Blog 4: Britain's Crack Down on Porn Prompts Free-Speech Concerns.

Next week heads of tech giants Google, Yahoo and other service providers will meet before a parliamentary committee to discuss Britain’s new Pornography related censorship laws. In one of the most sweeping censorship bills in the western world the British government is seeking to institute a series of default filters that would sift out pornographic content. In efforts to “protect children from the sexual corruption of pornography” the bill also seeks to filter out images included in consensual “violent sex acts” including simulated rape. The Bill would require all Internet Service Providers in the country to screen these sites and filter out pornographic content by default. Customers must “opt-out” or call ahead to their service providers to inform them that they would like access to pornographic material un-filtered on their devices. The new bill prompts concerns from several organizations over the authority of the government to determine to “objectionable” quality of certain subjective materials.

Britain’s new censorship law claims to be about “protecting the children” however, this is often used as the rallying point behind many ill-advised or even nefarious methods of control and censorship. If parents can no longer be trusted to determine what is appropriate or not for their children, where does the government go from here? In an ever increasing bid to censor copyrighted materials or dissenting political opinions giving the government access to internet controls could have long reaching and negative implications for human rights advocates and freedom of information. Certain works of literature are already being filtered based on their “violent content,” such as Hamlet by William Shakespeare. If these laws are allowed to go through and the government is given control over what is and is not appropriate for its own citizens to view it could easily be argued that the power to control such subjective material could easily be manipulated for political gain. “Protecting the children” is often an all too wholesome cause to hide one’s true intentions behind, who wouldn't want to protect our children? The seriousness of these implications is hidden behind the issue of “morality” and child-care. Not many people would argue that children should have free access to explicit pornographic content, even though according to recent statistics most children have been exposed to pornography on the internet by the time they’re fourteen. But if full grown adults are no longer to be trusted to “know what’s good for them” or how to protect their own children what other issues might the government also take up under their flag of morality?

Aaron Fountain

10/04/2013

3:14 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/britains-harsh-crackdown-on-internet-porn-prompts-free-speech-debate/2013/09/28/d1f5caf8-2781-11e3-9372-92606241ae9c_story.html