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from the what's-non-conventional-to-you-is-a-turn-on-to-me dept.
Web users in the UK will be banned from accessing websites portraying a range of non-conventional sexual acts, under a little discussed clause to a government bill currently going through parliament.
The proposal, part of the digital economy bill, would force internet service providers to block sites hosting content that would not be certified for commercial DVD sale by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).
[...] Pictures and videos that show spanking, whipping or caning that leaves marks, and sex acts involving urination, female ejaculation or menstruation as well as sex in public are likely to be caught by the ban – in effect turning back the clock on Britain's censorship regime to the pre-internet era.
The scale of the restrictions only became apparent after the BBFC, which has since 1984 been empowered to classify videos for commercial hire or sale, agreed to become the online age verification regulator last month. A spokeswoman for the BBFC said it would also check whether sites host "pornographic content that we would refuse to classify".
[...] . A spokesman for DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport] said the government's aim is to ensure that the same "rules and safeguards" that exist in the physical world also apply online.
Source: The Guardian
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fritsd on Saturday November 26 2016, @09:42PM
Ask yourself: what is the purpose of this new law? How is it going to be enforced? Oh it will be necessary to analyze everyone's internet habits, you say? Well I'm not sure if Prime Minister Theresa May likes that sort of policy, she's *never* been into snooping [wikipedia.org] ;-)
An important step towards a police state is, that almost everybody has broken the law.
The police won't arrest *everybody* for peccadilloes, the important thing is that they *can if they want to*.
It doesn't matter anymore if you feel like you've done nothing wrong; the police will have the power and authority to decide what to do with you, regardless. You must be guilty of something, with all those new laws.
This changes the nature of the police force over time: it will attract the kind of people who like to work in such an environment (also in the HR department, i.e. recruiting of the next generation police oficers).
And when the composition of the police changes for the worse, it will repel the kind of "law and order" people that believe things should be mostly done by the (law-)book and common sense. Instead of law and order, you'll get only order.