No Porn Please, We're British

[ronmcd]

I think you'll find it's pretty obviously distinguishable from the real thing. Real rape victims don't tend to have the foresight to set a video up in their home to capture the whole thing.

The production values may be distinguishable. The acts may not.

Er, what? People acting out a rape scenario is obviously an extremely different thing from someone actually being raped. Hence why one is not a crime while the other is.

Patently they are an extremely different thing. But are they distinguishable (beyond the production values)?

[Beatsong]

I'm unsure of my own view, to be frank, but I suppose I would ask this question: if someone were able to create 100% realistic child porn without their being a child involved (dont ask me how, Ive no idea) and pedos searched the material out ... would you ban that material, and make it illegal to own? You could surely argue the material itself, apparently depicting something not consensual or legal, in explicit detail, made to appeal to the sickos ... it would be harmful in it's own right, as harmful in a societal sense even if no child was involved. On that basis, wouldnt violent rape porn potentially be the same?

Actually I'm not convinced there is much of an argument that such material is "harmful in its own right". it would certainly require more evidence than has been found to date to show that it is.

It's an interesting question - there was a thread about that very subject years ago on ratskep, or might even have been the RDF forum. I came away thinking that the answer was no - if someone could create 100% artificially generated porn depicting children, that never had anything to do with any real child being involved in its production, people should be free to look at it as much as they like.

The problem I see with rape porn is maintaining sufficient transparency in the industry to ensure that none of it is ACTUAL rape. That might be theoretically possible if you were dealing with a nation-bound industry, but with the international nature of internet porn and some of it coming from all kinds of countries, it's just impossible. It then seems to me reasonable to argue for imposing upon the freedoms of some consumers to watch simulated rape porn, in order to draw a clear enough line against the dissemination of actual rape porn. It's an end-justifies-the-means argument, but maybe a valid one.

[Strontium Dog]

I think you'll find it's pretty obviously distinguishable from the real thing. Real rape victims don't tend to have the foresight to set a video up in their home to capture the whole thing.

The production values may be distinguishable. The acts may not.

Er, what? People acting out a rape scenario is obviously an extremely different thing from someone actually being raped. Hence why one is not a crime while the other is.

Patently they are an extremely different thing. But are they distinguishable (beyond the production values)?

I believe they would be extremely distinguishable; I couldn't imagine that actual rapes would be watermarked with the porn studio that filmed them, for instance.

The problem I see with rape porn is maintaining sufficient transparency in the industry to ensure that none of it is ACTUAL rape. That might be theoretically possible if you were dealing with a nation-bound industry, but with the international nature of internet porn and some of it coming from all kinds of countries, it's just impossible. It then seems to me reasonable to argue for imposing upon the freedoms of some consumers to watch simulated rape porn, in order to draw a clear enough line against the dissemination of actual rape porn. It's an end-justifies-the-means argument, but maybe a valid one.

This seems to be an argument for banning all porn, because how can you be certain that the performer hasn't been coerced into it.

In almost two decades on the Internet, I've never seen any child porn or real rape porn. It's nearly impossible to see this stuff unless you're actively looking for it, which is something that is rarely mentioned. To listen to some people one would think you have to wade through gigabytes of dodgy stuff to get to the innocent porn, when the reality is you need to try very hard to be exposed to anything so bad.

[ronmcd]

I think you'll find it's pretty obviously distinguishable from the real thing. Real rape victims don't tend to have the foresight to set a video up in their home to capture the whole thing.

The production values may be distinguishable. The acts may not.

Er, what? People acting out a rape scenario is obviously an extremely different thing from someone actually being raped. Hence why one is not a crime while the other is.

Patently they are an extremely different thing. But are they distinguishable (beyond the production values)?

I believe they would be extremely distinguishable; I couldn't imagine that actual rapes would be watermarked with the porn studio that filmed them, for instance.

Yeah, that would be part of what I referred to as "production values". But the ACTS.

The ACTS.

ACTS.

[Collector1337]

Can anyone tell me why Brits are so fucking uptight?

[Strontium Dog]

Yeah, that would be part of what I referred to as "production values". But the ACTS.

The ACTS.

ACTS.

Well, they involve vaginal or anal penetration, like every instance of vaginal or anal sex in history.

The fact is they are consensual acts, and looking-vaguely-like-they're-not-consensual isn't enough for me to want to have something banned.

[Brian Peacock]

Can anyone tell me why Brits are so fucking uptight?

I think it stems from most of our politicians being sent away to posh single-sex schools at about 7 years old. They never really get past puberty.

[Collector1337]

Can anyone tell me why Brits are so fucking uptight?

I think it stems from most of our politicians being sent away to posh single-sex schools at about 7 years old. They never really get past puberty.

I guess the retarded emotional and sexual development really explains a lot.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Interesting article on just how naïve and impracticable these proposals are...

http://boingboing.net/2013/07/22/uk-int ... an-no.html

[pErvinalia]

In almost two decades on the Internet, I've never seen any child porn or real rape porn. It's nearly impossible to see this stuff unless you're actively looking for it, which is something that is rarely mentioned. To listen to some people one would think you have to wade through gigabytes of dodgy stuff to get to the innocent porn, when the reality is you need to try very hard to be exposed to anything so bad.

That's actually a good point. I don't know whether I'm more surprised to find you can actually make good points, or that I agree with something you are saying.

Regarding the simulated vs real rape porn thing, I'm not certain you could tell if it was done right. You said the victim would be unlikely to have a camera set up to film it, and while that is likely (but not exclusively) true, the RAPIST could have a camera set up to catch it. The problem would be when you saw something that looked genuine whether you could know that it was simulated. Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it if I was making the laws. If it was advertised as "simulated" then the only real criminal in that act (if the rape was actually real) would be the rapist. The person watching hasn't done anything, and they were tricked into thinking it was simulated. Of course, the person watching it is probably a sicko, but thought crime shouldn't be against the law.

Where it might get tricky is in finding a moral law to deal with the case where it was actually simulated but advertised as real.

[Hermit]

No. I don't know who has actually read the proposal - not many here from the posts above.

Basically your ISP will ask you if you want your account to opt in or opt out of the ability to access porn categorised sites. It will be up to you. If you have kids or for that matter have no desire to watch people fucking and generally diddling each others genitals then you can opt out. The same content will be out there.

Who is going to collate the list of blocked sites, and who ensures that such a list does not stray into blocking sites for reasons other than to block "pornographic", "realistic" depictions of "violent rape"?

This kind of stuff has been trialled in Australia recently. The project was "shelved" after being found ineffective, error ridden, and because the list was supposed to stay secret, beyond the reach of any checks and balances.

[Brian Peacock]

Will Cameron be banning depictions of rape and sexual violence from the gritty crime dramas that pepper the schedules of every TV station? What is he going to do about the raunchy music videos on Youtube, only some of which ask you to confirm your age - a measure which you don't have to be a hacker of any kind to circumvent? What about the Youtube clips of real violence as entertainment, like the kick-boxing or mma or hobo rumbles, or the uncensored, unmoderated comments on the bottom half of most of the internet? The objectifying of topless 18 year old girls on page three of his chum Murdoch's Sun On Sunday is going to be exempt - what message is that sending to impressionable, forming minds? This is all posturing simply to reinforce his 'family-friendly' credentials, all the time blaming the internet for stuff he's not even prepared to deal with seriously.

[Beatsong]

Interesting article on just how naïve and impracticable these proposals are...

http://boingboing.net/2013/07/22/uk-int ... an-no.html

While I'm not a great fan of the proposals, the argument of that article is really quite wrong.

But it's not just "good" material that gets misclassified. There is unquestionably a lot of material on the internet kids shouldn't be seeing, and it multiplies at a staggering rate. Here, you have the inverse of the overblocking problem. Miss 1% – or 10%, or a quarter – of the adult stuff, and you allow a titanic amount of racy material through. Students who are actively seeking this material – the modern equivalent of looking up curse words in the school dictionary – will surely find it. Students who are innocently clicking from one place to another will, if they click long enough, land on one of these sites.

The first part might be true, although censhorship proponents would still (quite validly, from their POV) argue that preventing 99% of the kids' attempt to find objectionable material is better than preventing none of them. The last part is simply wrong. Anyone who's worked in a school or anywhere with a decent filtering system can tell you that kids don't just generally land on porn sites while "innocently clicking from one place to another". Hell, I have two pre-pubescent kids who have just never had any interest in looking for porn, we have NO FILTER whatsoever and they merrily use the internet all day with no problem at all. (I'm aware this will change with teenagerhood).

This attempt to show that laws are worse then useless because their implementation won't be 100% faultless, 100% of the time, is an old trick but a silly one. If it had any validity, we wouldn't bother making any laws ever,

[Azathoth]

Well if you are searching google images with safesearch off you are pretty much guaranteed to find porn. Rule 34 and all that

[Brian Peacock]

I'm not against limiting children's access to porn. It's fundamentally sexist and misleading about what sex is really like, and you need a bit of experience in life to recognise that unreal fantasy element. And who in their right mind would not say that accidentally viewing depictions of child abuse and rape should be limited, as much as it can be, because nobody but child abuse and rape fans are going to be clicking for that stuff (asides from academics and law enforcers) and feeding the websites that host it. But that's a different issue to Cameron saying that he wants to use software filtering from firms like Huawei (BBC: Chinese firm Huawei controls net filter praised by PM) to act as the enforcers of his personal morality, for our own good of course. And it's not like software filtering is going to do anything in itself to address the issue of child abuse and rape imagery on the internet nor limit people's ability to access that if they want to.

What he's doing is looking to imposing his so-called family-friendly values about what is proper sexual activity and experience, via the law if necessary, to change society to conform to his moral ideals. However, he hasn't really made that moral argument, he's just said we need to protect the kiddies from sex-stuff and therefore the internet needs nannies, which can be purchased at a reasonable price from firms such as Huawei, which is world leader in censoring the internet in China.