Internet Porn Site Regulation

We are in need of a round up again. Here's a few related bits and pieces that have popped up over the last few days:

First inclusion, in the interests of fairness, is the charities follow up to their comments on the Matt Hancock story discussed above. They have obviously been encouraged to display the rationale behind their earlier quotes. These pieces go into the statistical evidence and surveys they have been accuring in support of the government position:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44233544
https://www.careappointments.co.uk/featu...m-children

Second one, and you couldn't make this up, Porn-hub are launching their own VPN! Talk about playing both sides of the fence at the same time. This service will presumably enable you to get around their own AV gateway! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...twork.html

Meanwhile the rival AgeChecked continues to expand its associations: http://www.businesscloud.co.uk/news/bloc...roving-age

Finally here's another published response to the BBFC consultation; this time from internet security expert Alec Muffett: https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/response...4d988b14bb

On the blog that provided the above link...

Pandora Blake Wrote:Over 500 people submitted a response using the tool provided by the Open Rights Group, emphasising the need for age verification tech to be held to robust privacy and security standards. I'm told that around 750 consultation responses were received by the BBFC overall, which means that a significant majority highlighted the regulatory gap between the powers of the BBFC to regulate adult websites, and the powers of the Information Commissioner to enforce data protection rules.

(http://pandorablake.com/blog/2018/5/bbfc...-challenge )

Healthy numbers indeed. The BBFC will no doubt continue to cast around ever wider for answers to the queries raised. Their suggestions to the government should be fascinating come the summer.

ID's for porn sites, pah! That's too small scale, what we really really need is ID's for the internet in general :

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po...90841.html

The speed with which they are building this house of cards against the freedoms of the net is now frightening. One variation in line of attack now follows another with blinding rapidity: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bi...m-44438468 (Worryingly the trend is even spreading in the U.S.: https://www.ifex.org/united_states/2018/...ensorship/)

Emblodened mission creep has now set in. The politics of left and right strangely united in a common goal to curtail hard won liberties in some pigheaded fight to, in that old Brexit phrase note, "take back control" over neatly exaggerated wild west internet.

Because bad things happen online it's now deemed necessary that we are ALL to be identifiable and trackable where this happens. This is the basis of, no doubt soon to be, all encompassing virtual cctv for your web travels, for your digital footprint online. The key difference is that this time they are coming IN your home to erect their survelliance; to see if you're up to no good in private. What price stopping or limiting them after they have made that so? We should be telling them to fuck off while they just have that foot in the door.

This time they are coming to look inside your head too. (These latest proposals will build upon the series of court case convictions that have been happening in UK over recent months on the subject of "hate speech" communication - this thanks to another over-reachingly poor millennial law that badly needs repealing.) Tptb in this country are already well down the road to stifling any act or speech they deem undesirable. This is the next layer.

We are now decidedly on a slippery slope. Communicating bad thoughts is a crime; freedom of speech is qualified and reserved only for those that are being nice. The government of course reserves the right to define, and redefine in the future, what they think "nice" does or does not entail.

These policies and proposals are invasive and out of proportion. These politicians blind to the fundamental lines of freedom that have been crossed already. They continue to erode the principles of tolerance that this country is supposedly founded on. They are wrong in any country that desires to call itself democratic.

They are coming for your thoughts via your smart devices and at this pace it's hard to see where the internet in the UK will be by the time of the next scheduled election... Be smart and tell them why their values are not yours next time you see a politician. In 2022, vote for anyone that gets that.

just had a look at her twitter. i would be hard pressed to find a single negative comment.
shes another 1 who is inventing outrage to fit her feminist agenda.

she promotes 3rd wave feminism which in itself is absolutley anti male and she wonders why she gets "harassment".
but is it really harassment. all i saw were a few comments that disagreed with her and she replied calling them misogynistic.
REALLY!... you disagree with her extremist views and your a misogynist?.
YEAH!, shes an idiot thats on a powertrip. her constituents made a big mistake voting her in.

Who, Theresa May?

Hexit is talking about MP Jess Philips from the top link in my previous post.

Her wiki page is quite enlightening about her character and relationship with controversy and publicity.

The headline allegation is two years old, was never publicly verified as to quantity AFAIK and has now been regurgitated for the current zeitgeist.

So it seems that filters don't really work at preventing adolescents seeing porn. Who knew?
Guess the government will be cancelling the whole AV programme then

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/resear...vent-porn/

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/07/interne...ims-study/

^ Or, knowing the Westminster Government's enthusiasm for interfering in the private lives of citizens, trying to use it as an excuse to attempt to ban everyone from viewing porn.

"We, the Nanny State, having increasingly assumed responsibility for children, due to the corresponding absence of parental responsibility, now finding that Internet filters do not protect the 'little darlings' from the evil that is porn, have no option but the ban all porn, for everyone, irrespective of the blatant denial of the fundamental Human Right of Free Expression that such action represents."

(15-07-2018 15:45 )munch1917 Wrote:  So it seems that filters don't really work at preventing adolescents seeing porn. Who knew?
Guess the government will be cancelling the whole AV programme then

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/resear...vent-porn/

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/07/interne...ims-study/

or they'll kick it into the long grass quietly again at the end of the year like they did not that long ago

Anyone been wondering what stage we are at with the BBFC consultation guidance to government on AV? Well, thanks to Melon Farmers finding a note published online in minutes of the BBFC's bi-monthly board meetings (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/sites/default/file..._05_18.pdf ), we can finally say a little more on this:

It first firms up the figures Pandora Blake had reported...

BBFC Wrote:The BBFC received 620 responses, 40 from organisations and 580 from individuals. Many of the individual responses were encouraged by a campaign organised by the Open Rights Group.

Is it me or is there a slighty terse dismissiveness in that last sentence? Almost as if these responses were of lesser value because they were solicited by a third party?

Then we get what were the BBFC plans for their use...

BBFC Wrote:Our proposed response to the consultation will be circulated to the Board before being sent to DCMS on 21 May.

So, it seems very likely the draft guidance has been sitting at the DCMS since then. Nearly two freakin' months with no public word from anyone on this!

Are we going to even see the guidance published prior to the Parliamentary recess scheduled for 26th July?