Welp. Cameron’s done it. Bent over backwards to introduce unworkable, unrelated policies in a confused mess designed to appeal to comfort traditional Tory Middle-Class Daily Mail reading idiots I mean, voters.
So let’s look at the proposals he has outlined.
- A ‘crackdown’ on those accessing child pornography/ child abuse images.
- Internet Filters that will by default block access to all pornography on those using residential ISPs.
- The criminalisation of simulated rape pornography.
The crackdown.
I don’t think many people would disagree with child sexual abuse being absolutely disgusting. My mum was a Special Educational Needs teacher, and she has worked with children who have been abused. It is so wrong the damage it can do to them. That out of the way, let’s have a look at this
The way this is currently handled is you have CEOP, a branch of the police, who track down the people committing the abuse, rescue children, and find people who are viewing the content. You have the IWF, an independent charity who handle reports of child abuse images submitted by the public. They create the blacklist of URLs that is passed to search engines and ISPs to block access, and filter out those pages containing the content. They also forward information to CEOP and equivalent agencies worldwide after deeming content to be potentially illegal.
The proposals include getting search engines to redirect results, so someone searching for “child sex” for example, might get results for “child sex education”. There will also be pages displayed when someone tries to access a page blocked under this scheme that will warn them that looking for such material is a criminal offence. I imagine it would look similar to the ICE notice placed on seized domains by the US Government.
The thing here though, is that Google (and most other search engines) already remove results pointing to child abuse imagery. My thoughts on the IWF being the determiners for what gets blocked (which they already do) are long enough for another blog post – but suffice it to say, I’m not sure that an independent, unaccountable charity should have “special permission” to view and classify the images without any form of oversight – especially as it’s generally hard to work out that something has been blocked – See the Wikipedia Blocking Fiasco. I have another point about the effectiveness of blocking content – but that will be the main thrust of the next section.
Blocking of Pornography
So, the second issue is the implementation of filters on Residential UK Broadband connections that will prohibit access to porn, should the account holder not opt-out of the blocks. This is a further example of how our internet use is getting more and more restricted over time. First they had CleanFeed, which blocked the IWFs list. Then they blocked The Pirate Bay and other similar sites. Now they want to block Pornography (albeit on an opt-out basis for the moment).
So, firstly what is pornography? Images of oral, anal or vaginal sex? How about “Kink” images of bondage, where no genitalia are visible? Pictures of female breasts? Cameron has already announced that Page 3 won’t be blocked.
How about the written word – many fan-fiction pieces get very steamy, not to mention the entire erotica bookcase at your local bookshop (or Sainsburys).
Of course, our mobile internet connections are already filtered by default – so we can look at those to see what will be blocked. “User-generated content sites”. Oh yes, I suppose they could contain pornography. Reddit in fact has many sub-reddits dedicated to such things. ISPs have even indicated that categories such as “anorexia”, “web forums:” and even “esoteric content” may be blocked. Of course, one natural side effect of that will be the (accidental) blocking of sexual education resources. No filter is 100% perfect, so it’s inevitable that sites will get blocked. We can look at what mobile operators have blocked “by mistake” in the past – a church website blocked as adult, a political opinion blog(!) and even eHow – a site that posts tutorials and educates on how to do everyday things.
This is to say nothing of the LGBT websites that might be blocked – vital resources for any person questioning their gender or sexuality – but especially for young people who may not feel comfortable talking with their parents about these things. This by itself will actively cause harm (if these proposals didn’t cause harm I wouldn’t be so strongly against them), but there is further harm to come from these – parental complacency.
There are bad parents. There are parents who don’t communicate with their children. We all know they exist. And any right minded parent would fear their children seeing something on the internet that they weren’t ready to see. But these filters will make parents think their kids are “safe”. That they don’t need to talk with their kids about sex, about things they might see on the internet, that they don’t need to use the internet with their children. So when children do stumble across adult content, they’ll be even less prepared to talk about it. And these filters suppose one thing – that the children are less tech-savvy than those writing the filters. Anyone who has worked with children, or works in Computer Software will know how fast kids adapt to new technology. Those older children who do want to seek out this material aren’t stupid. They’ll know how to get around these filters – unless you want to block searches for proxies (or VPNs for those more technically inclined). And all the time the parents will think their kids are safe, and wrapped securely in cotton wool. This is possibly one of the most damaging effects.
Simulated Rape Pornography
The final measure announced in this slate of news was the criminalisation of simulated rape pornography – aiming to close a loophole in Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act – affectionately known as the “Extreme Porn Law”. To be clear this proposal is talking about the banning of consensual, fictional “rape-play” images. For context – studies from the late 70s and 80s have shown that the idea of forced sex is one of the most common fantasies. Somewhat amusingly this announcement came shortly after the Crown Prosecution Service had adjusted the prosecution guidelines for offences under this act.
To try and criminalise images of consensual, legal things is utter madness. My objections to this are very much the same as my objections to the original section of the act. It makes the assumption that we are unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality. It makes the assumption that there is evidence of harm by looking at consensual images. We’re happy to let people run around and kill simulated people, but to watch a consensual act is somehow damaging. To me this stems from our cultures attitude towards sex in general. Which is that it’s something to be done behind closed doors, without disturbing the neighbours, and without discussing it afterwards. To something so natural, that’s a very weird attitude. It, incidentally, is the same reason I believe the pornography-blocking proposals will cause harm.
Summary
Overall, these proposals are terrible. They won’t work, they’ll cause actual harm, and they’ll make people with common fantasies feel victimised.
You can sign the OpenRightsGroup petition here, and a DirectGov ePetition here – although neither address the criminalisation of simulated rape.
