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UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

independent.co.uk

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Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#41

Post by pjc50 »

hex12648430 wrote: post #23

Who decides what is or isn't an X-rated website? Are the authorities going to block tumblr or twitter because of all the porn on there? If not then what is the purpose of this law? How are websites going to get blocked? DNS filtering? Asking the sites operators to block all traffic from the UK by default?

> Are the authorities going to block tumblr or twitter because of all the porn on there? If not then what is the purpose of this law?

No. This is a Brexit-style law, the point is to send a message, through the newspapers. Not to be bothered with any details about how it might actually work.

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#42

Post by bitL »

hex12648430 wrote: post #23

Who decides what is or isn't an X-rated website? Are the authorities going to block tumblr or twitter because of all the porn on there? If not then what is the purpose of this law? How are websites going to get blocked? DNS filtering? Asking the sites operators to block all traffic from the UK by default?

I can write a scalable webservice that is able to detect such content with 90%-95% accuracy including locations of offending areas; based on some very recent (2 months old) Deep Learning research. I presume they can do that as well and take 5-10% failure rate as acceptable. If I were running my own social network and wanted to keep it clean, I'd use it without any hesitation. But those are technical means, this is a political issue.

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#43

Post by foldr »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #30
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing that if you abuse people enough eventually you'll run into someone who shoots back is a massive check on abuse of power. Checking abuse of government's power to enforce its will with violence makes it much more likely to be careful deciding what it's will is. It gives the slippery slope some friction if the will of the government strays too far from that of the people. I don't see it being applicable in the c…

There were recent examples of this in the US: armed confrontations with government in which the civilians were branded as unstable extremists. The stand-off led to a court case in which it turns out that yes, the government had been in the wrong the whole time. I think the gun control debate is interesting for a different reason than guns-preventing-tyranny, though: in the UK you see the police tweeting to brag about…

> in the UK you see the police tweeting to brag about finding the kind of knives you eat with and still struggling with very high murder rates

HN is not the place to spread simple misinformation. Homicide rates in the UK are lower than in the US, and are completely unremarkable internationally:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

The homicide rate in the UK has also been declining quite sharply for the past 20 years or so, as you can determine via a quick Google search.

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#44

Post by pjc50 »

pmyteh wrote: post #32
johannes1234321 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

England never saw any serious revolution or uprising since the Kingdom of England was founded about 1000 years ago (Scotts and Irish are different)

Oliver Cromwell would like a word: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War (There have been plenty of other revolutions and uprisings, though most were either elite coups or unsuccessful).

He's half-right; Cromwell was not a popular uprising, and was so unpopular during his rule that the UK returned to monarchy afterwards.

I think the crucial thing is that since the eras of Rights of Man and Human Rights we've not had enough of a catastrophe to completely ground-up rebuild the principles of government.

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#45

Post by lainga »

bitL wrote: post #42
hex12648430 wrote: post #23

Who decides what is or isn't an X-rated website? Are the authorities going to block tumblr or twitter because of all the porn on there? If not then what is the purpose of this law? How are websites going to get blocked? DNS filtering? Asking the sites operators to block all traffic from the UK by default?

I can write a scalable webservice that is able to detect such content with 90%-95% accuracy including locations of offending areas; based on some very recent (2 months old) Deep Learning research. I presume they can do that as well and take 5-10% failure rate as acceptable. If I were running my own social network and wanted to keep it clean, I'd use it without any hesitation. But those are technical means, this is a…

Does it handle literotica? (Could the UK under the new law?)

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#46

Post by magduf »

pjc50 wrote: post #28
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing that if you abuse people enough eventually you'll run into someone who shoots back is a massive check on abuse of power. Checking abuse of government's power to enforce its will with violence makes it much more likely to be careful deciding what it's will is. It gives the slippery slope some friction if the will of the government strays too far from that of the people. I don't see it being applicable in the c…

Do you know anything at all of the history of Northern Ireland? It turns out that the government can shoot back too.

If you go farther back to before NI existed, the reason the UK finally gave up and let Ireland have independence is because the Irish used violence against the British who were abusing them.

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#47

Post by TallGuyShort »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
TallGuyShort wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were recent examples of this in the US: armed confrontations with government in which the civilians were branded as unstable extremists. The stand-off led to a court case in which it turns out that yes, the government had been in the wrong the whole time. I think the gun control debate is interesting for a different reason than guns-preventing-tyranny, though: in the UK you see the police tweeting to brag about…

I see nobody's willing to engage with the actual Armalite vs government shooting war that happened in the UK.

Are you talking about the conflict over northern Ireland like in your other comments? If not I have no idea what shooting Aramlite was involved in or what conflict they had with the UK.

If you're referring to northern Ireland, my point is not that we should get into a back-and-forth of cases where guns did and didn't prevent tyranny - my point is that the debate has seemingly skipped the "reasonable regulation" so many people were suggesting and is now basically a tug-of-war over blanket bans of property people currently own when the politicians will openly admit it will have no impact on violent crime and is intended to be symbolic. What I'm saying is that's already tyranny and is stupid.

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#48

Post by foldr »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #22
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's an incredibly stupid claim that firearms would somehow improve the situation? I mean, we had a live-fire slow-burn civil war in the UK for decades (1970s-2000). It didn't help.

Knowing that if you abuse people enough eventually you'll run into someone who shoots back is a massive check on abuse of power. Checking abuse of government's power to enforce its will with violence makes it much more likely to be careful deciding what it's will is. It gives the slippery slope some friction if the will of the government strays too far from that of the people. I don't see it being applicable in the c…

>Knowing that if you abuse people enough eventually you'll run into someone who shoots back is a massive check on abuse of power.

It doesn't seem to be in practice. Did it stop segregation in the South, for example? That was a far more egregious abuse of power than a porn pass.

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#49

Post by djhworld »

verroq wrote: post #2

Can someone explain to me, what exactly is wrong with the UK? Where did it all go so wrong?

Policies like these always get argued through the lens of "won't someone think of the children?"

It's hard to make a rebuttal to that in the UK without being pilloried

Re: UK newsagents to sell ‘porn passes’ to visit X-rated websites

#50

Post by TallGuyShort »

foldr wrote: post #43
TallGuyShort wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were recent examples of this in the US: armed confrontations with government in which the civilians were branded as unstable extremists. The stand-off led to a court case in which it turns out that yes, the government had been in the wrong the whole time. I think the gun control debate is interesting for a different reason than guns-preventing-tyranny, though: in the UK you see the police tweeting to brag about…

> in the UK you see the police tweeting to brag about finding the kind of knives you eat with and still struggling with very high murder rates HN is not the place to spread simple misinformation. Homicide rates in the UK are lower than in the US, and are completely unremarkable internationally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... The homicide rate in the UK has also been declining quite sh…

With homicide rates I'm referring to London. But you're right I should have been more specific - I too live in a place with a declining and exceptionally low homicide rate and have to put up with people who think confiscating property is a reasonable response to mass shootings elsewhere.
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