DAVID CAMERON WAR AGAINST PORN

David Cameron’s initiative to cut off his nation’s porn supply was met with a barrage of anger, consternation, and ridicule when announced on Monday. According to the new rules, adult content will be automatically blocked from every home computer in Britain unless it is specifically requested by the Internet account holder. And that could spark a lot of awkward conversations between spouses, roommates, and teenage boys and their mothers.

Cameron’s sweeping alterations also include a deal with Britain’s biggest wifi providers and mobile phone companies to block content deemed inappropriate for under-18s for anyone in a public place.

The new rules stunned industry insiders who thought a less far-reaching compromise deal had been struck. “Something’s obviously gone wrong,” Dominique Lazanski, a former employee at Yahoo! and Apple, told the Daily Beast. “It’s very strange, they’ve been working on this deal for two years and then, between the negotiating table and Number 10, something changed.”

Internet security analysts said the move would do little to sanitize the darkest corners of the Internet and instead enrage regular Internet users who are likely to be blocked from thousands of perfectly safe websites by blunt-edged filters. All Internet account holders will be asked in the coming year if they want to remove new filters that would apply to every device in the household. But tech experts say the filters will be easy to evade, using VPN or proxy servers.

“It’s impossible for a politician to be successful in blocking porn online,” said Lazanski. “There seems to have been a lack of understanding at No. 10.”

The severity of the filters will be dictated by the service providers, although an independent watchdog will ensure they are sufficiently rigorous.

Civil liberties campaigners complained the prime minister had conflated two separate issues. As well as restricting access to legal pornography, Cameron on Monday promised to make it illegal to download some forms of extreme pornography, including simulated rape scenes, and force search engines, like Google, to block search terms that relate to child abuse footage. If users do access abuse images, a pop-up window will warn them not to proceed.

SOURCE: www.thedailybeast.com