This is such an interesting concept, in some ways I completely disagree with it and in other ways I think this is absolutely the right thing to do.
Disagree:
- Goodbye to freedom of information and freedom of speech.
- This is punishing people who aren't causing a problem to make a ham fisted effort at restricting those who are the problem. You think would-be-rapists and paedophiles are just using Google to find all their pornography? They share things through private networks and swapping stuff on memory sticks, this isn't going to stop that, it's just going to make things more difficult for them and they'll get more creative.
- People who just watch good old fashion (:laugh:) porn are going to start breaking the law too. They say it'll be up to the internet user to decide, but how many households do you think are going to sit down over dinner and ask their kids/teenagers/partners "so are we going to say yes to porn or not?" It's just ludicrous. If you want to watch porn, you're going to find porn. There are more porn websites than anything else on the internet. People might laugh, but it's every bit as bad as China blocking Google search terms and social networking sites.
- This is such a backwards step for so many rights movements - suddenly we're repressing people and telling them they can't express themselves? Thatcher wanted a return to Victorian values and Cameron's going one further by actually making it happen. And you know the thing about the Victorians? They were total perverts; STDs were rampant and so were the sex lives. People can argue that porn teaches unrealistic expectations about sex - but for the love of God, it's far more informative than an awkward shuffling Biology teacher explaining what sexual intercourse is in cold, hard terminology that teenagers don't relate to.
- We should have better sex education, not trying to make the problem go away by hiding all the magazines under the bed and putting all the videos on cyber ban.
- How many 'illegal' porn networks are going to pop up to provide people with videos of a man and a woman having sex? How many hilariously ridiculous arrests are we going to see sprawled across the news? What if you post a picture of yourself naked online? Are you a criminal, or is someone a criminal for viewing your picture? What if you deem something as artistic and someone else deems it as pornographic?
- I've seen a few people say it should be up to the parents to restrict access to materials and some parents say they can't control this sort of thing - don't give your kids smart phones with internet access then. Turn your router off at night - if you search for porn on 3G, the phone provider blocks it and asks you to confirm your age and charges you to access adult material. As a 21 year old male, I have every right to go out and have sex with whoever I want (over the age of consent, obviously), whenever I (and they, I'm not a rapist, despite what anti-porn advocates might have you think) want and I think it's ridiculous that I can do it myself, but I'm not allowed to watch a video of it?! It's like cinema ratings - you're old enough to get married and have kids and a full time job when you're 16, yet you're apparently not old enough to watch sex scenes in 18 films. So you can do it, you just can't watch other people do it? Where's the common sense?
On the other hand...
Agree:
- The internet has been a lawless place for more than a decade and I think the time has now finally come to try and regulate it a lot better. People have abused and corrupted it to the point where criminal activities are taking place online all the time and the police struggle to cope. We have seen a rise in online crime and a similar rise in arrests and legal action brought against people who have committed crimes online. A lot of people don't treat the internet in the same way they treat the rest of their every day existence. How many times do we, on this very site, refer to our "real life", aka off-site life or non-virtual life, as somehow being a separate, more serious entity? The internet has become an extension of our every day lives but people don't really see it that way. To us, it's one thing to say or do something online (slag someone off, watch extreme pornography) and another thing to do it offline (you might freely criticise something on the internet but you would never do it in real life (depending on what it is, obviously), you might watch a video depicting hardcore sex but you would never dream of doing it yourself) and that separation of online and offline is somehow also "serious" and "not serious" to us. That attitude needs to change with the times. The internet may be virtual but it is still very real and every bit as accountable as your actions in real life.
- Porn does give us unrealistic expectations and exposes us to extreme behaviour that we perhaps would never have even dreamed of had we not seen it online. This is particularly true for young people who may have been watching porn for years before they ever came into contact with an actual human being who wanted to have sex with them. It's probably not great having an impressionable 16 year old boy thinking it's totally acceptable to live out a "rape fantasy" with a girl. A "rape fantasy" come true - what does that make it in real terms? A boy acting like the porn actors he sees in a simulated rape video with a girl... do we call a spade a spade? How do we deal with situations like that? There's a huge amount of amateur porn, home videos, masturbation videos and all that's in between; can we say it teaches people unrealistic attitudes towards sex if their attitudes towards sex are safely being carried out and are their reality, or is that problematic? Certainly there's a rape culture around the world and pornography surely doesn't help that in any way.
- There needs to be some kind of way of monitoring people's online activities without resorting to spying on them; but the very nature of the internet makes that difficult if not impossible. Is this measure the best way to deal with it?
Conclusion:
- Something does need to be done about sexual predators and the internet. It's a complicated relationship - but we have to take a moment to get some perspective. This is the political equivalent of sweeping the problem under the carpet. ISPs can cut people off from viewing adult material, but it doesn't stop that adult material from existing. They're just cutting out the middle man here, the main distribution network. People will find other ways to get illegal porn to people who want it. And with 'rape porn' (short of an actual rape being filmed - this ISN'T a real rape, it's a simulation of rape with two or more actors/actresses who are being paid to play a role) - there's an unspoken assumption here that anyone watching such a video is a rapist in the making. People are curious. We read shocking headlines, we have tabloid culture, we love seeing paparazzi photos that show the dark side of humanity - porn is no different. How many of us have watched shock porn like 2 Girls 1 Cup, not for sexual gratification, but just to see how gruesome it is and be 'in on the joke' among people you know who say how shocking it is? Porn is mostly about curiosity more than anything. If you've never had sex, you want to know what you're doing before you actually get to meet a real live man or woman, surely? Surely, to any parents on here, you'd rather your kids were watching porn and seeing things like condoms go on and them seeing how the body works; rather than being clueless and hormonal - a recipe for disaster. How is this law even going to work? Are people going to be arrested if they possess ANY kind of pornography? Are people going to be arrested for bypassing their ISP block to watch porn that doesn't violate any decency laws? Referring back to an earlier point I made - what if, taking myself as an example, my parents choose to block porn and I, a legal adult, want to watch porn - how is that going to work? I can't watch it in a public place like a library because that's not allowed (and would be really weird); I can't watch it at home because my parents have opted to block it; so where can I watch it? Do I go to a friend's house and watch it there? Am I breaking the law because I'm not part of the household that opted to allow it, or is that allowed? There is just no feasible way to make this happen without turning us into a "1984" style police state. I think the law came from an honest place but, as per usual, it's been badly thought out (or not thought out at all) and it's laughable. Of course, above all else, men are going to be dubbed perverts for wanting to keep it and women are going to be branded feminists for wanting to ban it and anyone from either gender taking the opposite view will be ridiculed or slated for having that view. This is going to inspire so many debates about gender, sexuality, freedom of expression, human rights, criminal laws and a whole lot of other issues...
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