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| British Government Abolishes Freedom of Speech |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2011-10-11 15:22:36 |
| "BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin will be asked to offer customers the option to block adult content during subscription According to new measures to be announced by Prime Minister David Cameron, online pornography watchers will have to place a special request with their Internet Service providers (ISPs) to watch pornographic or sexualised content online. The prime minister is holding a summit at No.10 today with 30 media and retail executives, including broadcasters, magazine editors, trade bodies and advertisers, said the Daily Mail. Cameron is expected to announce the crackdown after Mothers Union charity chief executive Reg Bailey submitted a report on the matter after six months of study." The fact that this can happen in Great Britain just goes to show how brittle concepts like freedom of speech really are. Where people in the Arab world fight for the kinds of freedom we have, we in the west just hand them over to extremists. Un-frakking-believable. Any British folk in here? How on earth did you guys let this happen? |
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| RE[4]: Um? |
| By Laurence on 2011-10-11 20:14:52 |
|
> @Thom Please do your research, the link you provided is to a random news outlet. So I will link to a different random news out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-152... Specifically read paragraph 8. This is something that concerned parents have to activate. If anyone can find the original announcement it would be much appreciated. The article I read in the Guardian stated that this was an "opt in" feature, however you had to opt in to receive porn (which essentially makes it an opt out feature regardless of how the government tried to spin it) I'm all for ISP's having filters to allow concerned parents block their kids from dodgy sites. Kids know more about computers than most parents and kids can easily work their way around most firewalls, so this measure is a good idea. However it should be something the parents opt into and not something that's enabled by default. |
 - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Question |
| By MacTO on 2011-10-11 20:26:38 |
|
Just to keep a few things straight: You are telling your ISP that it is okay to access sexually explicit material. This isn't a case of asking "big brother" for permission. There is no need to distinguish between art and smut in this case because a person who doesn't want their internet connection used for smut probably won't want their internet connection used for sexually explicit art either. The "slippery slope" type arguments are getting pretty damned old too. If they had an ounce of truth to them, we would have been living in a police state decades ago. Yet we aren't. That's because there is a continuous negotiation between individual rights and social responsibilities. In this case there is a balance between the individual right to access sexually explicit material and the social responsibility to restrict that material to minors (unless there is parental consent). |
| - Score: 2 |
| Puzzled |
| By ameasures on 2011-10-11 20:31:29 |
|
So ... someone suggests rearranging the default settings for benefit of the vulnerable and it's somehow a free speech issue? Yeah right. This strident assertion of unashamed adult rights to access this stuff. Followed by a terror that a data leak might be embarrassing in the media. Frankly I think few people would be interested. Statistically: a surprisingly high proportion of child molestation comes from slightly older children. Adding easy child access to porn into that blend will not improve the mix. Doubtless I will be derided for holding an apparently minority perspective that questions a certain kind of "political correctness" - so be it. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Question |
| By MacTO on 2011-10-11 20:39:40 |
|
Just in case you didn't realize it, a lot of "nanny state" types do believe in parental responsibility. Yet we aren't as naive to believe that we have the ability to isolate our children from all of the people in this world who would gladly exploit them (and even abuse them) either out of negligence or a desire for personal gain. A parent is perfectly justified in isolating their child from porn because it is ultimately the parent's responsibility if the child misinterprets what they see and goes on to get pregnant or get a girl pregnant. Worse yet, there are corners of pornography that go beyond the acceptable. You only have to read the newspapers to discover the latests busts in child pornography and I've heard that there are many sites that glorify rape. Then there's the run of the mill stuff, the stuff that represents women as sex toys. Now I don't know about you, but I would not want a daughter to grow up thinking that it's okay to be subservient to men or to value themselves as sex objects. Of course, you may differ in that opinion. But you're also free to have the filters removed if you do differ. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[2]: Um? |
| By UglyKidBill on 2011-10-11 20:39:40 |
| +1 ! |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[5]: Um? |
| By UglyKidBill on 2011-10-11 20:46:54 |
|
hmm... me thinks you're gonna make it into that list XD |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[5]: Question |
| By Kivada on 2011-10-11 21:27:59 |
|
Whats that sound? Oh, its the sound of everything said screaming past your head at mach 12 @ 20k feet... If you're worried about your kids dehumanizing each other you should stop sheltering them and be open with them about sex, drugs and life in general. Sheltering them pushes them into a state of rebellion against you and everything you told them not to do. 90% of current "child porn"is made by children and traded to other children via their camera phones. The odds of kids meeting an actual pedo online and not a troll or the FBI is so insignificantly low, the only reason you keep hearing about very possible instance is to push ever more restrictions on the internet "to save the children". Just look at all the riders attached to ills that help fascist causes that make them political suicide to vote against because they sate something like "Voting against oil subsidies means you're for reducing sentences on child molesters" which is a tactic that is often used here in the US. Sites that glorify rape? You mean far right Ayn Rand types like the Republicans and Libertarians here in the US that worship her and her child mutilating murderer "supermen"? Or do you mean troll havens like 4chan which will deliberately target whatever you hate most to keep you going for their own amusement irregardless of their own personal convictions? |
| - Score: 4 |
| Good idea |
| By jefro on 2011-10-11 21:28:36 |
| It is just too difficult for common mothers and fathers to prevent their children from accessing the wrong kind of stuff. This should have been a mandatory solution years ago. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: Good idea |
| By lucas_maximus on 2011-10-11 21:35:16 |
|
David Cameron has been talking to the a Christian Group and has been swayed ... he also has the "back to basics" which says that we should be going back to "traditional family". So everything fits in with his campaign. Nobody in UK politics anymore isn't somebody that has actually any interest in the public good (this was different before the 60s) ... it is a career and they are in it since their early teens. Before that many politicians were members of a party because they were well known in a community ... They wasn't obviously 100% altruistic ... but their motives were from their community. I have numerous Step siblings, many step mothers and a good few step fathers and I have lived with other children that I consider my brothers and sisters ... and the notion of a "nuclear family" is outdated ... and I wish people would get away from "ideals" because they help nobody. Edited 2011-10-11 21:39 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[5]: Question |
| By Kivada on 2011-10-11 21:36:28 |
|
But thats exactly what it is, the internet is an unbridled public pace, provided you aren't committing any actual crimes it's nobody's business what what anyone looking up. You mean you haven't realized you're already in one? They've learned not to tighten their grasp too much else it causes rebellion, but you can already have anything happen to you in the name of national security just because they label you an extremely ill defined "terrorist". |
| - Score: 3 |
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