News Porn to be opt-in only with UK's biggest ISPs

There goes the last place where we had freedom of speech and expression. Roll out the VPNs. The main issue is not that they are doing this with porn, it is that once there is a system like this it will be used for other things es well. It is the start of a very slipper slope.

You can not exchange Freedom for Security you will end up losing both.

 

Kids have been looking at porn for ages now, why must we block it now

 

First porn
Then what next? 'Tasteless' websites? Piracy websites? I see this more as a gateway to end net neutrality.

Aslong as it is just a DNS block that isn't really a problem. But seriously.. leave the internet alone Cameron there are much more important things to tackle...

I have been waiting for an excuse to leave talktalk though..

 

I know it scarcely seems credible but the Guardian have criticised the Tory Government without actually reading the report - again.

According to the BBC's more considered take on it, it's not that you'll have to call your ISP to ask someone to let you look at boobs, which is what most of the headlines imply. When you sign up for a new account with BT, Sky, TalkTalk or Virgin, there'll be a question on the sign up form - do you want us to block porn? Yes/No.

It's still a worrying move down the road to a nanny state internet, since once that level of technology is implemented at the ISP's end who knows where it'll lead, but for now it's a meaningless token gesture to keep the Daily Mail quiet.

 

Ha, I didn't want to do that at the age I was.

 

Welcome to communist Britain.

Just like China & Austrailia, the gov are taking control....


If they make it, we will break it.

 

To be fair, The Guardian did post this later in the day.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/11/david-cameron-porn-filter-isps?newsfeed=true

 

I find the websense service we have at work as a royal PITA, its always blocking what i want even when its legit. My issue is will i be able to email vigin say unblock this URL... prob not. So i think ill just opt in.... anyway if GF does a runner i may need it

 

From a parent's view I'd be worried about just what the filtering will actually stop. The "set it and forget it" mentality of an automated system could very easily lead parents to believe their child is shielded from pornography (their choice, totally different matter) when indeed the clever little brat has found a website (or sites) which offers sufficiently arousing material which manages to slip past the filter. A parent who is legitimately interested in completely filtering content which is innappropriate by their own standards will still have to monitor internet use themselves, thus making such a feature largely useless.

On the subject of subverting the filter, that will likely be a joke. Could it really stop people from simply uploading blocked content onto unblocked torrent sites and image boards? Doubtful, we all know how hard it is to actually police such a site without outright blocking it, and again we all know how hard it is to outright block a site which has legitimate and non-explicit uses in addition to its shadier and kinkier ones. The bigger the threat of such a system is the larger the community fighting against it will be.

 

So's I says to this bird, "look love, I'm a man of few words, you and me, how about it? " she looks at me and says "your place or mine? ". I say, " well if your gonna make a big conversation out of it you can ##### off ".

 

Ironically, you'd be lucky to even get on their website

 

Well at least our kids in future might have some invention when it comes to grumble.
They will have to revert to 'porn stash' again, A fistfull of paper grumble hidden under the matress.

I remeber my mother finding my Hustler tsash when I was 14, She gave me a proper bollocking and chucked them in the bin.......next day I found them back in my stash spot.......My DAD put them back....LMAO....dirty old git.

 

You can't rely on parents having any sort of pc knowledge, I used to work for tech support at a large peripherals manufacturer, I know it sounds hard to believe but there are people out there that can't tell a ps/2 connector from a usb one and if it comes to networking they know even less, hell there are people that don't know that they will need a internet connection for a internet radio.
It is the unfortunate reality that in most households the kids are the ones who know something about pcs and not the parents so any security measurement taken locally is ineffective as the kids will find a way around it faster than the parents can install it.

In short, there is no other way to prevent kids from accessing porn online than only making the use of internet enable devices possible under supervision by a human.

 

That, to my mind, is basically the root of the problem.


You will not stop a child that wants to looking at porn, no generation has managed that.

What you want to do is stop young children that are not ready to be exposed to porn accidentally stumbling upon it, any half-decent net nanny program will do that.

What actually needs to happen is parents need to be better educated on how the net works, and how to (really quite easily) protect their child from stumbling on bad sites. Cameron wants to push his big society crap,so have libraries, schools e.t.c host a "how to keep your kids safe on the net" classes and make it mandatory for ISPs to make some sort of net-nanny software available for free.

Free software from ISPs costs very little.
Schools need to teach IT ergo must have someone to explain this sort of thing to parents, hell just stick it as some sort of extra part of the first parents evening.

 

One thing that hasn't been mentioned, what about all the poor dads out there? How on earth are they going to persuade their wife or GF that they really shouldn't opt in to the blocking?

 

Putting aside the right/wrong argument for this decision, is this not going to be impossible to actually enforce? Are the ISPs going to club together to create an 'anti-pron' team, scouring the internet for any traces of adult content on the internet and hitting it with the filter hammer? If so, are they hiring?

Seriously though, I know that they have been touting the idea of having a .xxx domain for adult sites, which would make it very easy to enforce, for the websites that actually use the domain. How will they deal with other websites? Filter one website, three more will pop up, in the same way as torrent websites. What about Google image searches with safesearch off? What about Torrents/rapidshare/megaupload not to mention proxies.

Massive waste of time and money, that will just serve to teach kids how to get around these sorts of security measures. I'm sure if this were introduced tomorrow, my 16 YO brother would have researched and gotten proficient with proxies by the end of the week (though I appreciate it won't apply to me as I'm an existing customer).

Seems like a massive waste of time and money.

 

Purely out of curiousity, you're not the Pendragon at Riot, are you?

 

this is so stupid.
1st its up to the parents to choose if they dont want there children watching it.
2nd if everyone keeps going on about how its "naughty" to watch it kids will go look at it just because they want to be naughty
3rd why cant we ban crazed minorities literally controlling the whole planet. if we keep giving them what they want they will keep asking for more. which will most likely end up in WW3

also im 16 and they make it sound like i watch porn atleast every week. but in reality i watch it once every few months

 

The arguments saying parents are technically incompetent to block / monitor their children's activity on the internet really annoy me. It's called parenting, if you don't know how to block / monitor inappropriate material then you should a. pay someone who can set it up for you, b. buy software that will do it and most important of all make sure the child cannot use the internet in a "private" location (aka. their bedroom).

Children under the age of 13 should not even be on the internet without parent/guardian supervision. It's the equivalent of leaving you child alone in a strange city and hoping they will be "all right". Parents need to take an interest in their children, engage with them and stop using the computer / internet as a babysitting device to keep the kids quiet.

 

That guardian story is UTTER RUBBISH... you will not have to opt in to visit adult sites. The ISPs are only flagging up the parental control software they use and asking people if they want to activate this security. The person does not have to activate it and dont have to say why for pitys sake.. If someone does want to use it that person will personally block the sites they don't want their children visiting..