Porn website restrictions from 2018

[BayLeaves]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40628909

Thoughts? Personally I'm happy about it, I just hope it works. Maybe we'll look back on the easy access to online porn in the 2000s and think it was incredible how children were easily able to get this stuff, when they would never be able to purchase a porn magazine from a real life shop, or to buy alcohol or cigarettes!

Sounds like an excellent idea to me. I can't see a downside.

A lot of kids will think twice about nicking a parent's credit card in order to gain access.

Hopefully the 'normalisation' of porn for kids will be a thing of the past.

They'll just torrent it...so maybe it will stop some but the vast majority of it will be there to be downloaded without any checks

revolution909

What does torrent mean?

A torrent is a peer to peer system of file sharing so you search for a movie say and you'll download portions of the file from thousands of people that have it. Torrents are obvs a way that porn is shared and pirated.

Dervel

Will they be able to take that into account? I don't really understand how it works. Surely they must know that's how kids share porn? Is this just a nod to camping down?

Are you saying that you don't believe this will have any effect at all?

Sorry for all questions. I knew someone would know far more about this than me.

Having read the article the bigger problem than torrents will be VPNs (which basically channels traffic through somewhere else that to an extent anonymisies you and is capable of fooling websites you are accessing the site from another country) or the TOR network.

To be honest I'm dreading my little boy getting older he's not old enough yet, but I've got a lot of reading up to do to keep an eye on his online activities, and how best to go about it. That government proposal does not as a parent fill me with a lot of confidence.

The music companies were (are?) quite fierce about taking down torrent sites of music that should be paid for. Would not sellers of porn not be the same?

There's also tons of amateur porn that do it for free...

Would not sellers of porn not be the same?

It gets torrented to fuck now and they don't care, so I don't see why it would change.

They just create increasingly more extreme porn until people stop paying for that. I don't know where it will end. The last big trend I noticed was for anal prolapsing

I wouldn't know lass, but again torrents + a vpn/tor would make it VERY hard for a music or porn company to trace people. For example I've been known to use a vpn with my Netflix account to access the MUCH larger Netflix US library.

I'm not opposing the steps proposed, but don't be fooled into thinking it 100% shields your child from objectionable material. If my kid was of an age right now I'd be looking into general internet security with a view to setting up on my own what he can and cannot access.

An iPhone rather than android as Apple have always opposed pornographic content in their apps. There ARE ways to get a TOR browser on your iPhone so I'd still need to cast a weather eye on what apps he uses.

Maybe once I've worked out what I'd need to do and blog a layman's guide or something. Although I'd probably need to block the guide as internet security is always a bit of a cat and mouse game I'm afraid.

A good point of contact to organise this sort of thing is through your child's school. If schools + parents co-ordinated effectively it might be possible to disseminate the crucial information to keep children safe.

I can't see how it would block anything over and above the standard filters at ISP level.

Just for anyone that is concerned for right now this sort thing is what I'd be looking at:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.howtogeek.com/68886/how-to-configure-your-router-for-network-wide-url-logging/amp/

This sort of guide will enable you to log what websites are logged into via your network router. Note this won't log online activity people using devices over mobile phone networks, unless the devises are
Connected to the router via wi-if.

This is all very light on detail (understandably, given that the proposals haven't actually been submitted to Parliament yet).

I don't like it, on principle. I think that the government is overreaching here. It's not proportionate.

If they want to protect children then there are better ways than this; it seems more like they want to discourage viewing of pornography by putting up barriers to it.

That stance will be fine for a lot of people, especially their voters, but I don't like it personally.

If they want to protect children then there are better ways than this;

What do you think they should do, Hont? Genuine question.

Better sex education in schools would be the main thing. Widespread and in-depth. Teach them about sex properly so they don't have to 'learn' from porn. I spent four years learning German and I think one week learning about sex/love/relationships - guess which has played a more important part in my adult life.

Education/guidance for parents on how to protect their children online, backed up with criminal fines/sanctions for parents who let their children access pornographic material.. Exactly how this would be done I'm not sure; there are already resources available from NSPCC et al, but it could even take the form of a Health Visitor type role.

ISPs could be regulated and forced to offer 'family-friendly' options when you buy/renew your Internet so people can opt-in to filtering.

All of those would be better than the current proposal, which I doubt will amount to anything.

I think it's going to be an uphill struggle fostering a healthy attitude towards sex in our children when we are ourselves pretty dysfunctional as a society (note I'm not attacking any particular individual on this thread just making a general observation) in this regard.

I'm not also entirely convinced by just blaming the parents. We live in a society where billions of dollars is poured into marketing to children, and unless a parent has a degree in psychology it is not a simple thing to counter that, so too with internet safety. I am pretty technologically savvy I can build machines and I have no doubt when the time comes I'll be able to build an arsenal of tools and practises that will maximise my child's safety online, but it's not reasonable to expect every parent to be equipped with the skills and inclination to be able to do this.

We live in a society and we are all incrementally responsible for the environment our children grow up in. I am a big proponent for liberty, but a lesser acknowledged aspect of liberty is the responsibility that accompanies that concept. Nowadays liberty without responsibility is being advocated for.

The internet has fantastic potential, but as with many things we need to be collectively responsible elsewise it all goes to hell in a handbasket pretty damn quickly.

Excellent post Dervel (the one above) and erm, might have to look into that Netflix thing.

We are also able to control our children's access more than a lot of parents (OH is the tech savvy one though) and I agree when people ask how I do that and I explain as OH has explained to me they find it difficult to understand. This isn't the parents' fault. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to be that informed.

Liberty comes in 2 forms, the freedom to do something and the freedom from something and often those two forms come into conflict - online porn is a good example of this. While many parents will accept the element of responsibility there is a sizeable proportion of society who don't care or rather only care about their own freedom. We all know how fiercely some men will cling onto their 'right' to a sex industry and how they will be wilfully blinkered about the harmful aspects of that industry - society as a whole has to be responsible. But I fear as Dervel says many people want their freedom to do something without thinking about the implications for others, even our children.

We all know how fiercely some men will cling onto their 'right' to a sex industry

Yes - it's as if these people think the freedom to access porn takes precedence over our children's right to grow up without exposure to this shit, and the right for girls to reach womanhood without being sexually assault estate by boys/men who have become accustomed to extreme porn.

With regards to the whole torrenting and proxy thing - yes, it's true there will always be a way to bypass age restrictions. Just like under 18s still drink alcohol and smoke! But that doesn't mean we shouldn't introduce these measures. At least it should make it harder for kids to accidentally find porn, and while a determined 16 year old would easily be able to figure out a loophole, it should be enough to protect primary school age kids, who will not have the knowledge and determination to bypass the age restrictions.

Presumably if most children first see porn via mobile devices, then this could be quite effective? As far as I am aware, VPNs and torrents are still overwhelmingly PC things, aren't they?

The comment about the music industry having cracked down made me laugh though. It stopped The Pirate Bay being hosted at thepiratebay.com - anyone with any determination can still find it. I don't know how much torrents are used by kids under 16 these days though. I would have thought most would need an older friend or sibling to have shown them.

I agree that more than just putting up roadblocks is necessary, though, if we want to reduce older teens' use of porn.

This seems to assume that porn is tidily available on sites that are identifiable as porn sites.

That is simply not the case, and any site that allows users to post content (without it being pre-moderated) could fall foul of these rules, as described in that article.

It's one if those announcements that sounds good, but really will have very little impact.

Also, BBFC is all well and good for films for release, but the system simply won't cope with the volumes of home-produced material. So without a definition of porn underpinning this, it is likely to be unworkable.

Also, it's far from clear how it'll work on sites that are not UK hosted.

BTW! If you want to protect your DC from accidentally seeing unsuitable content (which isn't just porn) there is already a pretty good solution. Install device-based filters.

Yes, at some stage they might work out how to circumvent them, but if the aim here is to stop younger Dc accidentally clicking through, they are pretty good and likely to be more effective than this sort of measure. If people are serious about clamping down, than actually using these filters (and picking the ones that will send a parent an alert if attempt to circumvent is made) is tech that already exists and should be better known.

Harder for a government to make it an eye-catching message though. Because that's all about educating parents about what is already out there, and urging them to step up and use it (and supervise their DC). Both of which require parenting by parents, not a nanny state doing something that sounds good but which is distinctly second-best.

No, this isn't a good thing. As VikingVolva said above you can't just group sites into porn and not porn, that's not how that works. The government doesn't seem to understand this at all and it won't be effective at all. Also, the proposed ways for people to prove how old they are will leave users vulnerable and open to attacks from scammers and thieves. There are many problems with this idea but those are some of the worst.

Hont thanks. Yes, those are all good ideas IMO. Honestly, I would jump at anything that is likely to restrict porn and stop men making it/teenagers accessing it at this point. For me, the proposal is better than nothing.

Making parents criminally responsible for making sure that their DC do not access porn is an idea I haven't heard before and quite a good one, I think. It would mean a major shift in attitude. Like using car seats and seatbelts when we were children. Not a bad thing.