> A single search can now land you on a government list of accused pedophiles.
Also, I foresee a sudden rise in rickrolling along the line of:
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=kiddy+porn">Funny Cat Video!</a>Anyone googled "santorum" recently? The Wikipedia article has a nice rundown on how a US Senator's name ended up thus: 'The word santorum, as defined, has been characterized as "obscene", "unfit to print", or "vulgar".'
I eagerly await the day a Google image search for "David Cameron" starts returning furry-rape-sex pictures, and "Conservative Party" some even more "abhorrent" & "illegal material".
That law is pointless. You're supposed to use Internet searches as bait as long as it works, not force criminals to create a new language immediately! There were paedophiles before the Internet! And I question the idea that porn makes children go paedophiles to begin with, which I understand this "Think of the children" argument builds on.
<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%6b%69%64%64%79%20%70%6f%72%6e">Funny Cat Video!</a>
The other day I used Google to find info about a movie called "How to Make Money Selling Drugs"[1]. As I typed the words, I thought to myself "I hope that doesn't get me on a government list." I can't imagine having to think twice before Googling "Lolita"[2].
[1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276962/reference [2]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056193/reference
https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges#RunningABridge
Honestly though, "Tor user" will probably remain an interesting / valuable (by their standards) enough heuristic for a long time to come.
- Long term unemployment is at a 17 year high.
- Government debt is at 90 percent of GDP.
- Violent crimes is worst in EU.
For years Britain has feared loosing sovereignty to the European Union. To me it seems like they should maybe worry more about American influence with all the wars they fight, the spying on their citizens and now the neo puritanism.
To fix the above, or to push through moralistic laws that will keep the media busy and get positive treatment in papers like Daily Mail to draw attention away from the problems?
If we get that far, I'll also throw 10k towards darknet infrastructure if someone comes up with a viable project.
Rates of murder and violent crime have fallen more rapidly in the UK in the past decade than many other countries in Western Europe http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22275280
Homicide rate is less than loads of EU countries (and Canada!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...
At 1.2 the UK still has higher murder rate than most of its neighboring countries: Germany (0.8), Denmark (0.9), Norway (0.6), the Netherlands (1.1), France (1.1). In that end of Europe, only Belgium (1.7) and Ireland (1.2) is doing worse or equally bad.
The "loads of" EU countries doing worse are mainly some of the new member states from Eastern European, which are much poorer than the UK. Only Belgium and Finland seem like countries the UK would like to compare themselves to that are actually doing worse.
If you'd like to reword your comment to "UK violent crime is worst in an ad-hoc collection of countries I've decided on" I'll withdraw my comment.
Describing debt as percentage of GDP is a subjective anti-debt framing of the issue. Here's why:
Units of debt: $ (here pounds). Units of GDP: $/year. So, units of debt/GDP: years, not percent.
Since "100%" sounds like a high number, this way of framing the numbers is useful for scaring people. Putting it mathematically correct "11 months" sounds much less scary.
> Putting it mathematically correct "11 months" sounds much less scary.
Yes, and for exactly this reason it's dishonest: It implies that you could, if you wanted, repay the debt in 11 months - which is impossible.
Anyway, 90% debt is only scary if we decide that there is a threshold below 90% that is un-scary. If the threshold was 150%, then Greece is scary but UK isn't. If it's 10% then everywhere is scary.
Personally, I'm more scared and/or outraged by the way the money is wasted than by the exact size of the debt.
Now, I'm not really replying to you as such, but I don't quite understand the alarmism over, say, a debt of 100% of GDP.
UK tax revenues are 39% of GDP (so, very naïvely, the government's "income") and with a debt of 90% of GDP, that's 2.3x income. Or a typical £25k earner having a long term debt, like a mortgage, of £57.5k.
I confess this is an extremely naïve analysis since personal and government budgets are chalk and cheese, but it doesn't strike me, as a taxpayer, as being a number to get alarmed over. Or am I totally missing something?
It does not imply that. It's simply the mathematical truth of the units. I'm arguing that using percent is factually _false_, with as aim scaring people. I prefer truthful facts with explanation. Feel free to use a different thing than debt/GDP, but don't use something that's equivalent to claiming that 1+1=3.
When you put debt as a percentage of GDP, it is understood to mean the "size" of the debt, with the implied "size" of 100% being bad (whether this is true or not, i m not sure).
Why would that be Britain's problem ?
> Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With this on the books, it seems a short hop to outlaw videos of simulated murder.
Even without such an extension, aren't there plenty of Hollywood movies which include "scenes of simulated rape"?
Still, it's a handy way to tar anyone complaining about online survellience as a rape-loving pedophile.
We'll have to see for sure, but it seems to suggest that the legislation only applies to videos that couldn't even get R18 (sex-shop only) rated - but I would have thought possession of those was illegal anyway.
There are a ton of films, legally classified as 18 in the UK, that have scenes that graphically depict simulated rape, torture, murder, and so on.
> Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces, or rapes, Leda. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta.
I suspect that films (girl with the dragon tattoo springs to mind) would not be subject to it because they aren't presenting the rape as sexual; it is seen as a crime in the film, which isn't primarily a film about rape/sex (obviously I can't speak for all films.)
The grey area and line drawing are a problem with laws like this, though, as several people have pointed out - I am sure there are films (horrible ones that I haven't seen) that come close to glorifying rape, or depicting it as desirable/sexual - whether those would be part of the law would be up to either parliament to specify, or up to the courts to decide later in case law.
Most folks I know who have actually watched it think it's horrific (at least in parts). It was banned for a long time due (IIRC) to the fact that you could watch it 'straight' and see it as glorifying all sorts of stuff. Especially when you take into account that the second half of the film is about government conditioning and then un-conditioning our anti-hero, so that by the end he's once again able to commit atrocities.
There are tricky cases of defensible portrayals of sex involving children, e.g. Schlöndorff's adaptation of The Tin Drum (which was banned in Canada as child pornography), and narratives that document the child sex industry, but they are rare by comparison. With artistically and morally defensible portrayals of rape, the range is huge. sspiff mentions A Clockwork Orange; even Jeffrey Archer (former senior Tory politician) wrote a novel with a rape scene. I also recall that when Virginia Bottomley (another former senior Tory politician) was asked to name her favourite film, she named Hitchcock's Rear Window, which is quite voyeuristic, and Hitchcock has filmed what I would class as morally indefensible rape scenes. The idea that moral guardians go about forbidding various classes of transgressive art forms that they themselves admit to enjoying is quite ironic.
For the sake of having some sort of a list: Bandit Queen, Deliverance, and Leaving Las Vegas all have hard-to-watch, defensible, and narratively necessary rape scenes. The victim in Bandit Queen I think was supposed to be prepubescent. And didn't Slumdog Millionaire have a child rape scene?
[1] http://health.india.com/diseases-conditions/international-wo...
He knows what he's doing and there's no reason to expect him to acknowledge the "side-effects" of an evil regulation.
And the reporter is not responsible for realizing this; you are.
If you really require me to be explicit, I can spell it out for you:
* Each person has an individual responsibility to realize such things for their self via critical thinking.
* A reporter has no legal responsibility to uphold journalistic principals.
* A reporter should have an ethical responsibility to uphold journalistic principals.
This, to me, is the equivalent of victim-blaming:
You walk past a dark alley and see someone being
assaulted. You are under no legal obligation to
help the person, therefore you do not help the
person. The person has no right to be angry at
you because they should have been responsible
for *their own* safety and shouldn't rely on
anyone else. The person being assaulted is the
person that is *really* at fault because they
failed to protect their own personal safety.[1] Couldn't think of a better way of putting it. I'm not saying that you're stating that sentiment directly.
It's easy to blame the reader when what you read is "too good to be true" or "so obvious that it's not", but when a fabrication makes its way into a rather respected journal, or when a more or less respected author gets something unusually wrong (which you're not clever enough to spot because it's not your expertise), then one can't be blamed to have believed it in the first place.
Win votes. That's the definition of success in politics.
They're not ignorant to the outcome here - it's exactly what they want and has been planned that way.
This is a serious fucking power grab.
> This is a serious fucking power grab.
* They realize it could be used for bad in the future, but they have delusions of, "bad things couldn't happen here." [ Sort of like the idea in America that, "Fascism could never happen here." ]
* They are more comfortable with creating said power because they are currently in control of it, and are short-sighted enough to not realize that this won't always be the case (i.e. the 'government' will control it, but they aren't guaranteed to be a part of the government).
The next step will be court sanctioned page blocks against the terrorists followed by the usual propaganda in the shite rags...
That should instantly disqualify them from a career in politics!
Probably in the same fantasy land where the parent described "every outcome" of the law, instead of just a few. If you wanna employ "hilarious" and "snark" better first get what the other guy said right.
I'm not even sure what your snark is supposed to be based on.
For one, nobody above claimed they can predict "every outcome" of a law.
Second, of course we can we can predict SOME outcomes of a law before it gets issued. Often times, we can even tell that a law is good or bad before it gets issued.
Predicting the outcome of laws is what the legislation process itself is based on: in the idea that the legislators draft laws in the way that they _predict_ will bring upon a possitive outcome. They don't draft random statements and see what sticks.
Now, because a lot of stuff can hamper the legislators (e.g private interests, appeal to get votes, ideology and partisan politics, fad moral opinions etc), a lot of times the public can tell a law is crap even before it gets issued.
LOL. On my Twitter account I have a public list for porn. It used to be a private list but most of those girls are pretty cool so there's no reason to be ashamed.
I'm not a public figure of course but I think this shame toward sexuality is a generational thing. It's only taboo for older people.
It's not widely advertised because they'd like to claim such a thing is impossible, to avoid the music industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_sys...
Edit: The harm is combining such a database with broad internet surveillance. Also, since the database is only hashes, false positives are likely. YouTube, who probably has the best content matching algorithms, can't even get it right all the time.
Commonly used hash algorithms are too rigid. A detection system shouldn't be bypassed just when a single bit gets flipped in a large file. The algorithm need to be fault tolerant, give few hash collision, and be proven by the passage of time. This of course a contradiction in terms.
It also need to be maintained and safe guarded against abuse. Who will watch the watchers, and how do we control what gets defined as offending images if there is no public reviews?
How is legal rights handled? How should appeals be handled, and peoples right to face ones accuser.
How do we control scope creep so "unwanted" political competition don't get suppressed under anti-propaganda laws? How is the slippery slope argument handled?
And last... but far from least, is the classical argument of 20th century political environment: Practicality. What does the cost-benefit analyses say about such filters and databases. Is the maintenance that those databases require cost more than they provide to society? What other options has been thought of, and how does the databases compare in efficiency and cost?
So if we think about it, maybe the harms are not that well hidden.
[1]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120806/11053019945/curio...
Can we expect films such as "I Spit On Your Grave" and "Once Upon a Time in America" to become illegal also?
I'm no lawyer, but it already is, if they're in a pornographic "context": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_63_of_the_Criminal_Just...
This 2008 act outlaws possessing or publishing explicit and realistic imagery of acts that threaten life, would cause serious injury to certain genitals, etc.
So fisting, simulated murder, or simulated necrophilia.. already illegal. Rape, borderline allowable, although if I were a lawyer testing this act in court, I'd say that rape is quite clearly an act that is "likely to result" in "serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals".
Actually there was a case in 2012 of someone tried under this law for having fisting videos. They weren't convicted. This is strong evidence (and precedent) that fisting per se would not fall under this law.
That it even made it to court meant there was a case to answer but the actual outcomes seem to be more sane and based on the context than the law itself.
I believe the crux was that the law said it was illegal to have porn that showed damage to the anus, so does fisting fall into that category or not? The outcome was no, fisting doesn't count as damage to the anus. The "stupid law" wasn't ignored, it wasn't a case of "people using their own moral compasses", it was a jury & judge interpreting a law, like normal.
That it even made it to court meant there was a case to answer
The cynic is me notices that the accused was a lawyer who helped prosecute corrupt police officers.
Which includes pretty much every action movie these days. Maybe the irony will be that Hollywood will step up with a campaign to fight this, because they see it as an eventual threat to their bottom line.
Actually it's the common person I'm more worried about. Applying to work as a teacher? They might ask you (or the Government body with the details) if you watch porn. "We can't let someone who watches porn teach 5 year olds!" will be the excuse.
> Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own.
This is already the case in the UK, with violent and extreme pornography, a new law that (I don't think) has any convictions yet.
> it seems a short hop to outlaw videos of simulated murder.
Again, other way around. They made porn of that technically illegal a few years ago AFAIR,
Perhaps they could do that with blue movies :)
"If you've been fucked in the eyesocket"...
[1]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/australian_por...
These filters are just an inconvenience, and if your child is too stupid to work around them then you've got worse problems.
Edit: You're free to cite examples of children who "aren't that lucky" and had their upbringing maliciously altered by viewing internet pornography.
My son is four. He watches a lot of stuff I was never allowed to as a child. He acts out scenes of decapitations with swords, for example, while playing. When his mom and I occasionally gasp or ask him to tone it down because we think it's going a bit far he goes "it's only pretend" with a condescending voice, as if we must be the stupidest people around to not realise that these things are just fantasy.
But if we as much as raise our voices to each other, he gets upset, tells us off and demands an explanation and wants to know who is angry at whom and why. Once we had an argument before his bedtime, and I left the room. The following night he wanted assurances from me that we were not going to argue again before I was allowed to sit down by his bed. He also understands well enough that so much as raising a hand at someone is unacceptable to the extent that when he is really upset, he has experimented with using the threat of it to try to get a reaction out of us (e.g. sitting on the sofa and calmly saying "I am going to hit you"). None of the stuff he's seeing in movies or his cartoons etc. has ever "crossed over" to non-play/fantasy situations.
I don't worry about movies. I worry about advertising. He can tell movies are fantasy because of how it is portrayed, but advertising makes claims intended to be believed, and from what I see it's effect is far stronger. Thankfully he's learned to detest advertising, and now get upset if we watch live TV because he wants to fast forward past it...
> Do you have kids?
These declarations will only be used to shame public figures once the list is leaked.
> The possession of "extreme pornography", which includes scenes of simulated rape, is to be outlawed.
Video footage of two consenting adults, acting out a scene, will be illegal to own. With this on the books, it seems a short hop to outlaw videos of simulated murder.
> The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) is to draw up a blacklist of "abhorrent" internet search terms to identify and prevent paedophiles searching for illegal material.
A single search can now land you on a government list of accused pedophiles.
Yikes.