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posted by martyb on Thursday November 30 2017, @08:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-are-watching-you-watching-them dept.

UK age verification legislation will lead to a porn habit database (archive)

The country is eager to protect children from porn. It's a worthy goal, mind you, given that research shows that exposing kids to porn can be damaging. Unfortunately, it's a quixotic goal, given that porn is impossible to block. Nevertheless, the UK is now on the brink of creating a database of the country's porn habits.

It also seems poised to hand the age verification piece of that puzzle over to an outfit that Vice refers to as "the shady company that controls the majority of free porn tube sites." That company is called MindGeek. Vice likens it to the Walmart of porn. Britain's leading obscenity lawyer, Myles Jackman, says it supposedly owns about 90% of tube sites on the internet, and it didn't get that way by making friends in the industry.

[...] And now, MindGeek, the WalMart of porn, is getting ready to become even more filthy rich by having maneuvered itself into the position of becoming gatekeeper for consumers of porn, be they adults or kids who don't know how to use a virtual private network (VPN). It's not a done deal quite yet, but MindGeek has had several conversations with officials. It's also currently pushing its own age verification platform, AgeID. If selected, Britons could be dealing with AgeID as the principal gate between themselves and their porn.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday December 01 2017, @03:11AM (4 children)

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Friday December 01 2017, @03:11AM (#603779)

    Pass a law requiring all porn sites to identify themselves with a special HTTP header (X-XXX-Content?) or an analog for non-HTTP distribution.

    That solution is only marginally less bad. Responsibility does not fall upon me to make it easier for you to identify content you find offensive. Why not expand this to other areas and not just porn? If your website is pushing a Christian agenda, then you have to identify yourself with a special HTTP header so that people can block your nonsense more easily. Somehow, I don't think that would be accepted. It's up to the developers of filtering software to figure out ways to block certain content; it's not up to other people to make it easy for them.

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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday December 01 2017, @02:55PM (3 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Friday December 01 2017, @02:55PM (#603911)

    Democratic societies are free to make a majority decision as to which content types need to be labelled. And if the filtering software has to play a cat-and-mouse game like ad blockers do, it will never be good enough, because when something makes it through the filter, the consumer is probably not going to complain.

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    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday December 04 2017, @09:09AM (2 children)

      by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Monday December 04 2017, @09:09AM (#604953)

      Democratic societies are free to make a majority decision as to which content types need to be labelled.

      They're also "free" to make certain minorities into slaves, as we saw in the past. But the fact that they can do this doesn't mean that it is ethical. The majority should not be able to violate fundamental liberties such as freedom of speech. And it is a speech issue, because there would be punishments handed out for not presenting your website in a way that the government deems desirable.

      You offered no justification beyond popularity, and that is why you fail.

      And if the filtering software has to play a cat-and-mouse game like ad blockers do, it will never be good enough, because when something makes it through the filter, the consumer is probably not going to complain.

      I don't care. That's an issue for the oversensitive people to try to solve for themselves.

      • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday December 04 2017, @03:01PM (1 child)

        by meustrus (4961) on Monday December 04 2017, @03:01PM (#605067)

        So is your argument that content labeling is an evil equivalent to slavery? Or are you merely pointing out that the same argument can lead to slavery in the absence of ethics? There's a lot of evil that we can do within the current political system. If you want to fix it, I suggest you stop complaining about unobjectionable proposals like requiring accurate labels for things and go to work on real ethics violations like mass surveillance, corrupt campaign finance, and eminent domain abuse, or if you want to go international, there's plenty of genocide out there that still needs eliminating.

        Meanwhile, the rest of us can have a less sensationalist conversation about how to solve comparatively minor problems like this, since that's apparently the only kind of problem we can solve.

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        If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
        • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday December 05 2017, @01:23AM

          by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday December 05 2017, @01:23AM (#605450)

          So is your argument that content labeling is an evil equivalent to slavery?

          No, my argument was that, even in democratic societies, the majority should definitely not have absolute power because that can lead to things like slavery and violating free speech rights. It may be the case that if the thuggish, foolish, and unprincipled majority wants something desperately, then it's going to happen no matter what, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.

          If you want to fix it, I suggest you stop complaining about unobjectionable proposals like requiring accurate labels for things

          I don't find it unobjectionable. Telling me to give up on things that I care about is not exactly convincing. For one thing, it's not really an opposition to putting labels on things in general, but an opposition to specific proposals like yours that would necessarily conflict with free speech.

          And the proposal you put forth is not something that has been implemented yet, so it's by no means an inevitability.

          and go to work on real ethics violations like mass surveillance, corrupt campaign finance, and eminent domain abuse, or if you want to go international, there's plenty of genocide out there that still needs eliminating.

          I already oppose all of those things. That sort of whataboutism isn't going to work. I'm not just going to focus entirely on those other things and ignore the government when it tries to violate my rights in other ways. For now, I'd rather discuss why it is ethically justifiable to mandate that pornography sites be labeled so as to be easily identified by filtering software, and why it would not be justifiable to make such requirements for other types of speech (like pro-Islam speech, etc.). Just because the majority wants the requirement for one type of speech but not others? Is that really it? That logic could be used to justify any number of intolerable policies. Should it be done because some people find the content offensive and would prefer that it be easier to block? That could apply to any speech.