Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

guardian.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 369 posts

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#101

Post by beedogs »

Sven7 wrote: post #41
conroy wrote: post #12

> Every household in Britain connected to the internet will be obliged to declare whether they want to maintain access to online pornography These declarations will only be used to shame public figures once the list is leaked. > The possession of "extreme pornography", which includes scenes of simulated rape, is to be outlawed. Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With t…

I think they have taken a good step in the right direction. Kids are exposed to too much crap these days. Kids growing up with involved parents and teachers turn out alright, but there are a whole lot of kids who aren't that lucky.

Are you out of your mind?

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#102

Post by Yver »

conroy wrote: post #12

> Every household in Britain connected to the internet will be obliged to declare whether they want to maintain access to online pornography These declarations will only be used to shame public figures once the list is leaked. > The possession of "extreme pornography", which includes scenes of simulated rape, is to be outlawed. Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With t…

> A single search can now land you on a government list of accused pedophiles.

The other day I used Google to find info about a movie called "How to Make Money Selling Drugs"[1]. As I typed the words, I thought to myself "I hope that doesn't get me on a government list." I can't imagine having to think twice before Googling "Lolita"[2].

[1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276962/reference [2]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056193/reference

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#103

Post by timthorn »

shrikant wrote: post #64
foobarbazqux wrote: post #20

Personally speaking I would be glad to have this filter, but I wouldn't want to force it on other people. So if people got a choice about enabling the filter I would be okay with it, i.e. if it was opt-in. In that case it's providing a service to people who need a human barrier to help them stop looking at porn if they have a problem. Any preventative mechanism that you set up for your own sake is pointless when you…

Unable to hunt up a link right now, but literally every single ISP in the UK currently offers an opt-in filter for 'adult material'. Maybe the legislation should've just been to force more effective marketing of this.

Mine doesn't.

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#104

Post by conroy »

yk wrote: post #83
conroy wrote: post #12

> Every household in Britain connected to the internet will be obliged to declare whether they want to maintain access to online pornography These declarations will only be used to shame public figures once the list is leaked. > The possession of "extreme pornography", which includes scenes of simulated rape, is to be outlawed. Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With t…

And on top of this, they want to create a database of all of child porn. ( What could possibly go wrong?)

If the database just contains hashes of offending images, I don't see the harm. Similar databases exist for copyrighted movies, television shows, and music.

Edit: The harm is combining such a database with broad internet surveillance. Also, since the database is only hashes, false positives are likely. YouTube, who probably has the best content matching algorithms, can't even get it right all the time.

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#106

Post by batiudrami »

unimpressive wrote: post #81
Sven7 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have kids?

Hi, kid here. A world where I don't worry about the swat busting into my house at 3AM to arrest me for my playboy collection[0] is preferable to the one where I see pop up ads with double penetration in them when I'm 8. (Which I did, I'm fine.) [0]: Or the government censors whatever they like with their filtering infrastructure.

>Which I did, I'm fine.

While I agree with the rest of your comment, this is a frustrating attitude to take to any studies which may have been done. Anecdotal evidence isn't evidence!

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#107

Post by pyre »

EarthLaunch wrote: post #75
droopyEyelids wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish he would have at least nodded his head to the idea that creating censorship infrastructure today, even for the right reasons, might lead to problems tomorrow. Also I wish whatever reporter wrote the story had asked his take on that.

What do you think his intention is, to do the right thing? He knows what he's doing and there's no reason to expect him to acknowledge the "side-effects" of an evil regulation. And the reporter is not responsible for realizing this; you are.

So the reporter has no responsibility to uphold journalistic ideals? Good to know.

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#108

Post by gojomo »

cinquemb wrote: post #70
cskau wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) is to draw up a blacklist of "abhorrent" internet search terms to identify and prevent paedophiles searching for illegal material. > A single search can now land you on a government list of accused pedophiles. Also, I foresee a sudden rise in rickrolling along the line of: Funny Cat Video!

Or 0x0 iframes injected into well trafficked of sites/forums.

Play nice! Only inject the IFRAME when you detect a visit from a government IP address.

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#109

Post by tehwalrus »

cskau wrote: post #35
conroy wrote: post #12

> Every household in Britain connected to the internet will be obliged to declare whether they want to maintain access to online pornography These declarations will only be used to shame public figures once the list is leaked. > The possession of "extreme pornography", which includes scenes of simulated rape, is to be outlawed. Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With t…

> > The possession of "extreme pornography", which includes scenes of simulated rape, is to be outlawed. > Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With this on the books, it seems a short hop to outlaw videos of simulated murder. Even without such an extension, aren't there plenty of Hollywood movies which include "scenes of simulated rape"?

IIRC, the UK's existing pornography laws make a distinction between, for example, partial nakedness (page 3 of the sun - not regulated) and sexual nakedness (what you think it is - regulated, restrictions on who can buy, what a licensed shop is, etc). There is also a separate rating above 12, 15, 18, which classifies films as subject to pornography controls or not. Internet sites are completely unregulated compared to video tapes/DVDs, under these laws, which is why they're updating them.

I suspect that films (girl with the dragon tattoo springs to mind) would not be subject to it because they aren't presenting the rape as sexual; it is seen as a crime in the film, which isn't primarily a film about rape/sex (obviously I can't speak for all films.)

The grey area and line drawing are a problem with laws like this, though, as several people have pointed out - I am sure there are films (horrible ones that I haven't seen) that come close to glorifying rape, or depicting it as desirable/sexual - whether those would be part of the law would be up to either parliament to specify, or up to the courts to decide later in case law.

Re: David Cameron cracks down on online pornography

#110

Post by bigiain »

icebraining wrote: post #77
moocowduckquack wrote: post #42

How is this going to work if people https to sites outside the UK?

When you connect to an HTTPS site, your browser send the domain (hostname) unencrypted, so that the server can select the right certificate. If it doesn't/didn't, the server could only have one site per IP, so you could identify the site by doing a reverse DNS query. In any case, blocking access to an HTTPS site is not a significant technical problem.

Sure - blocking access to https://www.google.com is not a significant tech problem.

I somehow don't think they're planning on that though.

Blocking access to https://www.google.com/?q=nasty+goat+sex while not blocking access to https://www.google.com/?q=how+to+vote+conservative+in+the+UK requires some technical chops that while not impossible, would put the UK right up there with enlightened democracies such as China, Iran, and Egypt in terms of interfering with their citizens internet use.

I eagerly await the spectacular demonstration of incompetence and misunderstanding of basic internet operation that'll be the fallout of this - perhaps it'll make my local government's own similar mistakes seem less obvious and stupid: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/how-asics-a...

Post reply on HN