Government considers web ban on adult content

Why?

I really cannot believe that supposedly educated people actually entertain this type of censorship - Already we see this has extended from 'protect the children' to 'other adult content'

Ill-imformed middle-class housewives (for want of a better term) I'd expect to spout this sort of BS - but to actually take parliamentary time & launch a formal investigation into the pros & cons of setting up such as system is seriously unbelievable.

Yes, there are some good things that such a system will do - but so often recent history has shown exactly why it should never be put into place.

Or is it that this time 'will be different' and 'that can't happen here'?

By greemble on 23 Aug 2011

*sigh*

Most kids are so tech savvy that they will get round a filter in the time it takes a politician to drink his espresso

By Bunnyman on 23 Aug 2011

It's piss easy to filter content already!

Surely what is needed is a simple education campaign explaining how to change DNS address in your router to OpenDNS or DynDNS and use their free filtering tools which can be made pretty much unhackable. Sheesh!

By robertwigley on 23 Aug 2011

I can't get on my gaming site dad, turn the filtering off

I can imagine it now. I see lots of parents of the kids I teach buy them 18 rated games/DVDs. All that will happen is that the filtering will get turned off and forgotten about.

How about we actually get parents to talk to their children instead of the government trying to bypass them as usual.

Claire Perry needs to wake up and smell the coffee...

By fiendishlyclever on 23 Aug 2011

You underestimate people's lack of knowledge

@robertwigley
A significant number of my customers have no knowledge of or get very confused when I tell them that they can use ctrl-c and ctrl-v to cut and paste. Asking them to change settings in a router is totally outside their comfort zone. I am sure you can extrapolate these findings across the country. It would be great if the average bod had the knowledge of an average PCPRO reader. Tho' I'd be out of work. :o(

By Pantagoon on 23 Aug 2011

I can imagine the "finding out how much porn children actually access" to be quite amusing and scary. "Hello little boy, have you seen any pictures on the internet like this?" "Oi! You're nicked for grooming".

At least they are including violence in the list - I'd far rather that was filtered. But as Robert says, it would cost less to just have a campaign to give info about what the options are. We use a free filtering service - just tell everyone and be done!

By MJ2010 on 23 Aug 2011

That should have been copy and paste obv.

oops

By Pantagoon on 23 Aug 2011

@robertwigley

How many different routers are there? Parents will be afraid of breaking their connection. How many people haven't changed the admin login details on their router? Even if they do, a simple reset by any child while the parents are out will wipe everything - eventually they will just give up. Heck my router resets itself on its own every couple of weeks.

By seikogb on 23 Aug 2011

phew!

Claire Perry is hot! Am I missing the point?

By gavmeister on 23 Aug 2011

Byron Report?

For goodness sake, this is what we get for letting the lovely Dr Tanya write a well-informed and grown-up report about children and technology. Who wants the facts when we can have conjecture!

I suppose we'd better polish our pitchforks and oil our torches ready for the assault on Castle Frankenweb.

By roadshowuk on 23 Aug 2011

Hate to sound like a broken record because i say this so often, but anyone who wants to look up porn with a filter on their connection will just use a proxy.

In secondary school, we may not have learnt much about computers but we learnt about bypassing web filters pretty quickly.

It will also probably end up being used for preventing super injunctions, piracy, etc.

If parents are that concerned over porn, maybw they should actually monitor their children?

Plus if the filter is as easily broken as i predict/ bet parents/the daily mail will complain despite not knowing how or why and expecting some sought of crackdown.

By tech3475 on 23 Aug 2011

@robertwigley

You'd be surprised. Ever heard of proxy avoidance sites? Over SSL? How you going to block them? New sites crop up every 5 minutes.

It's an international problem in the education sector. Only now are products just reaching the market that can inspect SSL packets for content. But thats in a corporate environment. How on earth are ISP's going to do it on their respective scale without hitting performance. How are they going to get around Data Protection given they have to decrypt the packets first, and then re-packet them up.

To be honest - I think it's a great idea. I've long thought all adult entertainment sites should be forced to use .xxx domains (but clearly this is unenforceable).

Although PC Pro are going for the over dramatic headline here to get readers, the article itself says they are not banning porn at all. Merely having it as an option at ISP level which can be enabled.

How is this censorship? It's exactly the same as commercial TV providers do it.

I welcome it, not only as a parent, not only as someone who worked in education for 12 years and not only as someone who has had to deal with parents of a year 9 girl who saw adult material which happened to pop-up (for christ sake she was mortified - as were the extremely angry parents).

Do it - if it stops some of the disgusting material from being seen by the wrong people - do it now.

My fear is, the technically incompetent MP's will listen to a commercial company, pay millions of pounds, but not actually think about how it can be enforced, policed and maintained.

It's an impossible task but I wish it was here right now.

By metalmonkey on 23 Aug 2011

I think the problem is...

for most people anyway, that it's not an opt in service, rather an opt out one. How many people will be comfortable ringing up their ISP and asking for the porn filter to be removed?

This kind of "service" is all well and good, but who will pay for it? I can guarentee your ISP will make us pay for it one way or another. If you have children put filtering software on the PC, you can install most programs these days with 3 mouse clicks.

I give it a week if it's implimented before someone sues in the human rights courts for one reason or another.

By David1981 on 24 Aug 2011

I think the problem is...

for most people anyway, that it's not an opt in service, rather an opt out one. How many people will be comfortable ringing up their ISP and asking for the porn filter to be removed?

This kind of "service" is all well and good, but who will pay for it? I can guarentee your ISP will make us pay for it one way or another. If you have children put filtering software on the PC, you can install most programs these days with 3 mouse clicks.

I give it a week if it's implimented before someone sues in the human rights courts for one reason or another.

By David1981 on 24 Aug 2011

BAN BAN TAX and TAX

Is our government in a free society ever going to end?
I am really against XXX materials and other adult pornography like the Illegal Iraq War but that does not mean they should be banned outright in a free democratic society.
If someone wishes to stop junk mail or phone calls etc., one has to simply request the services not be sent. Likewise with filters.. one should be able to request the application for filters, like parental controls on a TV.
What they are suggesting is that all that change and rather than be anonymous, anyone seeking adult material (NOT NECESSARILY PORNOGRAPHY) will have to divulge their name address and other personal details prior to access.
Knowlegable details of this could prove very useful to someone wishing to blackmail susceptible persons.
Keep it the way it is and ensure parents are responsible for their children viewing the internet.

By lenmontieth on 24 Aug 2011

Total Hypocrisy!

Ban tits, but allow Cert.18 FPS shooters full of swearing and extreme violence to be sold to primary school children. Pure genius.

Are we then bound then for the USA's fate, where everyone is okay with carrying a firearm like a mobile phone, but the nation collapses if someone says "nipple" and "evolution" in the same sentence?

By cheysuli on 24 Aug 2011

What sort of block?

Blocking can be achieved in 2 ways, by having a ratings based DNS service like OpenDNS or by doing direct content filtering.
If it's DNS based the average 13 year old will know how to set the DNS servers on their own PC to bypass the ISP.
Content filtering opens a can of worms that should put it beyond consideration.
As ISPs have the benefit of scale, it would be reasonable for the government to establish standards for services they could bundle that are easy for households to use.

By milliganp on 24 Aug 2011

Government considers web ban on adult content

So why aren't parents acting like fit & proper parents and controlling what their children do under their roof?
The rest of us should not have to be responsible for both the parent(s) and off spring

By invalidscreenname on 24 Aug 2011

what? parenting in stead of governing?

Really? Censorship? What happened to Net nanny? parent patrol? McGruff safeguard?

I'm thinking these people look in the wrong direction. As an involved parent my main problem is not so much kids or what's being send their way, no, it's other parents who are NOT involved. Like was stated by fiendishlyclever: most parents will actually go and BUY adult stuff for their kids, even when it's saying "18" or "16" with big glaring letters. And yes, in my experience that _IS_ MOST parents. These same parents have no idea whatsoever what their kid is doing online. They'll probably start caring when things get out of hand (ie; too late).

And as for censoring violence, I noticed most of the violent content uploaded on youtube seems to come from minors. I hope that filter works both ways... ;)

Also, my biggest problem with this, when does something become "objectable". Nakedness? soft erotics? hardcore porn? Whatever. I used to do safe-sex peer education projects with 15yr olds. We also build webpages with these kids. All of which were perfectly blocked by those programs I mentioned before, all due to the language used by those kids: ever tried using the word "vagina" with that 15year olds? utterly useless. If you want to get the message (about safe sex) through you gotta use four letter words. Which are all banned by these type of filters...
And indeed, most of the youths I encountered were able to circumvent these restrictions within seconds (by using a proxy for instance). Having utterly clueless parents helps ofcourse ;)


And there you have it, no matter which approach to this 'problem' I take, I keep ending up at "utterly clueless parents". Maybe in stead of government trying to take over the parenting role, they should make a law that makes parenting and caring about your kids obligatory for those who have kids...

BTW I can't help but feel sad for all those single-seniors out there who are depending on porn for their sex-life. THESE are really going to miss out due to this.

ps: I love all the techie comments here, kind of shows what type of reader base we have here. For all you techies: this is not a technical issue, this is a social problem. Don't let those clueless alphas make this (yet again) a beta-issue.

By Multifarious on 25 Aug 2011

If you don't want to see porn and you don't want your kids to see porn, or anything else of a disturbing nature, then don't watch it and don't let your kids watch it. It is YOUR responsibility. Allowing government to make such decisions for us is inviting the evolution of a totalitarian state. That is a real danger. In truth, it is already happening.

By luther on 25 Aug 2011

deja vu

I just had a look at the article linked in thisone (Conservative MP calls for ISPs to filter porn:26 Nov 2010) which had more or less the same content and (OMG, i'm SO surprised) pretty much the same kind of comments. It seems we all agree on two points:

- parents should pay more attention to what their kids are doing, should take responsibility
- kids will circumvent any type of filter that blocks their way


if it is this obvious, one has to wonder why (parts of) government insist on spending tax-payers money on researching the obvious...? How come those clever people we choose into power turn into muppets so soon after election is over?

By Multifarious on 25 Aug 2011

Sliding slope

The problem with filtering on the ISP end (if done "properly") would be that it's an all or nothing affair.

Filter for the kids means filter for the adults as well. This means there are going to be a lot of people that would opt-out purely on the basis alone.

This makes the filtering pretty useless, however, it will give tabloids something else to report on when a violent or sex crime is committed.

On the other hand the more puritan women groups will start making a fuss as surely people with children that opt-out put their own desires above the welfare of their children and are surely unsuitable as parents. They'll cite the previously mentioned tabloids as proof that clearly abusers and sexual deviants opt-out and that therefore everyone that has opted out might very well one of these undesirables and we should think of the children's safety!

At some point hackers will obtain the list of all the subscribers that opted out. Not long after a mash-up mapping the people with children who opted out and people who opted out in the direct area of primary schools, playgrounds and public parks is created. There will be a media outcry when a girl goes missing and is found dead a couple of weeks later and a suspect is arrested who was on the list and police is berated for not investigating this particular angle. It doesn't matter that it would have infringed the rights of hundreds of innocent people - because surely if you didn't do anything wrong you have nothing to hide & think of the children!

That this point opting out has become pretty much synonymous to being on the sexual offender registry. Websites pop-up all over the place where people can search for opted out people in their area. At this point nobody dares the opt-out any more and and government slowly but steadily start to increase the list of things that get filtered.

Facebook, twitter, blackberry messenger and whatapp get blocked in the UK as they incite violence and riots. Sending pictures and video from phones gets banned as this would allow taking pictures of children, sexting and taking video's of public officials. At the same time the people's republic of China start opening proxy servers so people in the UK can enjoy the relative freedom people enjoy in the walled garden that is the Chinese internet.

By Chambler on 25 Aug 2011

those depraved MP's

@Chambler
so, in short, it will be the MP's fault our children will grow up on tentacle porn and Bukkake(*)! Those depraved politicians! ;p


(DON'T GOOGLE IT!!!)

By Multifarious on 25 Aug 2011

oh dear

seems I lost my marbles there and mixed up my asian pornz.. how ironically clueless of me :D...

By Multifarious on 25 Aug 2011

A bit late?

The new generation of parents have potentially been exposed to Internet porn all their lives. If they avoided it then so can their kids. If they watched it then it would be hypocritical of them to stop their kids doing so. If porn does damage society then it already has done so. This seems another pointless exercise for MPs to waste taxpayer money on.

By andyj21 on 25 Aug 2011

Technology isn't a replacement for parenting

@Multifarious

I'm surprised it took this long for MPs and tentacle porn to end up in the same sentence. Surely it would have been more appropriate during the expenses scandal... grab whatever you can get your tentacles on while shafting the innocent public....

On a completely serious note though why should the government try to do something that parents should be perfectly capable of doing themselves?
Sex, porn & violence has been around since the dawn of man.
A technical solution pushed on us by the government should always be the last resort.

Maybe parents should do some actual parenting. If you feel your child is too young, maybe you should have a talk with them about why they shouldn't and put up some basic rules. Maybe restrict the use of computers to the communal areas of the house or use the parental control features built into many of the latest operating systems. If you really feel strongly about the subject buy one of those special software packages, routers or an ISP service that filters for you.

Why does the government need to get involved in something that is clearly a parental issue?

By Chambler on 25 Aug 2011

NEVER HAPPEN

It will never happen because the computer industry would collapse since 70%+ watch adult content of one form or another. What next? No War Films, No Playboy, No Naked Ankles.com? How about No Brainwashing Religion.Org? Follow the monye!

By BillB on 25 Aug 2011

Here we go again !

Yet another government attempt to try and take control of OUR internet by playing the voter friendly card.

In this case, for 'Voter' read lazy, irresponsible and ignorant parents.

By julian2003 on 25 Aug 2011

Here we go again !

Yet another government attempt to try and take control of OUR internet by playing the voter friendly card.

In this case, for 'Voter' read lazy, irresponsible and ignorant parents.

By julian2003 on 25 Aug 2011

Protect the Children

So that when they reach adulthood they still act like children. It should be up to parents and relatives to teach them about life not a nanny government.

By scanmaster on 25 Aug 2011

Clair Perry - an interfering X!X?X!

If you bring your children up well you do not fear they will look for porn on the internet. Getting ISPs to do the job of parents is an abdication of responsibility. When will we stop looking for excuses?

By Sinbad0 on 25 Aug 2011

MPs consider ban on "adult" content

The title of this story is misleading: it is ordinary MPs "thinking" about this, not the Government.

By JohnHLewis on 25 Aug 2011

Sex Education

Some years ago I attended a conference in London with the title "Censoring the Internet." My contribution was to offer a reminder that 'ought implies can.'
Much has changed since then, in the technologies and in the competence of young people in matters technological. What has not changed is the level of the debate, which rarely rises to the level of coherence.
What, in present-day society, is pornography? How is it to be differentiated from sex education - which is now a school subject, and is available on Channel 4 as 'The Sex Education Show?'
Other problems present themselves to the censors - how to control the behaviour of those children who use their mobile phones to make photographs and videos of themselves engaging in 'adult activities' then transmitting them to friends, thence to the world?
The age of innocence, it would seem, has gone for good... which some would think to be no bad thing.

By mordecai76 on 25 Aug 2011

Porn corrupts. Really?

Remember Lord Longford? Spent half a lifetime studying porn, before pontificating about how corrupting and degrading it was.

But only for we plebs, not for his lordship, apparently, and it looks as if nothing has changed.

But as far as kids are concerned, that's a parental and school problem - do not make it everybody else's.

@mordecai76 Quite.

By rongraves on 25 Aug 2011

Dictatorship

I'm not having some ponce in a suit telling me what i can & cant do with my PC & internets

By richardbulmer on 29 Aug 2011