While the rest of Britain and the world are focusing on the birth of the Royal Baby, British Prime Minister David Cameron has made a major announcement that might get buried under baby watch. By the end of this year, the United Kingdom will require internet service providers to block online pornography unless users specifically request that they be allowed to access porn.

The plan is for all new internet customers to have the porn filters automatically activated with those customers having to tell their ISP to deactivate the filters. Current customers will be contacted by their ISP and must answer if they want to use these filters.

Prime Minister Cameron stated that online access to pornography was “corroding childhood.” To prevent kids from accessing porn, rather than mandating easy to access or use filters on computer operating systems or internet browsers, Britain is just going to make anyone not using the filters look like a pervert.

What’s corrupting childhood is the fact that parents can’t be bothered to be parents. Kids are able to access porn online? Parents expect someone else to do their work for them. Rather than use the filters on your computer or download software to filter content that you don’t want your kids to see, just ban access for everyone. Punish everyone to make up for bad parenting.

Of course, gamers will know that this is also going on in gaming. Games have ratings with recommended age groups and sales restrictions. Consoles have parental controls but learning that must require too much effort. So does seeing what your kids are playing and explaining the difference between reality and fantasy.

Numerous other restrictions are going to be added as part of Cameron’s plan. It will be illegal to possess pornography depicting rape. So-called “horrific” search terms would be blacklisted so they would return no results on search results no later than in October. Videos streamed online would be subject to the same regulations as physical videos sold in shops.

On the plus side, Britain will be giving police agencies more power to track the spread of child pornography and find the pedophiles viewing it. I will grant the Brits that one as a very good use of power.

Overall, though, this filtering of the internet is troubling. Telling people what they can and can’t watch is unbelievably restricting. If it doesn’t harm anyone to make or watch a porno, why should it be made so hard to get a hold of that it would be easier to get drugs than porn?

This is a moronic new law that Cameron is proposing and I hope that the electorate and ISPs tell the government where to stick it.

Source: BBC News