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I found this article:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/david-cameron-internet-porn-filter-censorship-creep

At the risk of becoming very unpopular...

I read it and was left pretty angry because of the deeper implications. I mean, I'm not anti-morality but this gets a foot in the door to do other things like filter anti-government groups, filter petition groups like Avaaz and, essentially control the people. Funny thing is I've been saying this type of thing will creep in for years.

What annoys me is that there is plenty of software that makes content-blocking easy enough for someone -- even with a below 85 IQ -- to do in their own home. In other words, if parents want to "protect" their kids, they can do so.

Another thing to consider is how kids have ALWAYS had access to porn. I saw my first full-length hardcore before I was even 13 (pretty sure it was somewhere around 12 but it may have even been 11). I had two other friends who also used to watch as well and one (the supplier, ironically) was like a year and a half younger than me. We all turned out fine with no emotional scars. Now this was before many people had internet and before kids had cellphones.

What I'm saying is that this law is clearly only to get a foot in the door for more malicious control because the internet was the LAST source of porn I, and most of my peer-group found. Putting all that aside, kids are hardly innocent and hardly NEED protecting. Besides, let's face it, if kids want porn they will procure it just like I did when I was young and curious.

In any case, quite honestly I'm tired of these morality idiots that want to bring back the "good old days". If they want that, they should establish their own little community in the countryside and not bring the internet into it. But hell no, they'd rather take something that wasn't theirs to begin with (the internet) and then change it to suit them because they don't like it and to hell with everyone else.

I might have been willing to concede, had there been an anonymous voting nation-wide and had at least >70% of the entire population voted in favour of it.

Sorry for the rant, but these things annoy me. Any thoughts?

I totally agree with you kids will be able to get there hands on it anyway and it's not the governemnts job to decide what kind of websites people can visit. Based on what I have heard, the system seems utterly broken aswell. One of the ways I heard it works is by looking at URLs and if contains special words (or sequences of characters) it will be blocked. That means that any request to a server containing the letters "s","e" and "x" after eachother will be blocked even if it's an auto generated URL for a Leage of legends patch or a google search for sex and the city. Blocking content that way wont prevent anyone from getting acess to the porn. My guess is that there are other systems in place to prevent it but I havn't heard much about it.

The whole "government could block other things" argument doesn't make much sense to me. It's obvious that they are able to block content anyway and if they have the intention of using this system for more mallicious intents they could at any point. Using it for this is probably just a bad thing for them in that case because people can start working around it right now.

And I agree that the government shouldn't get into these kinds of things, like you said if people want to "protect" their children they can do so without problems and it wouldn't affect anything else.

They definitivley shouldn't get into these kinds of things when the people don't even agree to them, with the risk of getting a bit to political with this thread, the issue with most political systems is that the government have to be selected once but can be in charge for about 4 years without the people being able to do much. They can promise something and get elected for that and then do whatever they want for 3 years until they have to convince the people to vote for them again for a year. Most people probably won't remember that bad thing they did in the beginning of the "term" and they can get another 4 years. A system where everyone votes for everything won't work to well either since most people can't look a the whole system but a system where the people have to aprove every change the government tries to make regarding things like this would probably be a good thing.

I agree about the four-year terms. There should be more scrutiny and people in office need to be accountable immediately for what they do. Surprisingly this seems to be happening less and less. Even just looking at my own country: in 1994, the newly-elected party promised the masses of underprivileged they would get government-subsidised houses. Twenty years later they've barely done much aside from building a list a mile long of scandals. Our president, Jacob Zuma, was involved in many, including a charge of rape while our ruling party's ex Youth League leader, Julius Malema, has not only publicly told his follower to "shoot the boer" (shoot the Afrikaner/white-person) but when questioned about one of his own many scandals by a journalist, he yelled at the journalist to get out the conference room and accused the man of being part of a white conspiracy. Zuma was even involved in a corruption scandal before his promotion to the head of the ruling party, the ANC, and he has served two terms. One of the more recent ones was an attempt to gag the press and prosecute whistleblowers under the guise of national security. Many people even say that South Africans have grown so used to scandal that we no longer react much. So yeah, there's the typical 3 years of misapropreation of funds and scandals, then a few months for us of propaganda and last term's promises regurgitated.

It's nothing like the great firewall of China. At least in the UK you have a choice to opt-out or opt-in; in China they're forced to be blocked.

...for how long though? I'm prolly overreacting but there's a lot of people globally pushing for control on the net. That's what my title meant; 'could this be the first step towards a China-like regime?' ... I'm just concerned about the precedent being set and how this may globally affect the last free place. I don't like government having too much power. The problem is that many people are all sleepwalking into it. It is cause for concern. Maybe I'm just a paranoid product of the country I was born in, I'll accept that possibility. But what if I'm not? What if that crazy conspiracy nut in a mountain shack is right? That's a situation best prevented than cured.

The slippery slope is definitely a real thing, so I agree, there is great reason to be concerned.

nonZero, I am noticing that you and I agree on pretty much everything! Not often I find someone on the Internet like that.

DBJD7964, I think you may be correct. Hmm... Yes, I hereby invite you to join my League of Shadows (I shall PM you my Skype name, however I don't use Skype much as I did once due to bandwidth issues and the annoying touch interface of my phone).

Who is globally pushing for control over the Internet, in free countries? No western country that I know of has some kind of filtering that is not bypassed legally. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the only countries that censor their Internet are places like China, Iran, and UAE. This will NEVER happen in the USA or Canada.

EDIT:



We can't treat every crazy conspiracy as a certainty, otherwise everyone would stay inside their bomb shelters for fear of drinking water and breathing unfiltered air! I don't remember the last time I heard a popular conspiracy theory actually validated.

It's really disappointing to see this happening in the UK, but this is what always happens after a financial crisis: people regress into conservatism and nationalism. It's what gave the Nazis their popularity.

No, we wont become North Korea overnight, and David Cameron is not a Nazi, but it's a step backwards for democracy and free speech. It really bugs me that there is always so much heat on file sharing, as if the only data being shared by internet users is child porn and snuff films. Exchanging ideas and information is the essence of community. Look at what is being restricted and it covers every avenue that people can communicate with each other and work together. It's a load of rubbish that this has anything to do with "protecting children", it's designed to restrict adults.

It's no accident that political activists are thrown into the same category as rapists, murderers and child-molesters; that's exactly how the government wants the public to view them. Interesting that LGBT are thrown into that pit as well.

I have seen some things on the internet that I would rather not have seen, but that is very rare. I would not want a child to see those things but they shouldn't be on the internet unsupervised! Are people still so clueless that they don't know what the internet is? If you would not let your child walk down the street unsupervised then you should not let them online unsupervised. If you want to set up safe zones for them that is fine and I think the government should help people do that but only in their own homes and at their own request. No one should have to opt-in to a free internet.

The UK gov in this example and the USA with many that include the famous SOPA/PIPA acts. Australia in 2007 wanted to enact a content filtering law. The list is endless. Each of these is not really direct control so much as a foot in the door.

Not directly related but it goes to attitude and potential control:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

This is why we need to protect the freedom of the internet, to stop this stuff being swept under the carpet:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden