James Delahunty
21 Dec 2010 1:25
A British conservative MP is pushing for Internet Service Providers (ISP) to be forced to block Internet pornography by default to its subscribers.
Claire Perry, elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Devizes this year, is using children as usual as an excuse for the government-forced censorship. "We are not coming at this from an anti-porn perspective. We just want to make sure our children aren't stumbling across things we don’t want them to see." she told the Sunday Times.
The British government will meet with UK ISPs next month to discuss censoring Internet porn, including the possibility of implementing a system that would force Internet subscribers to request access to pornographic content. The Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) in the UK is (obviously) uninterested in such a system being put in place.
Putting aside the inevitable negative reaction from British Internet users who would have to inform their ISP of their intention to view pornographic material, ISPA also points out that such a system would be extremely difficult to implement and would be very expensive to maintain.
It brings up a lot of questions on not only how it would work, but whether such action is the role of a government in a region like Great Britain. Who would make the decisions on what material is porn and what isn't? (is nudity, pornography? what about "suggestive posing?", for example), and who would pay to setup and maintain such a system in the first place?
Also, would this not be the British government mandating that ISPs do a job that should be done (and is done) by parents instead? Do an ample amount of software packages aimed at blocking pornography from children not already exist on the market for parents to use if they feel the need?
Perhaps the most important question is, if a government can force ISPs to block all Internet pornography, what is to stop it from mandating similar censorship for anything else?