UK to have "opt out" Porn filters

[Rhyfelwyr]

@Montmorency: I'll give you a proper reply soon!

This is all about normalizing government censorship of the internet.

The whole porn issue is invented as a means to get the government's foot in the door in terms of beginning censorship with the support of righteous moralists who think it right all of society be forced into something to allegedly protect "the children".

Governments and bureaucrats, once granted an immense power - internet censorship - have never and will never simply stop at the initial extent of the law. They will always push for more power, more control, and more censorship (in this case) of things they deem bad. After all, if censorship of one thing is good, then surely they are other things they can censor for "the greater good".

I mean, look at the growth of the US security state for crying out loud.

CR

A few points of order...

1. State regulation of the internet is already normalized. It has to be, for example to ban things like abusive porn, animal abuse etc. Or do you think these things should be free and legal?
2. The state already has vastly more invasive laws and regulations in place when it comes to the internet. Unlike the 'war on terror', this adds no new powers, and is actually an example of the state using its given-powers appropriately.
3. While the slippery slope argument of increasing state regulation is a valid one, I think we can all agree that regulation is something to be tamed and minimized, not stamped out completely.
4. The UK is not the USA. The UK has a long history of moderate and limited government, and this seems to be the best protection against tyranny, as the experiences of the more radically liberal/secular/republican USA and France are testimony to. This dogmatic libertarianism (as demonstrated by InsaneApache IMO) that seems to have been imported from the US in the past few years through shared culture/the internet is a foreign and unwelcome innovation, and dangerous to British democracy.

Honestly, I find the general response in this thread to be bizarre. We live in such an artificial world, where the entirely of human life is completely subjected to a whole host of norms and restraints; from the hierarchical to the grassroots to the collective; from the government to the legal system to the corporation; from our social life to our work life to our private life - a thousand factors all mesh and strengthen and accelerate each other, limiting human life more and more till all social relations, all life is shaped entirely by some sort of Leviathan; at once intangible yet all too visible, simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, abstract yet real.

But instead of worrying about that people cry out:

"But no, all that's of no concern! The great tyranny is not having porn automatically accessible in every household with a computer! And what a tyrannical government it is that asks us if we choose to access it or not! We're living in 1984"!

1984... yes, you know what, it is 1984 indeed. Because the whole of humanity can live under such a malicious behemoth, and be so blinded to the superstructure around them, that they deem policies like this to be the most tyrannical and oppressive imaginable. And so they happily consume their opiates and wallow in some sort of outrage/paranoia-based collective stupidity, while their elected government panders to another corporation, another entrepreneur is forced into wage labour, minorities are incarcerated en masse, and the like. Ye blind guides, which straw at a gnat, and swallow a camel!

I hate tyranny as much as anybody in this thread. Ever since Lemur posted that thread with the Brazil song, it keeps popping into my head while I enclose the 1,000th envelope for the day, when I enter number 5,000 onto the database, when I send out that standard response for the 500th time that week. And I do all that not even for a wage, but just the hope that someone might see fit to grant me one, being left destitute of any other means of sustaining myself.

We have tyranny all right, but this opt out system is not it. I have to say, its a strange tyranny that lets you choose whether to opt-in to it or not. Start worrying about the one you are born into whether you like it or not.