UK Porn Filter Will Censor Other Content Too, ISPs Reveal

Installing Tor on Windows is a breeze, it even comes with a modified Firefox browser that enables your tor session when you open it.

This deserves a lot more of a response but for now I'll just leave this:

Liberty is about the ability of the individual to do things that others disapprove of. You don't need liberty if everyone else approves of your actions. As a corollary, the exercise of liberty does not require a justification, because it's a liberty, practicality or "usefulness" or what-have-you play no part in it. It's onerous to require someone to justify their right to look at porn. It's even more onerous to ask people to put their name on a list as someone who desires the ability to look at porn. And indeed this is how freedoms are eroded. Because once you put things on a different footing and you require people to justify their freedoms then it becomes ever more difficult to justify anything. Can you justify eating a cheap, greasy cheeseburger? Can you justify watching "Jersey Shore"? Are you willing to?

These are precisely the same sorts of tactics that have been used since the dawn of time for busybodies to rein in individual freedoms of others, and thereby to obtain greater authority over others.

People often dismiss out of hand the notion that tyranny could possibly take hold over the first world democracies of the west in the 21st century. And to that I can only sigh. Perhaps it will not be known as tyranny, perhaps someone will come up with a different, more apt name once (if) we are in the clutches of it, but it will be every bit as bad and every bit as difficult to throw off, if not more so.

If the concern is actually about enabling people to restrict what their children see, why not create and distribute a free, open-source software package that citizens can run on their own?

Obviously the question is rhetorical, but I'd like to see someone ask it.

At least to me, the big problem with porn is that it can rise your thresholds of excitement, make you insensitive, and you can even become an addict. But our kids will (hopefully) live in a world where porn is prevalent. We should teach them (at the appropriate age) that it is something that they can enjoy but should be careful not to abuse it.

Anyway, the idea of getting the government involved on blocking porn (or anything) is really bad. I rather live in a world where we have to teach our children to be responsable than in a world where the government decides what they can and what they cannot see.

The press could mention it, that would be a start. BBC news for instance barely mentioned the proposed blocking. The only stories to hit the front page (and then, right at the bottom in the Tech section) were the links to Huawei and the spat between the minister and the reporter. The actual proposed block has barely been mentioned. Apparently a baby being born warrants continuous headline coverage; loss of civil liberties gets a footnote.