suicide.
Perhaps the vast majority of people don't have a good idea precisely because they have watched porn from a young age. I know that's the case with the young adults of my generation (26 years).
So to answer your question => Yes; not watching porn is much healthier than watching.
I'm not sure I'd agree, unless you have statistics to back it up. Sure, porn may be unrealistic, but it does help normalize sexuality and might provide information to those who may otherwise not get it.
Might also normalise unhealthy sexual behaviors and spread misinformation. I don't think anyone can backup their claim with stats on that subject though.
Porn normalizes sexuality in the same way dog fighting toughens youths. The viewer experiences sex / violence completely removed from its context (since there is an intensely inter-subjective nature to both). Without counter-teaching external to the medium the presentation of these acts teaches the viewer that these acts exist for the sake of pleasing the viewer, and for no other reason.
> [porn] might provide information to those who may otherwise not get it
Porn doesn't teach you how to have sex, it teaches you that sexual feelings are a commodity you can take.
Are you sure you don't have the causation backwards? Speaking from personal experience, stress with life and relationships and depression leads to porn, not the other way around.
I used to buy into the whole "porn addiction" idea and though I was, but when I dropped it cold turkey back in college I just found other unhealthy coping mechanisms. Until I went to a professional and got on track towards fixing my health issues, then my "porn addiction", "video game addiction", "work addiction" or "browsing memes/hn addiction" or whatever else I had just went away, and I can now do all those things without overdoing them and without damaging other aspects of my life.
As such, I don't think any kind of porn addiction is the source of problems, but more of a symptom. I think this is generally true with any kind of addiction, but substance abuse has a harsher physical component to it with withdrawal. All the other "addictions" without a physical element are rooted in attempts to get some form of pleasure (dopamine, etc.) because of other problems (stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness), and once those other problems are solved the "addiction" tends to go away on it's own, unlike with substance abuse.
I find it hard to imagine that viewing such videos in the context of a society which vociferously opposes sexual violence could result in anyone thinking the videos are depicting reality. Are we meant to believe that a significant number of adolescents see the vast overabundance of non-abusive pornography, the wider messages about sex they've received every day of their life from their parents and society and peers, and a tiny number of abusive pornographic videos and then conclude that the abusive ones are the actual realistic ones?
I would love to live in "a society which vociferously opposes sexual violence". Where is this place? The society I live in falls over itself to excuse rapists.
Depending on the pornsites you go to you're never more than three clicks away from very disturbing content, even for adults.
(I don't think the idea of restricting access to some websites based on age is inherently bad, I just don't see a way to enforce it that isn't more harmful than useful)
While I get your point, I find it presumptuous for anyone to say what 'real' sex is.
This is just another typical cultural issue that people cannot agree on. My problem with these laws is that they force morals upon the population that are not necessarily widely accepted. e.g. 99% of people agree murder is wrong, but what % of people agree on what 'porn' even means?
If they had kept the requirement simple (such as adding the RTA header) [1] and requiring browser developers to recognize the RTA header, then they would not have had the complexity and doubts currently in play. That would have pushed the requirement, liability and decision onto the parents as to whether or not adult content was appropriate.
It's difficult to force foreign web sites and foreign browser developers to support this, in general but especially if you don't have the threat of blocking them if they fail to comply. Even so, some of them are likely to be indifferent or actively opposed to it.
There are already lists that say what domains are adult. This would just be adding one field that says RTA=(0|1|2) 0 being no header, 1 being site wide header, 2 being headers per URL. Governments that wish to go chasing after domain owners for non compliance could do so, just as they do today for copyright violations. (domain take-downs, etc)
I don't understand the international enforcement part.
It's not illegal in the U.S. to have a porn site or sexually explicit site without an RTA header. There's no legal remedy available in the U.S. to the U.K. government against a site that intentionally decides not to use this header, nor against people providing infrastructure to that site. DNS registrars, registries, and ICANN don't require it either.
This solution addresses people in the UK visiting UK sites. If you want to prevent your citizens from going to a site hosted elsewhere, then you would have to consume the RTA auditing results and enforce them at your internet border.
Certainly this won't solve VPN's and some proxies, but then who are we trying to block? Adults? Children? If we are thinking of the children, then an order to UK ISP's to consume the non-compliance list and block those domains (and even IP's if you want to get heavy handed) should more than suffice. Whether or not you decide to block CDN IP's is entirely up to how heavy handed you want to get. I predict CDN's would move adult sites to their own CIDR blocks if this starts occurring.
If we are trying to block adults, that is a whole other discussion as to the intention of the blocking in the first place. I would expect some countries in the middle east already know how to address this problem, by forcing all traffic through a MITM set of proxies. I believe Syria and Iran use Bluecoat proxies. China uses (or used) a heavily modified netfliter implementation. They have the distinct advantage of not having to be performant. Priority always goes to blocking first.
> This solution addresses people in the UK visiting UK sites. If you want to prevent your citizens from going to a site hosted elsewhere, then you would have to consume the RTA auditing results and enforce them at your internet border.
But isn't that already the structure of what the old proposal was going to do? UK ISPs would be expected to actively cooperate in blocking things indicated to them, most of which would be hosted outside of the country.
The primary difference being, end users are not registering with a centralized site and handing over sensitive information. There would be no citizen database. Rather, the inverse would be true. A database of adult sites that lack a header.
Don't get me wrong, I think a citizen database of porn passes would be a blast, once it leaks out from some public S3 bucket. I would tease Ricky Gervais about his habits until he turns it into a standup routine. (kidding, but it could happen) I'm just hoping one of his writers visits this site.
Oh, sorry, I got confused about which part of the plan you were focusing on. I thought you were focused on the blocking method rather than on the opt-out method, and I didn't see any significant impact on the blocking method.
How so? It's just a header that the web server / ssl accelerator / ELB / application would send. That is entirely independent of Google. If you mean Chrome + being logged into google, that is already a risk today without any headers. Google know which sites are adult (mostly).
This was a Tory policy. It was never about enabling parental choice; there are already tons of products for that. Taking away the option for parents to be "liberal" is part of the point.
The main point however was to generate favourable headlines in the Tory press, at the time of passing the law, which is why they lost all interest in actually implementing it.
The repression of sex instead of violence is THE single most bizarre facet of human society.
WHY are there so many taboos around an act that provides pleasure, reduces stress and literally creates life, that is the most natural instinct and urge of practically every single creature in known existence, but we can freely show depictions of ending someone's life and glamorize death, injury and misery?
>I would be curious how people behaved wrt sex before the modern repressive religions came along.
My impression is it has less to do with religion itself but rather the culture. China under the CCP is far from a religious culture, but they’ve banned porn for decades.
>Don’t you think people are naturally more private about sex though?
The first rule of Fuck Club: don’t talk about Fuck Club.
I had to read a book about a tribe in the pacific islands, and they were more open about sex, but they still had some rules. For example, having multiple partners was considered immature behavior that is only acceptable for teenagers. Once the villagers got older, it was expected that they would get "married" and try to raise a family, but there was nothing forcing them to stay together. If they fell out of love, one would move out. As long as they stayed monogomous, it didn't matter how long they were in a relationship.
Very crudely, my understanding is that places where food meant plowing (i.e. heavy work) almost always had a strong marriage tradition. While places where growing food was light work quite often did not -- basically places where it was possible for a woman to raise children on her own labor. (Not very sure about non-farming people.)
IIRC, the men would go fishing or diving for seafood, and the women would mainly stay at home fixing things like fishing nets, preparing food, or gathering fruit. Most of the child rearing was done by female teenagers instead of adults.
Almost all "religious" rules are made by men, with others blindly following them. This makes you more pious and "religious", if you do.
Did these people actually read the Bible? "So the two daughters get their farther drunk on wine, rape him, and have his children". Then the Bible moves on to the next tale, like "well, yeah, THAT just happened".
I’m still surprised how much art is made of Lot and his daughters. Much of it is great, if it wasn’t for the subject and the burning towns in the background I’d buy a print or two.
It all comes back to control. The leaders of religious communities/countries indulge in all sorts of hanky panky, so even they don't buy their own BS.
Or see the recent scandal of Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking for first world elites, or Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood's abusive underbelly. Or, closer to the topic here, the allegations of pedophilia involving UK's cream of the crop.
Yes, and that's why I do not recognize the institution of church. Too many times it's just a grifting operation stiffing the chumps, and sometimes a hide-away for boy-loving pervs. Because who would ever question a priest?
It originates from sexually transmitted infections. When the catholic church heavily encouraged abstinence suddenly people stopped dying from STI's as much. A combination of the church's influence on Western culture during that time period and all opposition dying out led to its ubiquity and it has stuck around as part of traditional moral values. The more Western culture has taken over the rest of the world, the more it's spread.
> The more Western culture has taken over the rest of the world, the more it's spread.
I'm from a Middle Eastern culture, where shopping malls etc literally have "No Hand Holding" signs (actually against public displays of affection) (https://i.imgur.com/WVOoTBA.jpg) so Western culture is still a lot better off, and the rest of Europe doesn't seem as stuck up
about it as the UK/US.
Sure, but while I have not done the research to back it up, I have the general feeling that a lot of religious prohibitions and traditions can have their origins traced back to rules from antiquity that made sense back then (stuff like not eating shellfish, for example) which were presented with a religious veneer to make them more memorable/enforceable. Over time these prohibitions got entrenched, extended, distorted because of misunderstandings, blind faith or more cynically, desire for control and power, and the original motivations were forgotten. This is, of course, a conclusion I came to without a lot of research so I'd love to take the time to look for evidence either way.
If this is true, it would also follow that more fundamentalist regions would have stricter interpretations of those rules. I does not take much imagination to come up with a version of the US where religious fundamentalism leads to "No Hand Holding" signs, and I'm sure at least some people living in the US right now would approve of such controls (thankfully they are not the majority).
Most regular people in the UK aren't nearly as stuck up about it. It always seems to be some sort of prudish edict from on high, from ageing or church going politicians or tabloids that forgot how to have fun. Usually ends up being a common cause to point at "the great and the good" or media and have a bloody good laugh.
Since I first noticed one, probably 70s/80s video nasties or heavy metal played backwards causes satanism, exactly never have I actually met or spoken to anyone who wasn't having a laugh at the stupidity. (Whilst watching a 4th generation copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre with friends)
> exactly never have I actually met or spoken to anyone who wasn't having a laugh at the stupidity.
Yet, for all the people laughing at the stupids, repressive laws are somehow being made.
You need to yell instead of laugh, or those who come after you will be crying. We already have China as an example of how bad repressive censorship can stifle the way of life we currently take for granted.
I am not sure politicians are especially noted for their connection to the real world. Quite often very much the opposite. Recreating the panopticon seems to be becoming too appealing to our rulers.
Besides these things are rarely, if ever, election promises. They are far more likely to be a knee-jerk reaction to some tabloid "This is outrageous, government must _do_ something" campaign.
Most social norms also prohibit violence. Putting up depictions of violence (real, not video game/cartoon ones) can get the LE on you. Sadly simulated violence is given a free pass, despite some studies indicating there may be links between childhood exposure to simulated violence and actual violence later in life. As for why violence is less censored than sex, I suspect this has something to do with the fact that most of our history has been male dominated. For the male of the species, violence has been a way of life while sex was the ultimate end, so the prize was locked behind several closed doors. Violence was on the other hand was just a tool to achieve the prize, so there was less sense in censoring it.
> depictions of violence (real, not video game/cartoon ones)
That's what I mean about depiction. Violence is glamorized right away from the very early stages of childhood. Toys, cartoons, comics and of course games showing weapons, fights, injuries etc but its unthinkable to show a kiss.
There was an infamous scene from some movie or TV show that I can't remember the name of right now, where they didn't want to show naked corpses so they increased the amount of blood to cover them up...
That must have been a cosmic facepalm moment where the Universe rearranged itself to put us in a corner far away from every other sentient species.
To add to your point of why violence might be less censored: It might also be, because it's just so much easier to engage in violence that it is to engage in sex. Like, I could go out in the street and punch anybody in the face (if I don't care about the consequences). This would be a lot harder if I'd try to go out and sex just anybody (silly example I know, but I think it drives home the point)
It's not just about outright sex, but some cultures repress ALL and ANY sexual and romantic expression, like couples publically holding hands, kissing someone on the cheek, females and males even shaking hands at all, flirting, dating etc.
Huh? Rape is definitely a thing, and it's as illegal as assault. I don't think assaulting someone is much harder, and ignoring the consequences seems to be an odd thing to leave out.
It's signicantly easier to have sex than commit assault, it's not like the police will stop you (consent permitting, of course). Sure, you need to find a willing partner, but that isnt exactly the biggest hurdle that has ever been faced.
Pornography is absolute fucking toxic waste. It is misery inducing in both obvious and subtle ways. Not only does pornography destroy reputation and exploit the naive, but it also causes a seething undercurrent of repressed jealousy to transpire among sexually frustrated individuals of all persuasions, far worse than the body image anxiety that any glossy fashion magazine could ever hope to provoke.
If changes aren't made to reign in that extremely graphic pornography we see on the internet, with all the emphatic blockade tactics used against racists, malignant nationalists, child pornography and pedophilia, radicalizing terrorist propaganda and warring, retaliatory drug cartel snuff violence, you will see things get worse.
The fact that state-enforced age verification was within the overton window in the UK is unfathomable. All age restrictions are toxic and lead to a culture where parents and children mutually distrust each other. And the state wants to enforce them!
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadAs I always said, opt-in is not an option.
“The decision will disappoint a number of British businesses that had invested substantial time and money developing verification products.”
I’m devastated. Let’s hope they all follow their morals and go bankrupt.
Hacker news isn't Reddit and I'm acting entirely too silly.
The TV license is also moronic but for different reasons and is probably why there is a growing movement to scrap it.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=BBC
It's an entirely optional license fee and those who don't own a TV are not required to pay for it. They employ scare tactics and harass people into paying up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t3B-ssC5j0
The Young Ones got busted by a TV detector van:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn1Y7nhB16U
Rick is a timeless character.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20646743
That's terrible that they tried to force their way in, if you feel up to registering a complaint please consider doing so.
I'd wager a good deal of money on betting that the conservative minded people pushing this legislation are also likely ones who consume a great deal of the content this legislation is aimed at.
I tend to wonder:
Do they have to buy said "passes" as well, or are they allowed to "opt out", so to speak?
I'd better the latter is more likely than the former, but it raises the question of what makes them so darn special? Of course, they'd probably claim they don't need it anyhow, as they are (somehow) of higher moral character (or some such rubbish) and would -never- consume such content anyhow...
If something like this actually gained traction and went on to become law, it wouldn't be very long until one or more of the legislators who pushed for it found their internet browsing history out in the public sphere.
Sad thing, though? Given today's seeming apathy, and in some cases acceptance and encouragement, of such activity by our public servants, likely nothing would happen to them politically or publicly.
It's a sickening form of Animal Farm we are currently living in.
Mainly the possible implementations and the thus following implications.
It enrages me how technically illiterate (insult of your choosing) conjure up these idiotic ideas and hordes of (more insults) companies jump on that bandwagon. All in the name of “save the children”. When we all know that that’s a very poor excuse but an excellent gateway for further regulation, since few people will publicly stand against it for obvious reasons.
I also faintly remember them banning various genres like bdsm and squirting. The latter because it might be simulated by pissing. I’m in to neither but it’s nobody’s business, as long as it’s consenting.
Whether or not to age-restrict porn I don’t know. I’m the wrong person to ask.
That's both the idea that wasn't workable (the original plan said ISPs have to censor the rest of the world using DNS blocking, as you may have noticed this doesn't work if you have DPRIVE, which was in fact already under development before the UK Government came up with this stupid idea) and it's the idea that makes no coherent sense anyway. Why should a Russian pornographer obey a British rule? Should a Canadian pornographer obey Chinese rules? How does "pornography" get to be special here? We have international rules, but only for things everybody (more or less) agrees are bad, like murder or piracy. We don't have such agreement as to what pornography even includes, let alone whether it should be restricted and who should get to access it.
If porn is a social ill (not sure I’m convinced, but I probably could be with some data), before we go all boot-on-face, let’s at least try engaging with minors first.
As a minor in the US I was subjected to countless classes and lectures exploring the harms of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol. If a minor in the US begins smoking, it’s not because they’ve never heard that cigarettes cause cancer.
Are youth in the UK educated about porn and its harms? I would say starting there seems smarter.
Separately, I would argue that if even one category of content should be age restricted, then internet access as a whole should be age restricted. AI isn’t ready to be a good age-appropriate filter yet.
Regarding “if one then all”: The beauty behind the porn filter is that few people (especially our stainless leaders) will publicly say stand against it for fear of being ridiculed and not reelected.
So you can get the infrastructure in place with only perverts protesting, only to then further expand that filter because terrorism | children | piracy | copyright | social credit | whathaveyou.
Good luck with that.
(all that without having really an opinion on the the topic of if and from which age porn should be restricted)
Update: spelling
Eh, tacking -xit onto things doesn't work nearly as well as -gate, unfortunately.
Why are such laws always proposed by conservatives? Aren't they supposed to be for smaller, less intrusive government?
So it's better for the patriarchs to keep porn away from the less fortunate men who might be inspired by it to demand a rule that no man can have more than one wife.
Also, to keep the peace in societies such as you described, it would probably make sense to have pornography available as outlet for repressed sexual desires.
Would you agree that say Saudi-Arabia is a "patriarchal society"? I can readily agree with your point it would probably help them as a society to legalize porn but seems like they are not going to do that any time soon:
https://www.quora.com/Is-porn-banned-in-Saudi
Why? If they did allow it the absolute power of the ruling dynasty could be questioned in other ways and that might be the end of that dynasty.
I don't quite buy into the Patriarchy mythos. For me, this is oversimplifying how societies form and develop their structure and rules.
If you want to equate "Patriarchy" with hierarchy; sure, be my guest. That's what a lot of ardent Feminists tend to do and my guess that is because it made for a convincing story if you were a privileged female member of the upper-classes of late 19th-century England. It was also probably very tempting to be able to point at any member of the opposite sex and say "It's your fault!". (At least these are my guesses why we struggle so hard to overcome the Patriachy mythos.)
I don't think that this approach has much merit to it, however.
To me it looks like a lot of what is considered "Patriarchy" are simply the remnants of cultural agreements that were made in a time when survival and reproduction where the predominant driver of the societal web. You don't send out your woman to battle war, they are the reproductive coin of your society. You send men to war, men are expendable. Our traditional social compact follows this logic.
But it was always a compact between males and females. It was never something that Men coerced Women into. It was an agreement out of necessity. Woman live in seclusion, Men die free. Sure, you are free to call these traditional, born-out-of-the-necessity-for-survival compacts 'patriarchal'. But 'matriarchal' would be just as appropriate.
So, why is pornography banned in Saudi-Arabia? Why is homosexuality considered an abomination? Howly cow, I don't know. I guess it has something to to with the tenants of the Abrahamic religion(s). Other traditional don't have that much beef with sex and sexuality. I don't think that allowing pornography would topple the regime, though it could put some strain onto the dynasty[0].
Looking forward to have a fruitful discourse!
[0] https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
(As a general point, in my perhaps limited knowledge, weird or appalling customs from the past tend to have economic underpinnings.)
Think about the semantics of the word 'conservative". It means keep things the same they are, conserve the status quo. Now who would support such a viewpoint? Of course those who benefit from inequality, who are on the sunny side of it.
The truth is that political ideology does not fit neatly on a continuous line from "liberal" to "conservative" and that party lines have been drawn in such a way that the original semantics of the labels no longer apply to a large set of preferred policies on either side.
Some kind of multi-axial graph or multi-dimensional matrix would be more useful. Social & Fiscal are two useful axes, and the bare minimum of what you need in order to sensibly represent modern day politics. It might actually be an interesting thought experiment to explore what other axes are most useful.
"Conservative" can be defined as a person who wants to conserve society as it is now or as it was earlier, the good old 1950s.
"Liberal" means a person who would like to liberate what is currently oppressed.
I assume that "conservatives" want to conserve their own power because who in their right mind would want to conserve a situation where they are oppressed. Those who want "liberation" do not want to conserve the current state of affairs.
The way I see it avoiding awkward conversations seems to be the most consistent "real goal" judging by other actions.
I'm quite sure ulterior motives explain more than stated goals, here and elsewhere.
And then they will regulate themselves.
So perhaps there should be good non-prude material for under aged people that are interested in the subject. If kids have nothing useful to watch they'll watch porn instead, right?
For example: I found a very informative book about drugs at school written by two guys that tried about every type of drugs in existence and wrote what to expect from it and what it's benefits and risks were. The section heroin basically contained the word: "NO". I don't think kids in the US had access to this type of information given what happened in the last decade with heroin because of 'protecting the kids' laws in schools.
Once you're competent in the relevant domain you can usually skim through those chainsaw and flamethrower DIY videos, find the parts you need and implement them with little issue.
Edit: and the things you should watch out for is not porn, but have you kid joined some weird religious cult or a gang - that can cause a LOT more trouble than having an awkward conversation about sex.
> The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, told parliament the policy would be abandoned. Instead, the government would instead focus on measures to protect children in the much broader online harms white paper. This is expected to introduce a new internet regulator, which will impose a duty of care on all websites and social media outlets – not just pornography sites.
Which links to: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/online-harms-whi...
.. which is almost a satire of every “think of the children” and “beware of terrorists” manifesto ever written. It’s a long document but I couldn’t find a single mention of the balance between safety and governmental overreach.. I would be surprised if e2e encryption were compatible with this white paper.
> 4.7. Reflecting the importance of privacy, the framework will also ensure a differentiated approach for private communication, meaning any requirements to scan or monitor content for tightly defined categories of illegal content will not apply to private channels.
The next sentence says that they haven't really thought about it yet: "We are consulting on definitions of private communications, and what measures should apply to these services."
Why don't we see more people with basic technical knowlege in policy making
Perhaps the vast majority of people don't have a good idea precisely because they have watched porn from a young age. I know that's the case with the young adults of my generation (26 years).
So to answer your question => Yes; not watching porn is much healthier than watching.
> [porn] might provide information to those who may otherwise not get it
Porn doesn't teach you how to have sex, it teaches you that sexual feelings are a commodity you can take.
I used to buy into the whole "porn addiction" idea and though I was, but when I dropped it cold turkey back in college I just found other unhealthy coping mechanisms. Until I went to a professional and got on track towards fixing my health issues, then my "porn addiction", "video game addiction", "work addiction" or "browsing memes/hn addiction" or whatever else I had just went away, and I can now do all those things without overdoing them and without damaging other aspects of my life.
As such, I don't think any kind of porn addiction is the source of problems, but more of a symptom. I think this is generally true with any kind of addiction, but substance abuse has a harsher physical component to it with withdrawal. All the other "addictions" without a physical element are rooted in attempts to get some form of pleasure (dopamine, etc.) because of other problems (stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness), and once those other problems are solved the "addiction" tends to go away on it's own, unlike with substance abuse.
(I don't think the idea of restricting access to some websites based on age is inherently bad, I just don't see a way to enforce it that isn't more harmful than useful)
This is just another typical cultural issue that people cannot agree on. My problem with these laws is that they force morals upon the population that are not necessarily widely accepted. e.g. 99% of people agree murder is wrong, but what % of people agree on what 'porn' even means?
[1] - https://davidwalsh.name/rta-label
It's not illegal in the U.S. to have a porn site or sexually explicit site without an RTA header. There's no legal remedy available in the U.S. to the U.K. government against a site that intentionally decides not to use this header, nor against people providing infrastructure to that site. DNS registrars, registries, and ICANN don't require it either.
Certainly this won't solve VPN's and some proxies, but then who are we trying to block? Adults? Children? If we are thinking of the children, then an order to UK ISP's to consume the non-compliance list and block those domains (and even IP's if you want to get heavy handed) should more than suffice. Whether or not you decide to block CDN IP's is entirely up to how heavy handed you want to get. I predict CDN's would move adult sites to their own CIDR blocks if this starts occurring.
If we are trying to block adults, that is a whole other discussion as to the intention of the blocking in the first place. I would expect some countries in the middle east already know how to address this problem, by forcing all traffic through a MITM set of proxies. I believe Syria and Iran use Bluecoat proxies. China uses (or used) a heavily modified netfliter implementation. They have the distinct advantage of not having to be performant. Priority always goes to blocking first.
But isn't that already the structure of what the old proposal was going to do? UK ISPs would be expected to actively cooperate in blocking things indicated to them, most of which would be hosted outside of the country.
Don't get me wrong, I think a citizen database of porn passes would be a blast, once it leaks out from some public S3 bucket. I would tease Ricky Gervais about his habits until he turns it into a standup routine. (kidding, but it could happen) I'm just hoping one of his writers visits this site.
What you've said makes better sense to me now.
The main point however was to generate favourable headlines in the Tory press, at the time of passing the law, which is why they lost all interest in actually implementing it.
WHY are there so many taboos around an act that provides pleasure, reduces stress and literally creates life, that is the most natural instinct and urge of practically every single creature in known existence, but we can freely show depictions of ending someone's life and glamorize death, injury and misery?
What the honest, actual, fuck.
I would be curious how people behaved wrt sex before the modern repressive religions came along.
My impression is it has less to do with religion itself but rather the culture. China under the CCP is far from a religious culture, but they’ve banned porn for decades.
>Don’t you think people are naturally more private about sex though?
The first rule of Fuck Club: don’t talk about Fuck Club.
Very crudely, my understanding is that places where food meant plowing (i.e. heavy work) almost always had a strong marriage tradition. While places where growing food was light work quite often did not -- basically places where it was possible for a woman to raise children on her own labor. (Not very sure about non-farming people.)
This situation is probably the extreme form of instinctive control over mating rights.
By denying potential competitors' access to mates, we hope to increase ours.
Did these people actually read the Bible? "So the two daughters get their farther drunk on wine, rape him, and have his children". Then the Bible moves on to the next tale, like "well, yeah, THAT just happened".
Or see the recent scandal of Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking for first world elites, or Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood's abusive underbelly. Or, closer to the topic here, the allegations of pedophilia involving UK's cream of the crop.
> The more Western culture has taken over the rest of the world, the more it's spread.
I'm from a Middle Eastern culture, where shopping malls etc literally have "No Hand Holding" signs (actually against public displays of affection) (https://i.imgur.com/WVOoTBA.jpg) so Western culture is still a lot better off, and the rest of Europe doesn't seem as stuck up about it as the UK/US.
If this is true, it would also follow that more fundamentalist regions would have stricter interpretations of those rules. I does not take much imagination to come up with a version of the US where religious fundamentalism leads to "No Hand Holding" signs, and I'm sure at least some people living in the US right now would approve of such controls (thankfully they are not the majority).
Since I first noticed one, probably 70s/80s video nasties or heavy metal played backwards causes satanism, exactly never have I actually met or spoken to anyone who wasn't having a laugh at the stupidity. (Whilst watching a 4th generation copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre with friends)
Yet, for all the people laughing at the stupids, repressive laws are somehow being made.
You need to yell instead of laugh, or those who come after you will be crying. We already have China as an example of how bad repressive censorship can stifle the way of life we currently take for granted.
Besides these things are rarely, if ever, election promises. They are far more likely to be a knee-jerk reaction to some tabloid "This is outrageous, government must _do_ something" campaign.
That's what I mean about depiction. Violence is glamorized right away from the very early stages of childhood. Toys, cartoons, comics and of course games showing weapons, fights, injuries etc but its unthinkable to show a kiss.
There was an infamous scene from some movie or TV show that I can't remember the name of right now, where they didn't want to show naked corpses so they increased the amount of blood to cover them up...
That must have been a cosmic facepalm moment where the Universe rearranged itself to put us in a corner far away from every other sentient species.
It's not just about outright sex, but some cultures repress ALL and ANY sexual and romantic expression, like couples publically holding hands, kissing someone on the cheek, females and males even shaking hands at all, flirting, dating etc.
It's signicantly easier to have sex than commit assault, it's not like the police will stop you (consent permitting, of course). Sure, you need to find a willing partner, but that isnt exactly the biggest hurdle that has ever been faced.
Watching violent films doesn't do that to you.
https://www.covenanteyes.com/2014/02/28/hypofrontality/
If changes aren't made to reign in that extremely graphic pornography we see on the internet, with all the emphatic blockade tactics used against racists, malignant nationalists, child pornography and pedophilia, radicalizing terrorist propaganda and warring, retaliatory drug cartel snuff violence, you will see things get worse.
Repeat: You will see things get worse.
Much worse.
No gods, no masters.
Mentioned here with no discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21270259