As we have established on here, repeatedly, Europe does not understand the Internet. At all. But Britain is going to take that one step further; by the end of the year, they’re going to ask all nineteen million Internet users in the United Kingdom whether they want Internet porn.
It’s worth noting here that the reason we Americans can bathe in smutty filth is because we have one of the least restrictive freedom of speech laws in the entire world. The British still have to have their video games approved by a committee, because apparently no matter how old British citizens get, they’re still children in the eyes of their government.
David Cameron laid out the plan in a speech that pretty much hit every single appeal to emotion on this issue without actually saying anything of substance. For example!
I want to talk about the internet, the impact it is having on the innocence of our children, how online pornography is corroding childhood and how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children, and that must be stamped out.
He hits the usual points: Parents are powerless idiots, porn is hunting down our children and exposing itself to them, and child porn is bad. You know, two stupid points and one very good one that it would be nice if Britain actually squarely focused on, and spent all the money it was wasting on instead. Cameron also called on Google to crack down on child porn, which they’re already doing anyway.
To be fair, Cameron’s plan essentially boils down to supposedly making porn “optional.” Filters will be installed in the nation’s ISPs that essentially boil down to SafeSearch; users can choose to disable it, or leave it up. So essentially Cameron will be holding an enormous poll about whether or not the British like to look at boobs. We’ve seen their tabloids: We’re pretty sure we know how this one’s going to shake out.
As we mentioned before when Iceland tried this stunt, the problem with the “BLOCK ALL THE PORN!” approach is that it’s a fundamentally deflecting and immature way to deal with the issue. There are serious, serious problems with the Internet and the porn industry; human trafficking and abuse are terrifyingly common, and organized crime is rapidly expanding. These are issues that desperately need to be solved.
And blocking porn will do nothing to solve them. The truth is that cutting off the supply, or trying to, will not affect the demand. Human beings are still sexual creatures, they’re still going to want sexual content, and all the advanced technology in the world isn’t going to stop them. It certainly hasn’t so far.
Guidance solving these problems is not going to come from the porn industry; there’s just too much money at stake for an effective, powerful self-regulating body to emerge from the industry. Governments, if they really want to solve these problems, need to lead the way… but they need to do it realistically and honestly. Otherwise, all Cameron and the rest are doing, ultimately, is making things worse.