It’s a whole year since the London face-sitting porn protest, organised by sex worker activist Charlotte Rose, made global news. The protest was held in response to a new law, AVMS 2014, which heavily restricted which porn could be legally sold by UK businesses. I explained the implications on this blog,
This Saturday at midday, we will gather outside Parliament again to protest. Last year’s law was the last straw for many of the remnants of the British porn industry, and many people have closed their businesses.
But it was just the beginning. The significant law isn’t the last one, but the next one. The bans introduced last year didn’t prevent providers outside the UK streaming their content to British consumers. The ultimate aim of the censorship machine is to create a mechanism for blocking non-UK sites that breach UK standards of ‘decency’. This won’t just apply to porn, but to many categories of content – as we discovered when the ‘porn filters’ were introduced two years ago.
I expect an attempt to introduce Internet censorship in 2016. In fact, one attempt is currently in the House of Lords: the Online Safety Bill.
This is the year to join the protest – please come along on Saturday if you can.
And please consider making a Xmas donation, big or small, to Sex & Censorship.
Thanks,
Jerry
The freedom banners just don’t get it.!!! Where there is a demand there will always be a supply. ALWAYS. !!!!!
I would love to see how they are going to enforce blocking adult content. Most small ISP’s will go out of business, most larger ones will still let adult content through, and sales of cloud VPN services will go through the roof (as will everyone’s internet connection charges due to the cost of implementing filtering). They will have to block or filter Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram almost instantly! And what about sites describing the ‘prohibited’ activities rather than showing pictures of them?!?
You cannot realistically filter the internet. Just ask China.
Parents have the responsibility to protect their children from internet pornography, in the same way they have responsibility to protect them from picking up a porn magazine or slipping an 18 rated film into their DVD player. Equally if they are old enough to be able to use the internet with any kind of savvy then whatever filter you put in place will be easy for them to get around using anonymous proxies, VPN clients or peer-to-peer sharing.
There are plenty of far more important social issues that the Government could be focusing on outside what people get off on in the privacy of their own homes.
I had an idea last year’s Bill was just the beginning of something far more reaching and sinister. It’s another reason they’ve redressed the Snoopers Charter as Investigatory Powers Bill. People will try to by pass unenforceable laws but like many sex workers will be criminalised in the process.