Reply to: Another badly thought out law

[Mordac]

This is being sold to the Hoi Paloi as 'Children come across it during normal browsing'. If the parents are educated in how to lock down their installation no casual browsing is unlikely to come across it.

'Most' routers now come with parental controls enabled out-of-the-box. I say 'most' because I can only vouch for Sky, Vodafone and BT (the last 3 I have had at home), but I'd be surprised if the other big players don't also do this. You have to change the settings to enable adult content, and if you've done it so you can view the naughty pages, don't be surprised when your kids decide to have a little look behind the curtain.

[d000hg]

This is being sold to the Hoi Paloi as 'Children come across it during normal browsing'. If the parents are educated in how to lock down their installation no casual browsing is unlikely to come across it.

I refer you to my previous post. Parents are also not IT savvy

Remember that most kids do most of their browsing on their mobile phone, which doesn't need to use the home WiFi. I'm not sure what the default protection settings are on mobile internet though? Although the amount of smut that can show up on routine searches even on a protected PC... image search can be quite shocking on seemingly innocuous terms!

[NigelJK]

This is being sold to the Hoi Paloi as 'Children come across it during normal browsing'. If the parents are educated in how to lock down their installation no casual browsing is unlikely to come across it.

[d000hg]

Anyone, of any age, who wants to view porn, will be able to find out how to set up a VPN connection in seconds, if they don't already know how to. This is a law designed to please Daily Mail readers, and if the MPs pressing for this don't already know that it's completely pointless, then they're idiots.

You vastly overestimate the IT capabilities of the population. How many free VPN services are there anyway, that are any good?

[Lance]

What really? I think you need to check out The Great Firewall Of China.

true. I mean that's the other thing the UK is really good at is huge, expensive publicly funded mega-projects (oh wait).

[WTFH]

This is a law designed to please Daily Mail readers, and if the MPs pressing for this don't already know that it's completely pointless, then they're idiots.

Yet if you want softcore, just go to MailOnline. Most of the front page of it is "celebrities" in bikinis and "look at how grown up she is in her revealing outfit"

[Mordac]

Porn sites will be legally required to verify users' age

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60293057

Porn websites in the UK will be legally required to verify the age of their users under new internet safety laws.

Britain is a world leader in many things, but porn isn't one of them. France does the best porn (as the late great Fleety espoused on many occasions). British porn is all dogging and women who look like Katie Price on a very bad day. My research is out of date, I hasten to add, and mostly based on the contents of MF's personal drive all those years ago .

Anyone, of any age, who wants to view porn, will be able to find out how to set up a VPN connection in seconds, if they don't already know how to. This is a law designed to please Daily Mail readers, and if the MPs pressing for this don't already know that it's completely pointless, then they're idiots.

[Eirikur]

Get a VPN and you're sorted

[NotAllThere]

the most ridiculous idea since the last time someone tried regulate the global internet with a local law.

What really? I think you need to check out The Great Firewall Of China.

[d000hg]

the most ridiculous idea since the last time someone tried regulate the global internet with a local law.

It happens all the time. We've already mentioned alcohol sales, and streaming services; another example is gambling sites.

PH isn't going to offer a free VPN service. And even if they did, needing a VPN prevents casual "I wonder what the fuss is about" browsing. You're also assuming everyone <18 knows how to set up and manage a VPN. Young people are not very tech-savvy these days (bizarrely).

[Lance]

the most ridiculous idea since the last time someone tried regulate the global internet with a local law.

As for the BBC block. That won't work as that's applied at the server end. Ofcom might try and force ISPs to enforce a block but I don't think that's in this proposed legislation.

Pornhub 'might' do an IP address check for UK then do credit card, but if they do there'll be a Pornhub VPN service advertised right next to it.
The less reputable (is there such a thing?) "content" providers will rub their hands (maybe hands) together with glee, as all Pornhub users come (ahem) flocking to them.

[d000hg]

There are age checks on sites that market alcohol - you're quite often asked to confirm that you are of legal drinking age in your country or enter a date of birth. It's very easy to bypass so one wonders what effect they have on reducing under age drinking.

Similarly, you can be under 13 and still sign up for an Instagram account by lying about your age - it's just a yes/no answer to "are you over 13" IIRC.

What is lacking is how the requirement is expected to be implemented. If it's like age checks on sites selling alcohol then it's not going to make a blind bit of difference. If the checks are more in depth then there is a potential privacy issue but it shouldn't be difficult to have an official means of independently validating your age and that system passing a yes/no token to the target site without sharing any PII.

I think the point is it won't just be a popup "are you old enough"... you'll have to provide evidence. CC is sometimes used but who wants to give their CC to a porn site "we promise you won't be charged". Online ID verifiers have become pretty widespread recently but you want to know all they are doing is verifying you meet a site's criteria, not revealing any data.

Kids can still go old-school and pinch their dad's CC/driving license of course but that in itself will hugely cut the number who dare to. Any 14yo boy is going to try to load pronhub in a private browsing window but far fewer will be prepared to use dad's ID to get in.

[ladymuck]

There are age checks on sites that market alcohol - you're quite often asked to confirm that you are of legal drinking age in your country or enter a date of birth. It's very easy to bypass so one wonders what effect they have on reducing under age drinking.

Similarly, you can be under 13 and still sign up for an Instagram account by lying about your age - it's just a yes/no answer to "are you over 13" IIRC.

What is lacking is how the requirement is expected to be implemented. If it's like age checks on sites selling alcohol then it's not going to make a blind bit of difference. If the checks are more in depth then there is a potential privacy issue but it shouldn't be difficult to have an official means of independently validating your age and that system passing a yes/no token to the target site without sharing any PII.

[NotAllThere]

My penny's worth is that I am not into porn as I like the real thing. However, the law will drive soft porn users to use the dark net and could encourage hard porn.

That's right, and if you try to enforce checks on age for people buying alcohol and thus reduce the ease at which under 18s can acquire it, you'll just end up with teenagers running stills in their own bedrooms, and thus encourage alcoholism.

Or maybe, if you make it a little more difficult, fewer kids will bother.

If kids really want porn, they'll get access to it. The trick is to stop them getting into it in the first place. At least until they're old enough that it doesn't warp their understanding of real human sexual relationships.

[d000hg]

My penny's worth is that I am not into porn as I like the real thing. However, the law will drive soft porn users to use the dark net and could encourage hard porn.

I thought all these sites were full of hard stuff anyway? You see it talked about quite a lot that the very first porn any kid sees - even on a mainstream site - is likely to be something pretty hardcore, they'd have to actively try harder to find soft stuff. There's a word for it but basically extreme has become the norm. Suppose it depends what you consider soft/hard though?

Given PornHub is the most used site in the world, with a global network. How that going to work?

A bit like Amazon you mean? With the desire to be seen as respectable comes the requirement to follow national laws. They were in the news a while back for removing a huge swath of content that was 'harmful'... possible revenge porn IIRC?

The argument "you can get around these things" shows a failure in understanding. You can get around most laws if you try hard, but there's a big difference between just being able to open a URL as a curious kid, and having to install a VPN or whatever first. Same as how you might buy pot from a seedy guy in a pub but you aren't going to make a trip to some gangland to do so.