Andy Chalk said:
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that virtually every home in the country will have access to online pornography blocked at the ISP level unless a request to remove the block is made.
They're finally getting the wish they've been asking for since 1996 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom] when the cops wanted to block child porn newsgroups (the list of which just happened to include things like pictures of centerfolds tacked on at the end).
Andy Chalk said:
Cameron said that by the end of 2014, the country's largest internet providers have agreed to contact their existing customers with an "unavoidable decision about whether or not to install family friendly content filters" - unavoidable because customers who fail to respond for any reason will have it switched on by default.
Except it's not really a choice about whether or not to install them, as they're being installed anyway. It's more of a Hobson's choice, as the refusal is the more difficult option: You can take the censorship horse being offered, or spend more time and trouble walking the uncensored path.
It also conveniently gives the government a short list of people who express a desire to look at porn.
That's it, I need a VPN.
Andy Chalk said:
The filter will be put into place on mobile phone networks and on the U.K.'s public wi-fi network "wherever children are likely to be present." The government is also looking into creating a "Family Friendly Wi-Fi" symbol for retailers, hotels and other companies who want to let their customers know that their wi-fi network is filtered.
If that was a selling point they'd already do it.
Andy Chalk said:
Cameron called upon Google, Bing and other search engines to blacklist sites provided to them by the government,
In other news, the Iranian goverment has also called upon search engines to blacklist sites provided, including ones with pictures of any part of the female anatomy, pro-Christian/atheist/Shinto/Zoroastrianism sites, sites that treat homosexuals like human beings, and anyone spreading that pernicious rumor that the Holocaust happened when it was obviously just that 'Jews are filthy disease-ridden monsters killed by their filthy Jew diseases and we're better off without them anyway'.
Free speech or fascism: Looks like the UK government made their choice.
Andy Chalk said:
implement pop-ups in place of disabled "child abuse sites" warning viewers that they risk losing their jobs, their family and even access to their children if they persist in their behavior, and to provide "clear routes... to legitimate sites on the web" when potentially illegal searches are conducted.
"Potentially illegal"? So the feds threaten your job and life if you do something
potentially illegal?
Also, "potentially illegal" could just mean copyright infringement. The scope creep has started before the project's begun, which tells me it's not scope creep at all.
Andy Chalk said:
If search engine companies haven't come up with acceptable voluntary solutions by October, he warned that legislation to "force action" will be put into place.
"I want to talk about the internet, the impact it is having on the innocence of our children, how online pornography is corroding childhood and how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children,
Because no child saw pornography before the Internet and no child was molested before the Internet.
Andy Chalk said:
and that must be stamped out,"
With nice big jackboots.
Andy Chalk said:
Cameron said in his speech. "I'm not making this speech because I want to moralize or scare-monger, but because I feel profoundly as a politician, and as a father, that the time for action has come.
Yet you are. If I kill someone because the voices in my head tell me to, I'm still a killer. The why and wherefore don't matter;
the act makes you the criminal.
I'd love to try this defense in a court: "I didn't speed because I wanted to, but because I felt profoundly that the time for action had come." The phrase is meaningless. I didn't want to do it but I did it because I wanted to do something.
Andy Chalk said:
Cameron also said that new laws will impose the same restrictions on streaming videos on the internet as those sold in retail outlets,
Completely untenable. You can't make a website in the Cayman islands behave like a brick-and-mortar business two blocks from the police station. Might as well impose the same restrictions on garage sales.
Andy Chalk said:
give more power to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center to investigate "secretive file-sharing networks," create a secure database of child pornography that will help police trace illegal content and the people who look at it, and criminalize the possession of "rape porn."
Define "rape porn". Filmed rape? A porn actress who pretends to be raped? Tentacle hentai? Bodice-ripper romance novels? Nice vague term to use as a bludgeon.
