Of course it's ridiculous. Why does it take Jimmy Fucking Wales saying this for BBC to run a story saying that?
Either David Cameron is an abject moron or he (and his cronies) don't understand this whole internet thing. It's probably the latter. AFAIK, everyone who didn't grow up online doesn't seem to "get" it.
I think it's for the average john smith. "Hey look, we have an internet information expert saying this is stupid" is much more effective than "Hey look, we have a greasy 17 year old neckbeard complaining he won't be able to look at porn". While both are arguing the same points, it's the former that is more worthy of listening to.
It's one of the whole reasons I hate how journalists go talk to people on the street. I honestly don't give a crap about the opinion of some chick down the street from a house fire/arson that stood around for 3 hours before media interviewed her. Put the damn Fire Marshal on so he can tell me what's important.
> Either David Cameron is an abject moron or he (and his cronies) don't understand this whole internet thing.
That's awfully disingenuous, it may be neither -- PM Cameron and his cronies may in fact fully understand that their legislation will have little effect on child abuse. They may in fact be interested in establishing a police state, which implies that they're not morons and that they fully understand that the internet as a communications medium is far too open.
Or they're indeed morons that don't understand the internet, but they're being lead by the nose by their military/surveillance-industrial corporate masters. War efforts are winding down and they need another excuse to pour billions down a rabbit hole.
No, I'm afraid you don't understand it. What Cameron proposes is perfectly do-able if you have a) billions of pounds b) physical access to the submarine cables and c) buy your computing power by the acre. GCHQ ticks all those boxes. The people saying "haha I'll use a VPN" are the ones who don't "get" it.
The thing I take issue with is that the government DOESN'T have billions of pounds. This is a government of austerity that consistently derides the previous government of stupid spending. They take any opportunity of insulting Labour about how their bad spending habits have ruined our economy yet then want to fund something as stupid as this?
Kids will see porno, whether its blocked of not. It's the same as people being able to download torrents after the pirate bay was blocked or making drugs illegal doesn't stop people getting drugs.
This is a deeper issue that can't be solved by closing off parts of the Internet. We need to improve society in general, not make it harder for the people who want to seek this sort of thing out.
I don't believe Cameron is proposing the Govt to foot the bill and/or to host the equipment; that will be foisted upon ISPs. Having said that some influential companies and government departments will benefit from said structure.
Thanks for clarifying that, this makes it easier to stomach.
There will still be a large expenditure on the side of the government, as is with most things in government. Such e penditure would be best spend influencing innovation and business, not requiring a sector to implement mandatory technology which probably has large costs.
It seems like the consumer will really foot the bill here. It seems a lot of decisions are made which cause the average joe to spend less, which isn't great for the economy.
> "Additionally when we use cases of a paedophile who's been addicted to child porn videos online, you realise all that Cameron's rules would require him to do is opt in and say, 'Yes, I would like porn please'."
Am I missing something? Or have people genuinely made the argument that this filter will help prevent child pornography? Surely the existing laws already block these sites?
They've genuinely made the argument that that justifies this, yes. No, they can't work computers, but neither can the people whose votes they hope this will net.
Yeah, I was just going to add the very same thing, since it doesn't exactly make him the most neutral and unbiased person to talk about the subject. I think he's even tried to get his own Wiki page edited to remove or tone down that fact.
But like pretty much everyone in comments, yes, of course it's a stupid idea. I'm not sure why Jimmy is somehow an "authority" on this though.
In truth, some of the content on Wikipedia is sensitive and would brand the site in more than one of the blocked categories. While not strictly pornographic, Wikipedia does get quite explicit, including entries and descriptions for things like fellatio, etc.
Some of the images could count as pornographic as well.
Back years ago there was an extremely long debate about whether the entry on autofellatio [1] should include a photograph of someone performing fellatio on themselves at the top, or whether something like a diagram was more informational and better suited to an encyclopedia. Looks like the photograph won out.
This is my problem with the vitriolic nature of politics in general - when a truly, profoundly stupefying idea comes along, we've run out of proper words we can use to aptly convey how utterly incomprehensible and devoid of rationality the idea is.
Our outrage can be reasonably seen as just another political discussion when in fact it's composed of literal and unbridled flabergastery the likes of which have not thusfar been witnessed by mankind.
It will be very interesting to see the criteria for a site to be labeled as porn. Is http://500px.com going to be deemed a porn site because it has a "nude" section?
I suspect there will be different criteria at each ISP, kept secret in the name of protecting children without anyone taking responsibly for that list when it inevitably gets abused.
Either David Cameron is an abject moron or he (and his cronies) don't understand this whole internet thing. It's probably the latter. AFAIK, everyone who didn't grow up online doesn't seem to "get" it.