Author Topic: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily  (Read 3609 times)

Jubal

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UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« on: July 17, 2017, 11:57:14 PM »
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40630582

Quote
A nine-month countdown to the introduction of compulsory age checks on online pornography seen from the UK has begun.

The April 2018 goal to protect under-18s was revealed as digital minister Matt Hancock signed the commencement order for the Digital Economy Act, which introduces the requirement. But details as to how the scheme will work have yet to be finalised. Experts who advised ministers said the targeted date seemed "unrealistic".

The act also sets out other new laws including punishing the use of bots to snatch up scores of concert tickets, and mandating the provision of subtitles on catch-up TV.

So my view is basically that this is incredibly silly - there's no way to blanket-find, let alone blanket-block, all the relevant websites, this does nothing to secondary sharing of content via FB/Twitter/messaging apps, and it introduces huge potential new problems in that people will be asked, legally, to give lots of extra sensitive ID data to websites and companies that they don't currently have to. So basically potential big new crime, ID theft, privacy and security issues in exchange for a system that will in all likelihood do bugger all to actually protect anyone. Gah.
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Clockwork

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2017, 04:42:37 AM »
I hate this so damn much. The bot thing is the companies problem, not the government, portugal the portugal outta that.


Porn regulations are dumb. Under-18s have been stealing looks at porn since time immemorial. Okay so back when it was more of a risk having to catch someone bathing or some armadillo but even so, if they want to see it they will. The human race is still going unfortunately so what harm has it really done? None, stupid goddamn 21st century sensibilities. Also, ISPs have blocked piratebay. That's gone awesomely for them, totally nobody uses that anymore /rolleyes. Is the depiction of sex in porn harmful? No. For the average, non-insane person who's at the same time as watching porn also seen ads saying 'no means no'; they'll do fine. Jesus it's not portugaling rocket surgery. Scumbags who don't respect when their partner doesn't want to do something aren't going to regardless of what they have or haven't seen.


Requiring VoDs to have subtitles is so retarded I can't even start. Who the portugal is going to actually subtitle youtube (as opposed to the CC which it already has).


Finally, up to 10 years for online piracy. portugal that noise as well. Legitimately you get less time for actual armed robbery. For use of a bladed weapon or firearm to intimidate AND serious harm done to person/business or property is 8 years starting up to 12 years. https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Robbery-offences-definitive-guideline-web.pdf


Someone try and argue the logic in that. It's ridiculous. Anyone feel free to quote that previous paragraph, sell it to a trashy newspaper, whatever. Spread the word how portugaling dumb this is.
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Jubal

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #2 on: July 18, 2017, 10:27:50 PM »
I didn't actually realise that was a higher sentence than armed robbery, that's ridiculous. Forwarded that to the RA's social media team, thankyou!

And yeah, it annoys me too. I just don't see who this policy is for, other than maybe a few older daily mail readers or something.
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dubsartur

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2019, 01:22:37 PM »
Porn, terrorism, and child abuse are the severed ears which Euro and settler authoritarians wave when they want to further restrict and surveil electronic communications. 

The other aspect of such a law would be that it would lock in the dominance of MindGeek.  MindGeek is the current name for a shifting series of companies founded on the observation that the budget of most porn films is far too small to defend the copyright in court.  So they got a lot of venture capital, created a network of video-sharing sites with friendly terms of service, and were shocked, shocked that many of the most popular videos were pirated (they had a very slow but scrupulously correct system for submitting takedown requests).  With revenues plummeting, most of the industry in the Anglo countries had to cooperate, and my understanding is that they hold the same position in the porn world that Newscorp holds in Australia and the UK or Amazon holds in online book sales.

They have access to capital (because they are "not a porn company" just a content-delivery network) and can afford to install a complicated system on their sites, most people in the naked-on-the-Internet business don't and can't.  And they can definitely afford lobbyists in London.

Glaurung

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2019, 08:44:04 PM »
After (I think) several intended dates for implementing age verification that didn't happen, and a "we're really going to do it this time" implementation date in July this year that didn't happen either, the UK government has now cancelled the current plans completely - see this Guardian article. The whole area will now be considered in an "online harms" white paper - though with a title like that, I'm doubtful the resulting legislation will be any better.

Pentagathus

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2019, 09:40:26 PM »
Rob I remember reading an article about a study (iirc I didn't read the study itaelf to check if it was solid) which reported that men who had been exposed to  pornography at younger ages were more likely to have troubled relationships, less likely to enjoy sex and more likely to display misogynistic behaviour (whatever that was counted as I don't know). So I'd say the law would be a good idea if I actually expected it to work but tbh I imagine it will probably be more of a hindrance to older peop!e than kids looking for porn.

Jubal

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2019, 10:18:19 PM »
I mean, my question of such a study would be that I'd assume it was more likely that people who had upbringings where they had difficulty connecting with women, lack of good role models, misogynistic fathers, etc etc, might both be more likely to watch porn and more likely to have the other effects without correlation implying causation. I don't think you could actually prove causation in this case without a controlled trial, and "we're going to show these kids porn to see if they're portugaled up in twenty years" would probably fail an ethics check for good reason.

But I also agree that such a system is basically unworkable without types of wider mass communication surveillance and content blocking that would be vastly worse than the problem they were trying to fix. I'm glad that these plans have been dropped.
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dubsartur

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2019, 09:59:45 PM »
Rob I remember reading an article about a study (iirc I didn't read the study itaelf to check if it was solid) which reported that men who had been exposed to  pornography at younger ages were more likely to have troubled relationships, less likely to enjoy sex and more likely to display misogynistic behaviour (whatever that was counted as I don't know). So I'd say the law would be a good idea if I actually expected it to work but tbh I imagine it will probably be more of a hindrance to older peop!e than kids looking for porn.
I find that pornography, sex work, and differences between the genders are some topics where any kind of study deserves a close looking at because there are a lot of partisan 'study shaped objects' that get passed around because nobody looks at the methods section and asks some gentle questions.  One thing which is hard is that what counts as pornography, sex, or whatever varies a lot from person to person so when people self-report they are often talking about different things.  Another issue is that everyone lies about sex ... Bob Altemeyer of "The Authoritarians" fame has another book talking about the problems with other studies, and the method he figured out to get survey data from his undergraduates which might possibly not be total BS.

Pentagathus

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2019, 11:27:02 AM »
Yeah as I said I didn't bother checking the study and I haven't actually read up on the subject. It's one of those areas where in general I would rather be conservative as the potential harm seems to hugely outweigh potential benefits. But on this particular policy I doubt it would be particularly successful at stopping minors from viewing porn  but will have all the privacy and security issues jubal mentioned. 

dubsartur

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Re: UK to regulate obscene content online more heavily
« Reply #9 on: June 11, 2020, 10:50:16 PM »
Some people are organizing to lobby MindGeek to only host videos by verified accounts (ie. something like the system for porn production in the USA which links everyone in a photo/audio/video to proof that they are at least 18 years old and consented to be naked on the Internet).  This would reduce the use of their tube sites to host revenge porn, and make their piracy-based business model harder to sustain and ensure that at least some money goes to the performers, but it would make some exhibitionists (and the people who cross-post videos to tube sites to get around YouTube censorship) unhappy.