Is something that the government of David Cameron was pushing for throughout 2013 at the behest of a bunch of easily offended wowsers, the Daily Mail, child protection nest-featherers, and other varieties of arsewipe.
This was following revelations that Mark Bridger, the murderer of April Jones, and Stuart Hazell, murderer of Tia Sharp, had both looked at porn on the internets in the run up to murdering said children and therefore, clearly, in the (tiny) minds of these people, it made them do it. Furthermore, there was a constant drip-feed of horror stories about how YOUR CHILDREN were logging onto all manner of brutality and depravity on the internets, and as such having their impressionable minds warped until they started having unrealistic expectations about sex and sexuality and then committing sexual offences. None of these stories had any sources or verifiability behind them so I rather suspect they were all false and simply thrown in to emotionally blackmail people into supporting this. There was then bumf about premature sexualisation of children and how this sort of easy access to smut on the internets is making vulnerable teenagers take nude selfies of themselves and post them on social media, and all that old bollox.
Needless to say, anyone who objected was shouted down as either, I. in the pockets of the producers of porn and/or the internet industry that is constantly showing itself unwilling to put people before profit, II. not a parent and therefore not allowed to have a view, III. not caring about children being harmed and therefore only half a step above Jimmy Savile, or IV. probably a paedophile themselves. Feminist critics of this sort of thing, i.e. those who believe that a large tenet of feminism is the idea that women should be the ones to control their own sexualities themselves, were shouted down by other feminists who saw them as selling out to patriarchy. In particular, a Gail Dines, a second-wave academic type, shouted at Anna Arrowsmith, a woman who directs porn films aimed at other women, as being a "traitor" and that "people like you are the scabs of the feminist movement." In short, the loud minority of foamers managed to bully the powers that be into bringing in this abject idiocy.
Basically, it's like this. From January 2014, any new subscriber to one of the major British ISPs will have to decide from the outset whether or not they want adult content to be blocked. This is not by Government fiat but by a voluntary agreement between the big ISPs. It will be blocked by default and will only be able to be unblocked by the account holder either at the outset and/or by ringing up halfway through and asking for it to be unblocked. It is, for reasons that will now be expounded on, a fuck-stupid idea.
Firstly, it will not work. Already major British ISPs have to block sites like The Pirate Bay, Kat.ph, Fenopy, Filestube, and other such places where one can obtain copyrighted works in a peglegs-and-parrots kinda way, further to various actions in the High Court. If you try to log on to any of these on, say, O2, which is the internet provider in my shoebox of a flat, you get a blank page saying that "The page you're looking for has been blocked. We're complying with a court order that means access to this website has to be blocked to protect against copyright infringement." However, if you then cut-and-paste the URL into Google Translate, set it to translate from, say, Afrikaans to English, and then click the link, you get completely unfettered access to it. Alternatively, there is a constantly proliferating number of proxies which one can use, or Virtual Private Networks, or similar. I therefore dare say that one will be able to access one's favourite online filth in a very similar way if the account holder at one's ISP won't tick the opt in.
At this point the proponents of the block (which, alarmingly, include my boss, who I previously thought was a fairly rational person) start expressing admiration for the Great Firewall of China. Sorry, but we're better than that in the UK, at least on paper. We should not be aping autocratic régimes for any reason, because if a supposedly democratic state brings in authoritarian and censorious measures like this it legitimises them. But that's another writeup.
Besides, the Great Firewall of China is circumventable itself.
And secondly, there's something very sinister about it all. It starts with porn but certain government folks are on record as saying they want the block extended to extremist material. I detect mission creep here. How long before anything the powers that be don't like are added to the filter? And besides, since when was it assumed that the average person was so weak-minded that if they saw a frothing Islamist flinging anathemas at all and sundry on YouTube or a green-ink website written by some psychotic far-Right loon about how International Jewry is behind everything bad in the world they would immediately sign up for instant martyrdom? Sorry, but no. Most extremist material I've seen finds itself sneered at, primarily. Fundies say the Darndest Things, anyone? Similarly, most people are rational and know that their favourite piece of BDSM acting or clip in which some bottle-blonde Californian gets a rooting from a man with an ugly hairdo who talks like a sex offender all the time isn't real. They also know that it's all fantasy and that seeing people doing it doesn't make people go out and rape folks left, right, and centre. But apparently we, the people, are too immature to be trusted with it. We have to bow to the wisdom of self-appointed folks like Claire Perry and Gail Dines who are Just Better and Know Better.
(There is a theory, which appears to be supported by substantial evidence, that easy access to smut actually reduces rates of sex offences, but that's another writeup.)
Similarly, how are we supposed to know that someone isn't compiling lists of everyone who's opted in for nefarious purposes, such as to smear them as some sort of pervert if they start upsetting the wrong people, or to sell them things? Want to adopt a child because you and/or your spouse is infertile? Oh, but sorry Mr & Mrs Smith, you've ticked the opt-in porn filter on your internet connection. There's too much risk that the child would be exposed to it. Your adventure ends here.
And besides, what about the problem of over- or under-blocking? There's sexually explicit materials on sites other than porno yano. There's sex education websites aimed at teenagers like Go Ask Alice or Scarleteen which contain that sort of thing for educational purposes, and with whose existence I wholly agree because, quite frankly, teenagers are so awash with hormones you'll not prevent them from shagging each other unless you physically lock them away from each other (and that, ironically, is not helpful to their development in any way) that they ought to know always to practice safe sex and similar at an early stage. But are those sites to be blocked? There's also sexually explicit content on Wikipedia as well, a starting point for the exploration of which is, if you're interested, the "Bad image list" on there (which is a catalogue of those pictures that are only permitted to be linked on certain pages because they'd be used for trolling otherwise). Does this mean Wikipedia is to be blocked also? Similarly, it will result in the filter having to play a neverending game of catch-up as new sites and mirrors spring up that aren't blocked.
I absolutely agree, incidentally, that adult content should be kept out the hands of children. However, I also believe that it's not the omnibenevolent State's job to do it. It's the job of the parents. Responsible parenting should be encouraged. Parents should educate their children about this sort of thing and only let them to use the internets under supervision until they've demonstrated they can be trusted. Similarly, in specific response to those amongst the forces of censoriousness that claim that with smartphones and tablets and mobile internet you can't do this, the answer is again simple. Don't give them mobile devices that can access the internets until, once again, they can be trusted with them. And don't give them laptops that they can take up to their room either. Get a proper-sized desktop PC and put it somewhere where they're visible. And for Odin's sake, if you do see them looking at something unsuitable, intervene. Stick your oar in. Pull them up on it there and then.
From that perspective, national adult content filtering is the worst thing to do because it encourages parental irresponsibility. It encourages parents to think that the omnibenevolent State will do the raising of their children for them.
(IN1330)