No super-kinky web smut please, we're British Film censors in the United Kingdom will be able to ban Brits from accessing websites that stream especially kinky X-rated videos, if a proposed change in the law gets up. The Digital Economy bill, which is due to penetrate the statute books in early 2017, is set to include a provision that will allow the British Board of Film …
Yeah, like I noticed that the "Autumn Statement" didn't include a budget increase for the BBFC to allow them to employ 50,000,000 new censors, which is just what they'd need to start with if they want to start monitoring porn sites on the Internet.
Still it could solve the unemployment crisis at a stroke (or has that been banned?)
@Dazed and Confused
Re: "Still it could solve the unemployment crisis at a stroke"
I do have this increasingly horrible feeling that following the driverless vehicles / robotics / machine learning / AI revolution that is coming and will lead to mass unemployment, the State will be employing vast numbers of the population as informers on their neighbours. In return for the very generous offer of basic income... :/
And before you think it won't affect you, have a look at this study of job types:
https://public.tableau.com/views/AutomationandUSjobs/Technicalpotentialforautomation?:showVi
OH, this is that SEL Tory MP who still can't manage to set her browsers access controls and demands ISP's do it for her.
IIRC she wanted every internet set to have an age rating.
She thought you could use those gambling sites to do so. They looked pretty trustworthy to her.
TOTC because, you know, that the usual excuse for this BS.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I voted against Corbyn.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I thought I was "management".
Then they came for the Jews and the Muslims, and I did not speak out—
Because I was neither a Jew nor a Muslim.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
It's a fair enough sentiment (though a bit early for a Godwin). The thing is - all this rubbish started years ago with Labour (maybe before), was carried on by the coalition and now the Tories have taken it on - so there's no one left to vote for. UKIP fall for the "protecting children" bullshit too and who knows what horrendous rules the greens would come up with. Protests have been held - and ignored so that doesn't work either. What else can be done?
"who knows what horrendous rules the greens would come up with."
Well this Green, and many I know, object to this kind of censorship (as well as the extension of online snooping powers). A further issue --- not addressed by Tor and VPNs --- is the disproportionate impact on independent producers in the UK, who, perhaps ironically, are often women (which seems at odds with the supposed "feminist" arguments for censorship). There is also a clear risk of mission creep: what is to stop mandatory age verification for adult material blocking access to information on sexual health (which is clearly at odds with "protecting children")? I don't know any Green who would consider that to be a good idea, or the idea of extending the gatekeeping powers of BBFC (whose classifications were originally just advisory), or granting them a monopoly on age verification. The Open Rights Group has expressed concern about privacy risks with the proposed age verification. That organisation was founded by a former officer of the Green Party of England and Wales.
Whatever else you may think of them, in the context of censorship and mass snooping at least, those with Green sympathies seem to be among the few voices of reason.
(Anon, reluctantly, because... politics.)
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Maybe because
Karren Brady (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karren_Brady)
is not the same person as
Karen Bradley, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-blocking-powers-to-protect-children-online
Just a thought - feel free to borrow it as you seem a bit hard of thinking...
Of course it will!
"Hello anoymous web user, are you 18 or over? ( Y or N)"
"Well I'm a sexually frustrated 15 year old, I'd better tick "N"...."
====
Working from a statute that was codified in 1958?!? FFS! Did they have anything more adventurous than "missionary" in 1958? There are 12 years old boys at my daughter's school showing each other hard-core porn on their mobiles FFS! Despite having "the talk" with our daughter when she was 9 years old and maintaining an open dialog about anything to do with sex, she still ended up looking at smut when she was 12 ( which lead to more sit down talks! ). Kids will find a way to get to see it, no matter how hard to want to ban it, and here's a clue for you censors, the more you ban something the more people want to see what it is and why!
In 1958 even missionary was illegal in Britain - by definition you had to go to the colonies to do that. We used to reproduce asexually, by sharing a cup of tea then sitting on a toilet seat your spouse had just sat on. However until 1986 spanking leaving a mark wasn't just legal, it was mandatory,
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This is the worst showing of Daily Mail Politics in quite some time. Put simply you find something that the readers of the Daily Mail are likely or have expressed an opinion of disgust about. Then you make campaign promises/moves to make it law/enact law etc. It doesn't matter that the law is unworkable or easy to circumvent that's not the point, you're showing the voter that you're tackling the big issues. This from a government that allows as did the previous ones to allow unencrypted soft core pr0n to be broadcast on the DTT platform. Yes TelevisonX (and I think one other?) is broadcast in the clear and is easily found with either a Nokia receiver or a USB stick and software.
Sadly this will doubtless have repercussions on all types of sites from those that are full on pr0n to those that have very little questionable on them baring something arty and erotic. Hell Youtube has people uploading the odd video nasty every now an then that lasts for a few minutes/hours/days before it's removed. So we're banning Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Youtube, Dailymotion, Bing Videos etc. Some UK pr0n producers have had to site themselves overseas to get round existing restrictions and some have fought the regulators see ATVOD vs Pandora Blake for an example of this.
One of my favourite examples of these things getting out of hand was in 2011 as found on El Reg
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/25/ignorance_of_scottish_pr0n_law_no_defence/
A spokesman told us: "We do not publicly disclose our prosecution policy in relation to specific offences as to do so may allow offenders to adapt or restrict their behaviour to conduct which falls short of our prosecution threshold."
They added that any such information would also be exempt from any attempt to tease it out by using Freedom of Information legislation.
On the plus side if there is one, it may encourage more people to get more computer literate and start using VPN services etc.
As they seem to want to make criminals out of anyone seeing anything that you might not want your servants seeing, they are bound to force people into using Tor, VPNs and proxies. In fact most internet savvy teens are already using them...
Hopefully one brave ISP (!) will refuse to censor sites (they are hardly "qualified" and won't want the burden), and take it to the courts, if only to point out the idiocy in stopping people seeing acts that they can legally do. Most acts with age limits (smoking, drinking, driving... ) are fine to watch if you are too young to actually do them.
I must admit I absolutely *love* the idea of people flocking to VPN services as a way to avoid local censors spotting anyone watching dodgy stuff. The last time I looked, most of these operators were actually based in the US, so all these VPN users were doing was giving US authorities insight into their online activities.
Next time you want to use a VPN operator, just check how careful they are with your personal information. Especially check where they physically host their services or you might as well not bother.
Why would you gve a VPN operator genuine personal information??
1. If it's paid-for, then you need to pay...
2. If it's free, there is the question whether they log traffic - they can see your real IP and your destination. If they log that, then your PII is at risk. Worse yet if they're really unscrupulous and do DPI to skim for e-mail addresses or other PII to sell on. You're basically setting yourself up for a deliberate MITM to get around a greater evil.
Do your research.
Hopefully one brave ISP (!) will refuse to censor sites (they are hardly "qualified" and won't want the burden),
I'm not sure if this new legislation is intended to apply to all ISPs or if it will only be applied to the largest.
Andrews and Arnold famously don't filter. The big ISPs all have (optional) filtering in place anyway for parental control, and mandatory filtering infrastructure for court orders (like the Pirate Bay block and the Child-Porn blacklists they get from CEOP). Most of those are implemented via straight up DNS blocks, so I can see them just stuffing their new blacklist in there so they can say they've complied whilst the rest of us carry on using 8.8.8.8 or OpenDNS uninhibited.
I doubt many of the ISPs will want to go to the expense of pursuing a judicial review when they can just wing it with a gimped DNS "block" and not really inconvenience customers whilst also ticking the government's boxes.
buy a VPN
Buy a VPN? This is el Reg, people round here fire up OpenVPN on a small cloud server. If you can't be bothered to roll your own there are already precanned ones. I found this in about 10 seconds
Oh, it's /logical/, all right -- it's consistent with the existing old-school porn regulation, which makes one sort of sense. The alternative would be level down the regs so videos of the various legal-to-do-but-not-see stuff become legal. You may very well think that the latter is a more sensible approach, and perhaps you'd be right, but it's not inherently more /logical/ than the alternative.
</captain_pedant>
The alternative would be level down the regs so videos of the various legal-to-do-but-not-see stuff become legal.
You are correct, that would be the logical way to do things.
However, it would have all the Mumsnet/Daily Mail etc. crowd up in arms because "The government is letting our kids watch dirty porn*, won't somebody think of the children!"
* "Of course, it isn't the responsibility of the parent to educate their children and ensure their wellbeing, that's too difficult, so we want the govt to do it for us. Then we can just sit back with a nice bottle of wine and let the TV and internet raise and educate our children."
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