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Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

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Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#31

Post by jlgreco »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #27
peto123 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And as surely as you could "accidentally" visit a porn website (does this really happen to anybody? I am convinced that this is a myth created by the go-to excuse of every teenager and husband with a controlling spouse...), you could accidentally visit a restaurant that serves alcohol.

If such an incident disturbs you to the core, then turn around and find the door.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#32

Post by dspillett »

smutticus wrote: post #10

This whole story would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. I can just imagine a whole generation of young brits teaching each other how to avoid this idiotic pornography filter. Just like every other ineffective pornography filter has been worked around by every other group of adolescents in internet history. The people who think it works get placated, the kids work around it, and it has absolutely no effect on violenc…

&> The people who think it works get placated*

That is the whole point. Mr Cameron has just offended a group of Tory supporters, some of whom are rich and/or influential, with the gay marriage thing. In order to placate them ready for next time he needs their influence and/or campaign donations he is taking on this issue that the same subset care about.

If the controls are not particularly effective then all the better for him. The people he needs to placate will be placated for a time and the people that only care because they want access to porn will stop caring when they discover this won't stop them accessing porn (so he'll not become someone who has taken away some of their freedom). True free speech fighters will stay on the case of course, but there are so few of them that it'll not be a massive concern (and most of them will admit they have bigger fish to fry), many of the people say they really care about free speech are just not wanting to admit that they really care about porn.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#33

Post by jlgreco »

bilbo0s wrote: post #6
caval wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most governments already control alcohol and tobacco sales "to protect the children". It seems like the UK government thinks they can make the argument that pornography falls in the same category. TV, movies, and YouTube already restrict pornographic content as well, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of strong arguments against that.

Alcohol and tobacco, at least in the US, are not controlled to "protect the children". Because a 20 year old man can't get alcohol either. To your other point, there is a material philosophical difference between Google/YouTube, (private company), banning books/media, and one's government banning books/media.

> Alcohol and tobacco, at least in the US, are not controlled to "protect the children". Because a 20 year old man can't get alcohol either.

Furthermore, in many (if not most) places, it is even worse than that. A 40 year old man cannot buy alcohol depending on the day of the week or time of day. In some states they can only purchase certain kinds of alcohol from the state itself (if they don't feel like paying for it at a bar). In others, wide swaths of alcohol are simply unavailable.

Are we really to believe that the unavailability of beer over 4abv in Utah is to protect the children? No. That law, like nearly every alcohol law, is a puritanical attempt to regulate the morality of adults. These laws have no place in a civilized society, and neither do the "corresponding" porn laws.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#34

Post by pyrocat »

peto123 wrote: 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…

So because you think porn has a negative impact, everyone else should have that decision made for them?

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#35

Post by digitalsushi »

peto123 wrote: 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…

Blocking porn requires that you draw a definitive boundary around a subjectively defined area. You'll always draw the wrong shape because everyone has their own.

So now you're blocking stuff that people think you shouldn't, like girls in bare ankles or breast cancer papers or who knows, and now you're requiring people to divulge their thoughts by requesting access to it.

And now you have an insight, however primitive, into someone's thoughts. And you have no right to be in there.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#36

Post by dspillett »

dave809 wrote: post #17
peto123 wrote: 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…

Censoring something is the lazy way of getting people to conform to your ideals. Imagine that instead of a censor campaign, the UK government had made an attempt to educate the public on the effects of porn. This could be done with adverts and studied in sex ed in school.

This has nothing to do with getting people to conform, it is about getting people who want us to conform to believe he is on their side (after offending a lot of said people with the gay marriage changes). The subset of the people he is trying to placate here are a subset who are very much against sex education in school.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#37

Post by Osiris »

I work at GoDaddy, though not in the domains group. I heard this story from a co-worker that does work directly on domains and was involved in the the deployment.

Within the last week, a UK news agency published a report that it was was possible to buy the domain name 'rapeher.co.uk'. I don't know the exact article but I believe it was this one [1]

The rumor is that someone from the Prime Minister's office called the GoDaddy CEO to express the PM's displeasure with the idea that you could buy that domain name.

An emergency deployment was made to blacklist that one domain name. No additional filtering was added. As GoDaddy states in the article, "We are withdrawing the name while we carry out a review. We have not done this before."

The discussion with my co-worker was clear that it would be impossible to add in a word filter without having a large number of false positives given that domains don't have spaces and it would be hard to know if a blocked term was a word or part of another word.

So, yes, GoDaddy did block a domain, but it's not as nefarious as some people are making it out to be.

(Ironically, that article about getting rid of porn has a full column of ads on the right side filled with half-naked women)

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384629/Britain-home...

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#38

Post by testbro »

DanBC wrote: 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…

Mission creep is a concern I have with this though. It's a short jump to go from optional blocking to mandatory blocking (as we already have with CleanFeed). The proposal is for it to be on by default - that's censorship in my eyes since you have to ask for the perverse content you're already being protected from.

I don't agree with the notion that the freedoms offered by the internet need to be curtailed to bring it back into line with the rest of life.

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#39

Post by testbro »

peto123 wrote: post #12
darxius wrote: 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...

Is a government mandated filter the best way to allow parents to go beyond just educating their children? As a childless person who isn't petrified of naked people, why should I pay for a service that's only any good for lazy parents?

Re: Godaddy caves to UK Porn hysteria

#40

Post by testbro »

ktzar wrote: 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…

There'll never be a way of filtering it correctly (is ASCII art of sex acts posted to reddit porn?) so the only real option is ensure people are aware of the risks (whatever they might be). Opting out is already possible today - don't visit porn websites if you don't want to see it.
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