Any thoughts on the porn ban?

Sorry, I missed that.
I don't think its possible to separate porn and prostitution, women and girls are now moved around like cattle. The demand for one feeds the other.

To give context, TheInebriati, I posted Sad to say but online porn is one of the evils of the internet... We can't stop the flow.

To which OP replied Would you say the same of prostitution Prawn?

I said her analogy was nonsense because it is. Prostitution involves relatively static human beings, who are in no way comparable to the many billions of computer files that can be transmitted effortlessly around the world in the blink of an eye.

Being realistic about what can and can not be done about technology doesn't make me pro porn.

I see this as a cynical or ignorant government claiming to do what people want, so they can't be accused of being presented with a problem and doing nothing.

Cynical, because they're claiming that this will work, when they know it won't. And ignorant, because some people in the government actually do think it's going to work.

But it's not entirely the government's fault, because people have demanded a ban on internet porn and won't educate themselves as to how it can't be done. What's next, a demand for nicer weather? And the government of the day will say oh yes, we'll deliver that for you.

As for comparing online porn to prostitution - it's a nonsense.

No it isnt. Both are abusive to women, both lead to increased trafficking and abuse expecially of underage girls. Prostitution isn't a career choice. Its what you do when you don't have any other option.

Oh for goodness sake. This board is majority leftist. It's pro-woman. It's almost 100% anti-porn and anti-prostitution.

Government has brought in a stupid, unworkable law that could actually make things worse.

Saying so does not perform some miraculous transmogrification whereby suddenly a person becomes pro-porn.

This thread is getting right on my saggy tits.

I imagined mumsnet fc to be frequented by left-wing feminists. It is, OP, but it's also populated by people who understand the technology and its properties.

A number of PP have explained why laws won't work but you just aren't listening. As for comparing online porn to prostitution - it's a nonsense.

Governments tend to prioritize money launderers and vanity projects like the Trump Wall over the truly important stuff like homelessness or sorting out drinking water for people in Flint (US)

It's not just organized crime that produces porn. Social Services and the police could do with more money to protect the vulnerable who are at risk from their carers.

But not clamp down on the companies that profit from all this?

How exactly does the UK govt clamp down on a company that is not in the UK?

Lula1998 - you're not listening to what's being said. Read the posts. It's a bad law and it's not going to do what you want it to do. Pointing this out is not approving of porn.

Can governments really clamp down on organized crime? Lots of porn is produced by individuals not companies.

You need to bear in mind that the web is world wide (the clue is in the name). The reason child abuse images/videos are relatively well controlled is because they are very much illegal in the vast majority of countries. Porn is very much not. So the UK govt can enforce legislation and regulation on uk-based publishers but they're really just pissing in the wind because they can't do anything about publishers in all the countries where porn is legal. They can try and put legal pressure on ISPs but so far that has failed miserably as a strategy for tackling pirating of movies and other commercial media. It would be great if something meaningful could be done but practically it's just not going to happen.

In a similar vein to the porn ban I think that the government can do more to protect kids in

1. Clamping down more on kids who demand nudes from others.
2. Recording sexual assaults in schools. (No requirement to do this yet)
3. Having a clear cut policy for schools to follow when a sexual assault occurs. Victims should not have to be in the same class as the person who assaulted them etc
4. Channel resources so that the police can tackle drugs, gangs and knives.
5. Zero tolerance on sexual harassment in schools. A staggering proportion of girls experience this.

And so on

How do porn barons have less free rein with the new law?

Lula I'm not convinced you want a genuine answer, however there are multiple things that the govt could be doing instead..

• educating parents about the risks online and the multitude of ways children are likely to come across inappropriate content (eg. Whatsapp, YouTube, Reddit)
• educating children what to do if they come across inappropriate content
• better oversight of non-porn media that normalises a pornified image (eg. advertising)
• harsher punishment for men caught sharing stuff like upskirting photos
• harsher punishment for men claiming sex game gone wrong as a defence for violence against women
• stopping companies using strip clubs for meetings

And so on.

We need to change society, make it shameful to watch porn, make it easier for women to see themselves as people not object, make it less profitable for porn producers and sellers.

There's no point just trying to pull a curtain over it when it's much too big and insidious to contain. We need to tackle it at source. It wont be easy, and it wont be quick, but that's the real solution.

ps. if you are going to pull the "you're siding with the porn industry" line you might want to remember that this govt initiative is literally working with the porn industry and therefore supporting it is legitimately siding with them.

Here's a hint, if it actually harmed the patriarchal porn system then the patriarchy would be fighting it, not using it to win easy votes

If the web cannot be regulated, why are we bothering at all?

Because voters and threads like this. This isn’t anything to do with regulating the porn industry. It’s about reducing children’s access to porn and this law does nothing to change that. The government’s own impact assessment says that it’s likely to make things worse. But that doesn’t actually matter because people are only reading the headline and thinking the government are tackling the issue.

The fact is that this can only really be tackled by parents. If we’d put as much effort into educating parents over the last 5 years as we have in trying to pass an unworkable law we might actually have had fewer children exposed to porn online.

The police often catch people downloading child abuse images by tracking the files. But it's incredibly labour intensive. Dedicating people to monitor online porn in general is entirely impractical.

Sad to say but online porn is one of the evils of the internet. We have to warn and protect our children. We can't stop the flow.

I assume that the places with these images are on the Dark Web so untraceable.