Sunday 19 December 2010

Porn, And Ed Vaizey's Handbag

Here go the government again, desperately assuaging the massed ranks of middle England Mail readers.

Internet pornography sites will be automatically blocked from home computers unless households request access under an ‘opt-in’ system.

Ministers want to reverse the current situation in which such sites are accessible to anyone surfing the internet, including children, unless a lock is installed.

Under the plans, those who want access to pornography sites would have to ask their broadband firm to make them available.
Well, that was perhaps the aim, anyway. Unfortunately, the comments seem to suggest that even Mail readers think this is an idea so fucked up as to render the coalition a laughing stock.

The Coalition is hoping to persuade Internet firms to devise this system voluntarily, but would legislate if they fail to comply.
Ah, the old 'do as we say voluntarily, or we will force you' trick. Previously seen in tobacco control, alcohol awareness, music and games classification, and the latest bĂȘte noir, fast food.

13 years of Labour and they still can't stop bloody interfe ... oh, hang on.

The [Tory] Communications Minister [Ed Vaizey] told the Sunday Times: ' This is a very serious matter. I think it is very important that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) come up with solutions to protect children.

'I am hoping they will get their acts together so we don't have to legislate, but we are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have a new communications bill in the next couple of years.'
Well, screw me sideways with a glass dildo last seen in "Where the men aren't: Connossieur's Collection". It's a Tory suggesting this? Seriously?

Oh, I get it now. It's that new 'Nudge' thing, innit. You know, opting in rather than out? Or, in this case, being presumed to be an irresponsible cunt until you prove otherwise by giving your name and porn preferences to the state.

Quite remarkable.

Of course, Man Widdicombe has quickly spotted a couple of flaws in such desperately frown-ridden nonsense.

How will they know which homes and have kids? Will you have to provide that information to your ISP when you sign up?
Or even be required by law to notify your ISP when anyone in the household gives birth? No. Silly me. A government department will be set up to monitor such things and then pass forms - in triplicate - to your ISP once a birth certificate crosses their desk.

What exactly is pornography? Bill Hicks famously paraphrased in one of his routines that "pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thought, that's their definition, essentially." So what does our Government define as porn?
Another good question. Who decides?

Here's a picture currently carried on fun retro-site, victoriporn.

Hmm, very nice too.

Does that count? There are more revealing ones, just as there are ones with all subjects clothed. Does the entire site get blacklisted, or just some pages?

My guess is that it would be the lot. After all, now the UK government has fully signed up to the precautionary principle, banning everything is the only way to ensure that no-one sees something which will almost certainly have NO FUCKING ADVERSE EFFECT ON ANYONE!

Hands up if you didn't witness - in fact, actively seek out - porn in your teen years despite the best efforts of your parents to hide it (admittedly, ladies may be different here). Anyone?

It's been a natural thing for time immemoriam. Pubescents will kill for a view of whatever they can find (and they are comprehensively resourceful), kids will not, and even if they do see it, they will probably just ignorantly giggle. If there is a significant conversion rate from youth porn-viewing to hideous sex cases, it's been hidden for quite a few millenia now.

We are led by astoundingly myopic fools. A modern day bunch of arrogant King Canutes, as the Moose has pointed out.

Do they really believe that every pornographic image can be blocked. There is a hell of a lot of porn out there, I've looked.
Err, are we not in the midst of public sector cuts? Yet here is a lumpen-headed Tory - I'll say that again - a lumpen-headed Tory, promoting legislation which would require an infinite number of civil service monkeys, sitting around an infinite number of computers, just to keep track of one day's worth of newly-set up porn sites.

And if they fail? The Moose has done me a favour again by morphing into Mystic Meg on unintended consequences.

What happens when some gets through and children see it because there is no parental filter in place on the PC, as will obviously happen? Does the parent then sue the Internet provider and get compensation?

That's the usual consequence of taking responsibility away from the individual. They start to believe that they need not do anything as the government is looking after them. When something then goes wrong, they want compensation.
Oh, but you see, it's that other top-down illiberal cunt soup so beloved of our hideous parliamentarians - the next logical step.

The initiative comes following a successful trial by British ISPs to stop innocent people accessing child pornography websites.
Innocent people accessing kiddie porn? Err, I don't suppose they could name one? I mean really, just one.

I seem to remember a heck of a lot of defendants saying that they stumbled across child porn by accident, followed by about the same amount of sentences stating that they had been added to the sex offenders' register. No-one just stumbles across child porn, that is pure unadulterated bollocks.

In fact, the nearest we have seen is when a state organisation ballsed up so much that they directed the world and his wife to a Scorpions album cover from the 1970s.

As scaremongering justification for the state as mother and father goes, it's incredibly weak.

No. What we have here is Vaizey and cohorts vainly thinking they are clever enough to succeed where prurient fucknuts have failed for thousands of years.

People will watch porn. Teens will try to access it (I used to sell Mr P Snr's stash at school for 50p a pop mag). All this initiative will do is throw good money - our money - at irrelevant employment, with no possible positive outcome.

Ed Vaizey - a guy I thought I had respect for - has illustrated quite comprehensively today why MPs should be given a 5 year sleeping pill the day they are elected. Every time the dozy fucks open their gob, the country suffers the potential of a further spiral into terminally-expensive futility.

All this without pointing out what should be crystal clear to a conservative MP. What people indulge in is none of your business, Ed. Nor you, Claire Perry, the self-righteous mare who thought this crock up when scrambling for an original angle which could make her fuckwitted name. It's not your life, there is no problem, and they are not your kids.

John Major was arse-whipped for his talk of 'back to basics' and the Victorian mindset. Ed Vaizey seems to think that a return to some puritan crone-like hand-bagging of those who paid their penny to see 'What the Butler Saw' is the way forward. Worse still, he and prissy Perry naively believe that they are capable of defying the lessons of history.

Listen. This is as pathetic an initiative as I have seen in the past decade. If parents wish to throw their keks around their ankles and get jiggy to "Gang Bang Auditions 13", what the fuck has it to do with Westminster, and why the fuck are they wasting time and money on such poppycock.

Hey, Ed, didn't you see the memo that talked of cutting public sector bullshit? Shut the fuck up, eh?


23 comments:

Trooper Thompson said...

Can I pro-actively opt in to being provided with images of tory MPs being chased and devoured by wolves?

I promise I won't masturbate.

The witch from Essex said...

The best porn was always in plain wrappers under the counter.
I wonder if cigarettes will become more popular when they are plainly packaged and hidden from view ?

Dick Puddlecote said...

Trooper: I think I'd buy that, too.

Witch: Funny you should mention that. Online sharing is being tackled by governments everywhere (the US recently shut down Limewire), but it barely scratches the surface.

Same goes for porn. If Vaizey thinks he can prohibit all sites, he will have to tackle the huge amount of bit torrent downloading sites. In doing so, he will be barring not just porn, but music, films, etc too.

The deluded prick is in way over his head.

Anonymous said...

You'll go ballistic about this then too.

The UK IWF has a blacklist of "not allowed" websites you're going to get a "page not found" result if you hit their page.

Ostensibly for blocking access to child porn (admirable), it's a secret list that no one gets to see - not so admirable, then.

Creature feep already.

R said...

http://www.goclearinternet.com/2010/teenage-kicks-are-they-hooked-on-porn/

I think we can blame this lot for this new load of nonsense from nanny.

Anonymous said...

My youngster now 26 made a healthy supplement to his pocket money, selling my old fiesta's.

Eric Crampton said...

I'm going to bet that this is a negotiation position for the meeting with the ISPs where he's either hoping for more subsidized net nanny stuff for folks who want it (paid for by the rest) or concessions on some other margin entirely.

He can't be serious about this shit, can he? Seriously?

JuliaM said...

"Hands up if you didn't witness - in fact, actively seek out - porn in your teen years despite the best efforts of your parents to hide it (admittedly, ladies may be different here)."

No we're not. We just look at different stuff, for slightly different reasons.

JuliaM said...

" In doing so, he will be barring not just porn, but music, films, etc too.

The deluded prick is in way over his head."


You see that as a side-effect. Maybe it's the real goal?

Mr A said...

They just had the lead charity fuck-nugget behind this idea on Toady. Amazingly(!?) she referenced Tobacco Control as being an area where we unquestioningly listened to "experts", in much the same way as we should listen to the "experts" who say our kids are being twisted by internet filth.

Amazing - do they have a shared script that they just pass around them? And what the Hell is a Tory Government doing listening to these idiots?

Then again, now that the anti-boozers, anti-foodists, anti-porners amd anti-gamblers are all citing the smoking ban experiment as "proof" of State intervention on individual behaviour working well, will those dumb ass idiots who say, "I'm a libertarian but I love the smoking ban" kindly admit they were wrong and eat their own words? (Preferably with lots of lard and salt).

Anonymous said...

**No-one just stumbles across child porn, that is pure unadulterated bollocks.**

Never been to 4chan then?

I've been on other forums as well where people think "wouldnt it be funny if i posted pictures of kiddy porn in innocent looking threads".

And of course the goverment wouldnt give a shit about why you have such images on your computer, just that you have them.

William said...

Stop for a minute and try to work out why this Vaizey chap has announced he is 'going to meet' and not 'we have met with'.

I never believe a single word that a government minister either really does say on tv or radio or what the written press spin into a 'story'.

This seems to me to a deliberate diversion tactic perfected by A Campbell and fondlebum. I haven' yet figured out what it is our attention is being diverted from but a good guess would be the billions changing hands in the EU and the continent wide rioting that the MSM ignore.

Anonymous said...

And of course the goverment wouldnt give a shit about why you have such images on your computer, just that you have them.

or have just seen them.

It was not so long ago that CP would show up on newsgroups out of the blue.

What is pornography, anyway? Tits oot? Artistic pictures? Spam butterflies? Two girls one cup?

Woodsy42 said...

I see the same Mr Vaizey is in the news this AM as wanting to sort out gun control too. The BBC web news has the news bit nicely sliced and diced with reminders of Bird's shooting spree. In this endeavour Mr V actually says the licence cost will have to go up to pay for the safer controls.
Sounds like the man is not just another control freak but actually proud of it!

Sam Duncan said...

I was outraged by this when I read it, too. I don't think it's “very important that the Internet Service Providers come up with solutions” at all. If you can't install DansGuardian (or whatever you Windows and Mac people use) to stop your kids visiting sites you don't want them to, you shouldn't have a bloody computer in the first place. But I've calmed down a bit: as the Moose points out, what Vaizey's proposing is impossible.

Mind you, having said that, all the worst malfunctions of government are caused by it trying to do the impossible. This could get ugly.

Woodsy42 said...

Oops, looks like the gun thing is being driven by Keith Vaz. More coffee needed!

Dick Puddlecote said...

Mr A: That's precisely what I've noticed too. The template being followed to the letter, sucking in some gullible faux libertarians along the way.

Eric: You could be right about that approach. But if so, making himself look a right pillock seems to be a funny way of going about gaining a concession.

Anon @ 09:35: Aware of 4Chan but never visited, no. If that does go on there, I stand corrected, although it's still nigh on impossible for the vast majority of people to just stumble across CP. From what I've heard, one has to be fairly thick-skinned to be on 4Chan in the first place. :)

Anonymous said...

**From what I've heard, one has to be fairly thick-skinned to be on 4Chan in the first place. :)**

From what i understand it started out as some image board for jap manga cartoons.

Now /b the random part of it is just filled with random comics, jokes, pictures of naked people, shock images, and the occasional twat posting CP.

But the point is it started out as some geeky forum.

Now i visit alot of other geeky forums (some about computer RPG's so really quite innocent stuff).

But people from 4chan who happen to be into this stuff, also happen to post on other innocent forums, and occasionally post shit for giggles.



The whole point is that yes, most people won't find it unless they look for it. But you can still stumble across it innocently, and that's why i find any talk of censorship or tracking or making images illigel, very very dangerous, and very very stupid.

But then that's goverment.

nbc said...

This sounds like mission creep for the Internet Watch Foundation.

Incidentally this is a "self-regulatory" body (funded by the EU) which is also a charity...

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

Uh... so much for the Great Repeal Bill eh?

I see they don't get it wiv guns evah - more regulation required when the problems are related to errr... illegally held guns. Or.. are they shit scared of the public having any guns at all - I see Clegg has been presented with a new £300,000 armoured limo.

Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs said...

...why MPs should be given a 5 year sleeping pill the day they are elected.

I would take this a step forward DP:

"Anyone thinking about being an MP should automatically ban them from ever becoming one"

w/v: jaminth - Bob Marley with a lisp

Den said...

I am a parent .. and I am the porn filter.

END OF

Anonymous said...

It's not really any surprise to me to see that Talk Talk, SkyBSB and Virgin Media are the three involved in this. They already filter content, throttle ports and shape traffic but I guess that's what you get for £15 a month. On the other hand pay a little bit more for a service somewhere between consumer grade and business level and you will have far fewer issues with your ISP and this sort of nonsense.

However, for the technically inclined none of this filtering will be a problem...