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Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

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21–30 of 42 posts

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#21
post #8

Instead of having ISPs and governments with databases detailing which one of us wants to enjoy online porn, there should be a standard on how to provide adult material on the internet. If this was to be implemented it'd be easy to create simple technologies that users could use for filtering out this kind of material themselves. The use case that most people would find this good is blocking porn in kids' phones and c…

So, in your scheme, existing websites are deprived of their domains if someone in government decides they belong in .xxx? And new sites are forced to the likely-to-be-blocked tld if someone deems them pornographic? What definition do you propose should be used? Can you imagine any conflicts over definitions of "adult material"? How would you imagine them being resolved? Would you have have site owners forced to self-apply labels they disagree with? What about foreign sites not subject to the law?

Try reading up on the many criticisms made of the .xxx concept when it was proposed.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#22
I have not used GoDaddy in years, and will never do so again. However, in a world where the governments seem to be in a war against their electronic citizens rights and privacy, then there is no better countermeasure than to train an entire generation to circumvent security from the age of 13.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#23
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does government or industry have to intervene in your personal life? If you don't want to view pornographic material, don't search for it. Stay away from sites where you might see something like it. If you're a parent, educate your kid. This is a waste of time and money. Plain and simple.

If you are a parent yourself, you will know that suggesting education is not enough. By your logic, why is there an age limit to alcohol consumption? Your whole reasoning could be used for that as well - and enforcing alcohol age limit also costs time and money...

Alcohol is a drug which has measurable health impacts on children if they drink at a young age. I have yet to see a non-biased scientific study which deems porn (not just the rapey kind) as physically and psychologically damaging to children.

If porn was found to be - without a doubt - bad for a certain age group, then yes I would get behind something where the government would limit its access to minors. This law, however, further stigmatizes porn instead of embracing it as just another weird thing humans do for entertainment.

(I want to make it clear that I'm not referring to illegal pornography. "Porn" where people get raped or that deal with minors is illegal)

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#24
post #7

I might be a minority here, but I honestly think that making internet porn opt-in is a good idea, I am not from UK, but I support it. As a reader of /r/nofap subreddit, I have learned that porn have had a very negative impact on a lot of people, and it is certainly not healthy for very young people (or even kids) to have easy access to it (as the situation is now). I am just not sure if I would support other categori…

I don't think you deserve to be downvoted for expressing a dissenting opinion, but citing "/r/nofap" as sole reference does not really help your argument.

Anyway, we all know that if kids want access to porn they'll find a way or an other, what we need is to educate the parents and explain that you can't leave a kid alone on the web any more than you can leave them alone in the streets.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#26
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does government or industry have to intervene in your personal life? If you don't want to view pornographic material, don't search for it. Stay away from sites where you might see something like it. If you're a parent, educate your kid. This is a waste of time and money. Plain and simple.

If you are a parent yourself, you will know that suggesting education is not enough. By your logic, why is there an age limit to alcohol consumption? Your whole reasoning could be used for that as well - and enforcing alcohol age limit also costs time and money...

The comparison to alcohol is actually very useful: in the US where the drinking age is high (and fairly strictly enforced), binge drinking and alcohol abuse is extremely common in the teenaged population.

Compare with other countries where alcohol usage is not taboo, where the drinking age is low (and/or unenforced), where teen alcohol abuse is a far, far lesser problem.

It turns out that making something taboo and setting up some rudimentary roadblocks to its acquisition does not have the effect on consumption that you think it does...

Speaking anecdotally, growing up in Canada there was no one under the drinking age who couldn't get alcohol if they wanted it. Hell, half of us didn't even like drinking, and we did it for the taboo-ness of it all.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#27
post #11

My rant about the topic of UK Porn is that it is entirely analogous to what is happening in Russia with the anti-Gay legislation. Two forms of sexual expression, both states using the same logic in terms of reasons for legislating against them, namely "Protect the children". Both with social stigma and negative attitudes from the most ardent conservatives of the population. Though in Russia the bigotry extends a litt…

Maybe my analogy would also by naive, but I consider the effects of porn to be similar to effects of consuming alcohol - some enjoy it, some became addicted to it, and some people's lives will get literally destroyed by it. Therefore, alcohol is "opt-in" - you have to reach certain age, and you also need to buy it, there are not bottles of alcohol available anywhere for anybody to consume. Similar with porn, it shoul…

Going to a web site is already opt-in. Plus google has default safe search. The only other path I can think of offhand is advertisements on torrent sites. If you want to make those opt-in I won't complain.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#28
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does government or industry have to intervene in your personal life? If you don't want to view pornographic material, don't search for it. Stay away from sites where you might see something like it. If you're a parent, educate your kid. This is a waste of time and money. Plain and simple.

If you are a parent yourself, you will know that suggesting education is not enough. By your logic, why is there an age limit to alcohol consumption? Your whole reasoning could be used for that as well - and enforcing alcohol age limit also costs time and money...

> If you are a parent yourself, you will know that suggesting education is not enough.

...why do you think this? If you raise a child to be intelligent and independent, education is pretty much the only effective way to keep them away from something.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#29
post #11

My rant about the topic of UK Porn is that it is entirely analogous to what is happening in Russia with the anti-Gay legislation. Two forms of sexual expression, both states using the same logic in terms of reasons for legislating against them, namely "Protect the children". Both with social stigma and negative attitudes from the most ardent conservatives of the population. Though in Russia the bigotry extends a litt…

Maybe my analogy would also by naive, but I consider the effects of porn to be similar to effects of consuming alcohol - some enjoy it, some became addicted to it, and some people's lives will get literally destroyed by it. Therefore, alcohol is "opt-in" - you have to reach certain age, and you also need to buy it, there are not bottles of alcohol available anywhere for anybody to consume. Similar with porn, it shoul…

Okay, if we are going the play it safe then we need to ban sugar. Oh, and soda. As well as chips. Definitely chocolate bars. Tea of course contains caffeine, an extremely dangerous substance in extreme circumstances?

The point is that people can become addicted to essentially everything. If you single out one thing as being an opt-in/certain age simply because of that reason then you create a situation of forcing your worldview on others simply because you created a reasoning that can be applied to anything and used that as a justification.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#30
post #5

> As a related part of this move, the government has already arranged with the six largest Wi-Fi hot-spot operators in the country to have porn filters turned on by default. > I haven’t personally tested these networks, but they’re apparently using the kind of lazy keyword filters that are already blocking access to newspaper reports about Cameron’s speech. That's a good thing, it'll demonstrate just how lousy the id…

On technical counts, I agree. The scenario of a poorly implemented filter reminds me of "porn before the Internet": young people learning the basic tricks to gain access to forbidden material and then spreading them within their groups. Even with physical pornography, doing this was neither complex nor particularly time-consuming.

However, I maintain that there's reason for concern when a government elects to make sexuality a matter of policy. Steering public opinion in a certain direction (making the filter opt-out sounds more like a "you shouldn't be doing it, perv" rather than a "it's entirely up to you, my well-adjusted friend!") and exerting control over exposure at the infrastructure level might not be censorship proper, but I wouldn't consider it harmless from a cultural perspective. Generally, I'm indeed bothered when my government wields morality to crusade against something of dubious consequence.

Granted, this comes from someone who considers the most common stances on pornography and sexual education largely detrimental.

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