And they say feminists are hysterical...

[FloraFox]

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/28/iceland-porn-ban-free-society

So a group of activists from different countries (including Laurie Penny) have penned this gem of a letter to the Icelandic minister in charge of the pornography ban proposal. It includes such gems as:

"The current discussion of blocking pornographic content has offered no definition, no evidence and suggested no technology. This is an affront to the basic principles of the society..."

Eh? What basic principle of society would that be?

"Rather than silencing a voice, the result is depriving the population of material they can see and read. This is censorship, as it skews the way people see the world."

What? Through the filter of a woman's vagina?

"The right to see the world as it is, is critical to the very tenets and functions of a democracy and must be protected at all costs."

Just, fucking, wow.

"The prohibition of pornographic content may create demand for an underground porn industry, unregulated and most certainly affiliated with other illegal activities..."

So we must not regulate pornography on the internet because if we do, an unregulated porn industry might arise. OK, got it.

I'm finding this thread really confusing, however, having read the article linked to in the OP and following a link from there to another article, I have found this:

Web filters, blocked addresses and making it a crime to use Icelandic credit cards to access pay-per-view pornography, are among the plans being devised by internet and legal experts.

Am I right in thinking the thread is about whether this is a good idea or not?

The credit card thing is workable, the rest isn't really, unless we want something akin to the great firewall of China (where everybody just uses proxy servers anyway). I wish it was possible and workable, but it just isn't. I've already posted the following on another thread today, I think it's relevant here, although I may have got completely the wrong end of this thread, as I say, I'm finding it quite confusing ...

I'm not sure Kaloki's around any more but the post below clearly explains the problems with this proposal. If you're still reading, Kaloki, thanks once again for your excellent post ...

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KalokiMallow Thu 23-Dec-10 18:59:06

I apologise in advance, this is probably going to be a long post, but if you are interested in the technical reasons why filtering porn cannot work, then you really should read it.

Anatomy of a website

Domain
The domain is the address you type in.
Eg. www.mumsnet.com
This is actually separate to the website itself, which is why you can have multiple domain names pointed to the same site.

Say you wanted to block www.mumsnet.com you wouldn't necessarily be blocking access to the website itself. As they could then just set up www.mumsnetisback.com without having to change where it is hosted or reload content.

You also could block domain names with keywords in the title, say you blocked "mumsnet", however this wouldn't block www.mummsnet.com - which could easily be pointed at the same site.

So that wouldn't work for filtering websites, too easy to get around.

Hosting
A website is hosted on rented or bought server space, you could block the IP address for a server, which is what the domain name points to. This is about the only way to block websites, but requires you individually blocking each website.

An ISP provides access to the internet, whether for a user or server, some have their own servers which they host sites on. But not all do. Hosting and providing net access are two different things.

URL
Essentially the same as the domain name, but with directions to specific pages or files.
Eg. www.mumsnet.com/Talk

You could block specific pages within a website, either by keyword or knowing the address. However you'd have to somehow take into account embedded information;
The web standard style of coding websites nowadays usually runs along the lines of;
Main page
¬ Header
¬ Content
¬ Footer

So while you may have blocked "main page", you haven't blocked "header", "content" and "footer", and if someone was to direct link to one of them..

Meta Data
Hidden information coded into webpages, usually keywords and a description. Not all sites bother with this though.

So although you could search the meta data for keywords and block pages where the meta keywords are to be filtered, if someone hasn't entered meta data then the computer will have no way of knowing.

HTML/Coding
Keywords could also be in the coding. This will include the text you see on the page. You could block pages with blocked keywords, however, read on to see why that is flawed.

Images
There are only two way to block images.

1. Block any images that are inserted using the code. Which will block 99% of images. 99% of all images that is. Including the MN logo at the top of your page.
2. Block images with filtered keywords, but this has the same problem as meta data, it doesn't have to be filled in. And the image file could be 111111.jpg. With no keyword data, you have no clue of that is a pornographic image or a pretty little flower.

There is no technology that exists that can identify what an unlabelled, generically titled image is either.

Embedded Media
Exactly the same as Images. This covers embedded video, interactive flash and audio.

Different filtering methods

Keywords
You could block keywords. But what keywords would you block for porn?

Penis? Vagina? Breast?

• there goes any website that mentions anatomy in any way, say medical websites...

Pussy?

• so no personal pages about Ginger the cat.

Porn? Erotica?

• There goes this page, and a large part of the feminism forum.

Do any of you have spam filters on your email? Does that work all of the time?
Do you ever get emails asking if you'd like to purchase v1agra?

That's the other way to get round keyword filters, just type things wrong or leave sp aces in them. You could even add in sym|3ols.

Also, if you wanted text but didn't want it searchable then you'd just use an image file with the text on and not label the image file. Easy.

So to summarise. You can block individual IP addresses, one by one - but hang on, how would you implement this? Who'd decide? Do you create a central agency to decide? Or do you leave it up to the public to report?

If you leave it up to the public do you immediately filter any reported sites to look at when someone gets a chance? Or do you wait? Could get a few complaints when sites aren't removed promptly enough? Say you decide that you will only filter a site when it has a set number of complaints? What happens when a large group of internet users decide it would be amusing to all report one site at once?

And would you block the page with the content, or the whole site? What if someone posted a pornographic picture on flickr, do you filter all of flickr?

If you use keywords to block sites then you will block innocent websites.

There's also a flaw with opting in. Say it's a family network, (because remember, the ISP's can't distinguish between separate computers) and one person wants to opt in (possibly because the filter system has blocked a website which isn't actually pornographic) then how do you protect the children?? Oh yeah, a computer based filter. One which can be set up not only for individual computers, but also for individual user accounts on one computer.

And you can set it up to block or not block exactly what you want! How exciting!

I thought the thread was about a bunch of people writing to the government of a country that they don't live in, to say that the concept of a ban on pornographic material with violent or degrading content was an affront to the basic principles of society.

yy Trekkie

PLenty 'Tis me, Kaloki in disguise Quite proud to see my essay post being referred to

Trekkie The problem is, in the case of that letter, you can't talk about it without taking into account the fact that a filter that stopped all pornography would also go against civil liberties. That doesn't mean that access to pornography is a civil liberty and shouldn't be blocked, it means that a porn filter would be highly likely to block things that are civil liberties.

So the concept of banning porn is an affront to basic principles of society, not because of the porn, but because of the collateral damage.

But from the things I could find on google that is not what they are suggesting.

What they are suggesting is a revision of their existing porn laws, to criminalise pornography with violent or degrading content. They have not said (as far as I can find out) how they will impliment that or even if it is possible.

In the UK we have a law (the obscene publications law) which says similar.

Do you want that law repealed?

I don't agree that the letter was only objecting to the collateral damage on non-porn related civil liberties. It's quite clearly addressing porn as a civil liberty in itself. The third quote in the OP puts forward that the porn would be worse if there was an attempt to regulate it

this article sets out the proposal and the reason for it as far as I can find so far

That's an interesting and informative article, Trekkie, and points out that this is still in the "Is this a Good Idea?" stage. But again, it talks about "violent and degrading" porn, who decides that? And how do you tell a computer?

Yay! Pleased to see you're still about Kaloki/Murder

"But it has given the Geek circles a good laugh..."

Glad to hear it. Glad that geeks find it so funny that some people are trying to protect people.

This sentence really sums something up for me. A real complete point-missing, a bizarre and head-fucking system of values.
It seems to me that the human aspect of what this law is trying to do is completely missing from this giggling, sneering view-point, which is childishly glorifying the skills that can keep making and promoting ugly and cruel things despite the attempts to stop them.

Whose side are you on? Do you somehow identify with pornographers as underdogs or something, as opposed to The Man who makes laws? Get fucking real.

I don't see why we have to accept cruelty and degradation of women as mainstream and inevitable. I don't see why so few of you are prepared to think properly about whose interests this is in.

Still very few people have given a straight answer to my question of Saturday 10.55:

Do you think that the primary way to decide what activities are illegal or legal, unacceptable or acceptable, is to start from a position of deciding what would be easy or difficult to stop people doing?

One person did, and she said, clearly "no". I agree. Those who are implying "yes" won't come out and say it because it will expose them as ethically fucked.

I think it's sad that there are (stupid) women out there who have such little self worth that instead of earning money doing something useful, prefer to expose themselves, denigrate themselves.

However, it is their problem.

I would be really pleased to see a ban on pornography (printed or online) because I really worry about the impact it is having on your children and teenagers. It is too easy to access currently.

"Whose side are you on? Do you somehow identify with pornographers as underdogs or something, as opposed to The Man who makes laws? Get fucking real. "

I want to protect children (and adults) from porn, but I'm aware that a govt dictated porn block will not work and will not protect anyone.

"Do you think that the primary way to decide what activities are illegal or legal, unacceptable or acceptable, is to start from a position of deciding what would be easy or difficult to stop people doing?"

No, obviously. But as I say on all of these threads, the porn block will not work. But there is a solution to protect the children, one that I support fully.

Parental control software installed on individual computers alongside education about how to use it, education on other harmful stuff on the net (pro-anorexia, grooming, etc) and what other steps can be taken.

So there is something that can be done, it's in the hands of the parents and it exists already.

That's the side I'm on. The side which can make a difference right now and which works, rather than the side which is asking for technology that doesn't exist.

Timetoask there are many reasons that women go to work in the porn industry. They are myriad and tied up in all sorts of things to do with society, background, opportunity, money, and so on, thousands of reasons.

To simply say they are "stupid" is not on.

If you are anti-porn and want to focus on the "bad guys" then the people who make it, the people who consume it and the general structure in society which deems it acceptable would be better places to start than the performers.

Do you think that the primary way to decide what activities are illegal or legal, unacceptable or acceptable, is to start from a position of deciding what would be easy or difficult to stop people doing?

No. I'd like to see porn banned because it harms women, both the women involved in its production and women as a class and because it fucks up men's sexuality.

Happy?

Where do we go from here? Do you have any workable ideas beyond us all saying 'down with this sort of thing'?

"Where do we go from here? Do you have any workable ideas beyond us all saying 'down with this sort of thing'?"

I always wonder that.

And it seems appropriate to re-post this. Replace "unicorn" with "block porn".

"I want to travel by unicorn!"
"They don't exist"
"Someday there might be technology available to create one!"
"Um.. well, yes.. possibly.."
"So I want one now!"
"But the technology doesn't actually exist right now"
"It should do"
"Well.. yes, maybe.."
"So get me a unicorn!"
"We can't."
"But you should."
"How?"
"I don't know, there should be experts working on it"
"There probably are"
"See? So my unicorn is possible!"
"No.. it's potentially possible, not actually possible"
"You are just being negative"
"No, I'm being factual"
"You hate unicorns!"
"What?"
"Unicorn hater!"
"..uh..."
"You aren't even trying to help!"
"I.. uh.. buh.. "
"Where's your solution?"
"My solution? You want the bloody unicorn, I'm happy with all the many other methods of transport"
"No, I refuse to even try other methods. A unicorn is the only solution!"
"But they don't exist. You can't will them into existence"
"Excuses excuses"
"It's not an excuse, it's reality. Look, you can have a horse. They do exactly the same thing but without costing loads in research and implementation"
"No. Unicorn."
"Why not a horse?"
"A unicorn just sounds better"
"But creating a unicorn could be massively flawed, the horse has evolved to where it is now. It's does the job more than adequately"
"A unicorn might be better"
"It might. But we don't know this for certain."
"See, I was right. You said yourself it has some advantages"
"It has a lot of disadvantages. Oh and it's still not possible right now. In fact it may never be possible"
"You are so negative! Wont you think of the children??"

What nonsense. The thread is about the preposterous letter claiming that the right to access porn is an important civil liberty and that attempts to regulate porn will lead to a dangerous unregulated porn industry. Some of these responses "UNICORNZ! It's all about UNICORNZ" are a little odd to say the least.

"But creating a unicorn could be massively flawed, the horse has evolved to where it is now. It's does the job more than adequately"

You see, this is it. Stop pretending you are worried about where the unicorns* are going to come from when actually you don't want them, and you are fine with the horse.

I am not fine with the status quo.

*pathetic, stupid analogy, because a unicorn is a mythical beast, whereas societally agreed and legally enforced boundaries on what can be done to human beings and what sort of media is acceptable exist in abundance

I think it is extremely unfair to demand that the OP single-handedly come up with a solution to the global industry of misogynistic porn.

The feminism section is here for debate and discussion. Telling a woman that because she can't personally explode a multi-billion dollar industry she shouldn't post her thoughts here is shitty. The point of posting here is so that women can think about these topics without being told to shut up. If you don't agree with someone then tell them you don't agree with them, don't try to silence them. I'm a bit shocked TBH. We talk about all sorts on here and the idea that people shouldn't be allowed to discuss things unless they have a solution for them is awful. If people had solutions for all this stuff we wouldn't need feminism would we.

curry We appear to be talking at cross purposes.

The unicorn is an analogy for a centralised govt controlled effective porn filter.
The horse is an analogy for localised filters applied to individual computers by parents.

The centralised govt controlled effective porn filter is basically a mythical beast. It doesn't exist. And there is no current technology to make it exist. Like a mythical beast it's a lovely thought, and lots of people want to believe in it, but that doesn't make it realistic.

flora Have you read the letter? Because I don't think it's saying what you think it's saying.

I've just read it, and the gist of it is actually that censoring the whole countries internet access as one is not actually a great idea. Not because they think people should be allowed to view porn, but because it could and probably would restrict access to other things. This is a quote from the open letter,

"It is technically impossible to censor content delivered over the Internet without monitoring all telecommunications. Not just unwanted communications or inappropriate material, everything must be examined automatically by unsupervised machines which make the final decision on whether to allow the content to continue or not. This level of government surveillance directly conflicts with the idea of a free society."

Does that translate to "we want to see the pornz"? No, it doesn't.

How about this paragraph?

"Internet censorship is used by totalitarian regimes in order to restrict people's access to various information and material on the internet. The methods used to conduct this censorship are technically identical to the methods that would be employed by Iceland if these plans were to be implemented. The act of censoring pornography in Iceland differs in no way from repression of speech in Iran, China or North Korea. By stating that Iceland is considering censoring pornographic material on the Internet for moral reasons, they are justifying rather than condemning the actions of totalitarian regimes."

Are you seeing requests for access to porn? Or are you seeing an explanation of why filtering the internet is dodgy ground?

"If the Icelandic Government worries about children getting their sexual education from pornography on the Internet, the solution should be better sex education in the home or through schools. Sex education that deals not only with conception, contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, but also relationships, communication and respect."

Oh look a helpful solution that would benefit the children. And yet they are being painted as being pro-porn and against children..

"There exist decentralized technical measures that respect the rights and dignity of all citizens in a society which involves aiding families with providing an accessible way to make their own computer and internet access secure for their children"

And there we go with that whole pesky educating people to use technology that already exists. How horrible are they?

Some of the sentences, taken out of context, could be taken to mean they wanted loads of porn access for everybody, but if you read the whole thing you will see that all they are saying is that a centralised porn filter would not work and could well be detrimental and that there are better alternatives.

Which is exactly what we've been saying on this thread.

Telling a woman that because she can't personally explode a multi-billion dollar industry she shouldn't post her thoughts here is shitty.

Yes, that would indeed be shitty if anyone was actually doing that.

Murder yes I have read the letter - I would have thought that was obvious since I wrote the OP. I think your interpretation is strained, particularly in light of the last quote from the OP.

The very last quote is not the main thrust of the argument, instead it is in addition and makes the point that prohibition type actions actually tend to have the opposite affect to what is intended. Which is true.

The majority of the letter talks about the technology not existing, and the only way it could currently exist is by using a system put in place by the kinds of govts that it would be best not to emulate. It also talks about solutions that could work, eg. education.

The reason I asked is because you've somehow missed all of those points. And then done so again when I've copied them out for you.

I didn't miss the points. I don't agree with them.

You said upthread: "Basically you probably could block porn, the problem is that you wouldn't just block porn. And that's where civil liberties come into it. To block porn you'd need to block other things too (due to the technology actually available) which isn't on."

This is it. I don't agree it's not on.

Also, technology develops to meet demands, it does not develop in an abstract.

The last point is important because it is clear what the perspective of the writers is. And it is staggering in it's illogicality. Still, feel free to say it's true if you wish.

Murderof Goths I love your Unicorn story, it is so true of those who imagine that becouse something sounds possible it should happen. In a sense if Oppenheimer had stopped at "yes we can build a nuclear bomb" but then went on to say "However it's not a good idea" the world would be different from what it is.

Flora. At last you have come out and said exactly what I suspected you were saying, this whole thread has been a pretence to talk about banning porn. NOT the letter, nor even if it is possible or not. Just the straightforward banning of all porn as identified by you? Or some other individual who like you has failed to engage with the difficulties of doing just that.

I will say what I said on a thread about banning page three, if you think banning something will stop people thinking thoughts that you would rather they did not have, go ahead but don't complain when you find you cannot actualy control peoples thoughts.