Becuase I don't want hard core porn like the tubes being freely and instantly accessible to my kids.
1) No I am not "abdicating" my responsibilities as a parent. I will teach them appropriatre netiquette etc. There will always be other consumption vectors and work arounds, but I just don't want it shoved in their face, as is inevitable when it's just a click away.
2) Yes there are work-arounds to filters. But just becuase you can't perfectly block something doesn't mean you shouldn't take preventative measures.
3) I am not against porn. But access needs to be regulated.
4) The internet is a form of media like any other. We have restructions on buyng adult DVDs, magazines and cable channels. Why does internet delivered content qualify for special dispensation?
1) I've browsed the internet happily for many a year without having pornography 'shoved in my face'. If they find it, they were almost certainly looking for it.
2) If they're looking for it (see above) then an imperfect filter just means they don't find the known, safe sites.
3) Yes, it does. It is your right as a parent to decide what's appropriate for your child. It's not your right as a parent to force other people in households without children to report to a government-friendly list about their sexuality.
4) Well, such restrictions can still exist online. Paid porn sites can prevent the underage getting access. But really, why do we do this? Why is a young teenage girl or boy to be prohibited -- by law rather than parental consent -- from seeing sexual content? You say the internet should fall in line with these restrictions, but maybe those restrictions should be done away with.
I definitely got porn shoved in my face as a young teenager when I used to browse around looking for cracks for videogames that I'd borrowed or downloaded.
Then Chrome / Firefox came along with popup blockers, and Steam came along with a better way of downloading games... porn doesn't get shoved in my face anymore.
1) You are an adult with years of life experience behind you. It's trivial for you to avoid. Ditto myself. Nor are you subject to the playground peer pressures. But a young child who get's texted or messaged or facebooked a link, perhaps obsfuscated by an url shortener, is gonna be taken unawares.
2) Of course if you actively go out of your way to find it, you'll be able to. Just as you can work around any restriction in life. It's just about reducing the prevelence and "de-normalising" it.
3) So you support free access cos you don't want to admit you're into porn? And I am expected to support your desire for privacy even though it's at the expense of my children's safety?
Not sure why ticking a box to opt-in in such a big deal anyway. It's not like your ISP isn't logging your requests and doesn't know you're visiting pron sites. Plus I thought liberals like yourself supported openness and transparency?
4) Yes, sites should be behind a paywall - hard core anyway. And they should be prohibited because much hard core is absolsutely unsuitable for young eyes. Boobs fine. But girls getting bukkaked or inserting crap up their behinds is not on.
Violence is far worse, frankly sex (and inserting things up a women's behind, if she's into that) is pretty normal (ask the Romans about that last bit) -- why are you trying to denormalise it?
Now, y'know, I can totally get someone coming at it from a "porn addiction (if you will) has negative effects, so I'd like to help my children avoid those possible negative effects", but that requires ongoing communication and education (well, that's how my parents did it anyway, and I never ran into the problems some of my friends and others have reported). That's assuming that "porn addiction" or desensitisation is a real thing (unproven so far, but anecdotally I'm a believer).
> But a young child who get's texted or messaged or facebooked a link, perhaps obsfuscated by an url shortener, is gonna be taken unawares.
They'll be taken unaware, take one look, go "ewww", and close the window. My four year old is already doing that when he sees someone kissing. It grosses kids out, there's no indication anywhere as far as I am aware, that the occasional exposure to sexual imagery causes harm.
> It's just about reducing the prevelence and "de-normalising" it.
What you will achieve, in my experience, is to reduce the normality of what they find. Back when BBS's was our source of porn, because it even "normal" porn of a single man and woman having normal sex was illegal where I grew up, the BBSs were overflowing with bestiality, child porn and every nasty kink known to man, because as an illicit source there was no reason for them to put limits on what was being uploaded. As a result, avoiding the really horrible stuff was made harder by lumping all the porn together.
> So you support free access cos you don't want to admit you're into porn?
If you can not see the difference between voluntarily admitting to enjoying porn and being forced to disclose something that parts of society see as deeply shameful (or we wouldn't even have this debate) to your ISP where it is made easily available in a single dataset that does not require anyone to do additional logging, then I am questioning whether it is worth even debating you further.
> It's not like your ISP isn't logging your requests and doesn't know you're visiting pron sites.
If you can't see the difference between specifically specifying a preference, and their ability to log traffic from someone in the household, then I don't know what to say.
> And they should be prohibited because much hard core is absolsutely unsuitable for young eyes. Boobs fine. But girls getting bukkaked or inserting crap up their behinds is not on.
Do you have any evidence that any of this is harmful? Why this specifically? What about specific political opinions? I mean, personally I find conservative politics extremely harmful (yet, before you ask, no, I am not going to shield my son from coming across conservative websites); what about specific religious views? Violence? Where do you draw the line, and on what basis? And why exactly are things you want to allow better/less harmful to kids than the porn you want blocked?
> I just don't want it shoved in their face, as is inevitable when it's just a click away
But you're perfectly content with shoving your views down everyone else's throat, right?
If you want to block porn in your house you're free to do so. If you're not able to do that, either hire someone to do it for you or just don't allow your kids near the internet. Problem solved.
> But you're perfectly content with shoving your views down everyone else's throat, right?
Oh I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to voice a differing opinion to the HN hivemind or your particular world view? I thought this site encouraged constructive discussion?
Quit being so defensive, I'm not talking about expressing opinions on HN!
I was commenting on your arguments for a filter that limits the web for other people. Like I said, you're free to limit your internet as much as you want. The problem is when you want to do it for everyone else.
Well, the filter as implemented is entirely optional - the ISPs have made it an "active choice" to enable or not - it's not something I've felt is being forced down my throat.
No, it is not entirely optional. It is optional for the account holder, which means a substantial percentage of the population, including a substantial percentage of the population above the age of 18 is subject to the whims of the person in whose name the connection is. Many of those may not have the realistic option of voicing their preference. And many of those do not have the realistic option of moving out.
Those were the people who already had no ultimate control over the restrictions on their connection. Hasn't the billpayer always had the ability to restrict their connection and set terms of use on people using it?
It forces conversations for some people that would never have otherwise needed to happen (but might have, in some cases).
If you as a parent feel that this needs to be blocked, why not do it yourself on your own network? Everyone's happy then. Nation wide filtering seems heavy handed to me.
Tell them, yes. But actively filtering have been substantially more effort. None of the routers I've been given from my various broadband providers in the UK have had filtering options that would have allowed this, which means said person would either have to explicitly go out of his way to lock down the provided router and put a filtering firewall in between, or lock down each computer in the household with filters.
That it has been technically possible for a very small portion of the population to oppress their family members further does not strike me as a good reason for making it a one click option.
And it is also on-by-default, for both new and existing customers. (Or at least this was the initial plan, if something has changed since July, please do correct me)
"But you're perfectly content with shoving your views down everyone else's throat, right?"
retube simply said that he/she agreed with it in the context of their parental responsibilities. It is unlikely that they are responsible for policy/implementation of this filtering, and nobody here is telling you what to do.
> I was commenting on your arguments for a filter that limits the web for other people. Like I said, you're free to limit your internet as much as you want. The problem is when you want to do it for everyone else
But you're free to opt-in if you want, I am not trying or arguing to limit your access.
So install a filter on your own home connection. What's it got to do with the rest of us? And why allow the government to define what is and isn't objectionable for you?
Umm the government decide what is "objectionable" in all areas of life. They enact laws against murder or fraud, they don't allow you to buy alcohool until your 18 (or 21 or whatever), they don't allow you to drive until 17. These are enacted for the overall benefit of society an I for for one am glad of this - otherwise you have anarchy.
The fact is the prevelance and ease of accessibility of porn is resulting in a huge spike in sexual violence and disturbed behaviour in teens. This is not good. Whiilst I may be a responsible parent and will turn on filters; many will not.
There is a lot of correlatory evidence. And whilst correlation does not imply causation many studies have observed a correlation. Interestingly enough actually proving causation is difficult and potential research would involve exposing people to a lot of porn involving ethical and potential legal issues.
I am at work and would rather not go looking for porn research but am sure you know how to use Google. In the meantime:
Restricting certain (legal, normal, non-violent, even educational) materials because some people think that maybe they might possibly lead to undesirable behaviour, is to my mind a clear overstepping of government power.
Like you I am currently on a work network so I can't really do any research, but I'm certain there will be plenty of claims of the positive effects of pornography (I have heard it said that pornography reduces sexual violence by providing a healthy outlet), and even more so other sex-related (and non-sex-related) material which is caught in these filters. For a sect of the government to force this unilaterally, without any kind of democratic process, is a real problem in my eyes.
> Restricting certain (legal, normal, non-violent, even educational) materials
I am not advocating that at all. The fact that the current filter technology may be badly implemented doesn't change anything with respect the basic premise.
> For a sect of the government to force this unilaterally, without any kind of democratic process, is a real problem in my eyes.
Every law in the land is made this way. It's not possible to have public voting on every piece of legislation. What you can do tho is vote in general elections. If a government passes unpopular laws they'll be voted out. My guess is tho, that like it or not, this legislation will have a lot of support.
The vast majority of what these filters will block if properly implemented will be legal, normal, non-violent material. Quite a bit of it educational too.
Huh, what? No no no. I am simply saying that there is some porn which should not be freely available. Educational stuff, soft porn, fine. It's the hard core, often violent, usually degrading to women, and in some cases, frankly unsafe/dangerous porn I have an issue with.
I am, and yet in 20+ years of asking people objecting to porn to provide evidence of harm, I've yet to come across anyone that have been able to provide anything remotely believable, so forgive me for not being convinced by a request to Google it.
Regulated by whom? Why is it insufficient for people to install their own filters? After all, ISPs have offered (often given away) such filtering software to their customers for many years now.
The filter is at the account level. That leaves a whole lot of people, both kids that will miss out on access on non-pornographic sites that are wrongfully filtered, and adults living in family households that are left without a realistic choice.
That makes it a problem for me. The net effect is that it realistically, given UK employment patterns, it reinforces patriarchal means of control of the family unit.
> just cos the implementation may be buggy doesn't detract from the basic premise.
But it does mean the practical implementation creates the risk of substantial harm. And we're waiting on those citations that shows that the existence of the filter will protect against any harm.
> given that it will be the adults thet are paying the bill and it's their choice to filter or not not sure there's a problem here.
You miss the point: A substantial number of UK adults share households with other adult family members, with the average age for moving out having been pushed well into the 20's. Many of these adults may not be in a position where they are realistically able to ask the person in control of the internet connection to turn off the filter. You try being a 20-year old woman in a religious household and going to your dad and ask him to remove the porn filter because you want to look at those filtered sex education sites. Or a battered wife wanting to look for a support site and running into a block.
> umm i reckon mums will be far more motivated and keen to restrict access than dads
Meanwhile, Mumsnet, the largest social networking site for mums in the UK was forced to retract their support after a massive uproar amongst their users, who made it exceedingly clear they did not want the filter and who were extremely upset that the site operators had chosen to support it.
And you are demonstrating exactly the kind of attitudes that will deprive a lot of people of the realistic ability to choose, even as adults, to get an unfiltered internet connection.
That's your choice. But it certainly changes... Well, nothing. It's no more forced in their face that they can go to one URL and see it, vs using any dumb rot13 proxy and accessing it that way instead (like I used to 10 years ago). Misplaced priorities, in my opinion
1) No I am not "abdicating" my responsibilities as a parent. I will teach them appropriatre netiquette etc. There will always be other consumption vectors and work arounds, but I just don't want it shoved in their face, as is inevitable when it's just a click away.
2) Yes there are work-arounds to filters. But just becuase you can't perfectly block something doesn't mean you shouldn't take preventative measures.
3) I am not against porn. But access needs to be regulated.
4) The internet is a form of media like any other. We have restructions on buyng adult DVDs, magazines and cable channels. Why does internet delivered content qualify for special dispensation?