Practical Objections to David Cameron's "Porn Ban"

David Cameron's plans for a default internet filter, centred around blocking pornographic material, have a host of practical and abstract issues. The abstract debate is full to the rafters, and confused through over-use of moralising and dramatic words like "censorship", so I'd like to focus on the practical problems with this latest revelation in DC's war on porn, such as stupid filters, clever kids and a general lack of evidence.

Stupid Filters

An internet filter works by searching pages for certain words or phrases that indicate this page needs to be blocked. There are already quite a few out there. O2 has one on it's 3g service and domestic ones can be bought, or come optional with routers. These examples have already demonstrated that filters are far from fool-proof, as beneficial sites on these topics will also be blocked. In 2002, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study entitled "Does Pornography-Blocking Software Block Access to Health Information On The Internet" The report found two things: that as filters become more restrictive, health sites become blocked much quicker than pornography and that LGBT and sexuality related sites were singled out in the blocking. In a country with already weak sex education and LGBT support, this filter could cut crucial support networks and drastically increase feelings of isolation. This isolation will then be augmented by the fact anybody who needs to use "immoral" phrases to describe their traumatic real-life experiences will find themselves blocked.

While the main risk of this is to sex/uality related areas, other areas such as violent material, anorexia and eating disorder websites, suicide related websites, alcohol and smoking are all planned for the filter. 

People in need of support for anorexia or depression on the internet will struggle, as the government is already cutting mental health services in the NHS. I realise they are trying to tackle websites such as harmful "pro-ana" blogs but they're filter won't discriminate in that nuanced way. It's the fatal combination of good intentions and not really understanding how something works.

Some may argue that that this was back in 2002 and the technology has developed since then, a report from the Open Rights Group in 2011 suggests not. They had four conclusions:

Firstly, sites are often incorrectly classified as containing objectionable material. Second, phone operators aren't forthcoming about the details of how their filtering systems work or what kind of content they block. Third, it's not clear how to report sites that are erroneously blocked. Finally, it’s difficult even for adults to turn the filtering off.

Network filters have problems discriminating, and so could block valuable and beneficial parts of online lives.

Smart People

The second problem is that on the super-information highway some people are travelling a lost faster than others, pre-dominantly the young that this bill is aimed to protect. Teenagers often understand the internet better than their parents, and react faster to changes in it. It won't be long until the young simply begin using identity-masking services like Tor to hide their activities and share this route-around with their friends via social networks. Workarounds like this will be created and shared a lot faster than changes can be made to the massive, clunky internet filter David Cameron proposes, especially if the filter affects more than just porn,

The filter may also antagonise valuable aspects of the internet. When the "dark web" child porn site Lolita City was exposed to the world, government entities struggled to shut it down. Fortunately, the hacking collective Anonymous did, removing 100GB of child porn in the process. Unfortunately, Anonymous aren't always a savoury (or sane) bunch and could easily find themselves falling on the wrong side of the filter due to ill-advised comments by members, a situation hardly conducive to further altrusim and aid by the group. Once again, good things on the internet be lost with the bad.

No Evidence That It Actually Works.

Herein lies a big problem. There is actually little (at least quoted) evidence that violent pornography leads to sexual violence and abuse. An in-depth review by Ferguson and Hartley in 2009 failed to find any meaningful link.and concluded "It is time to discard the hypothesis that pornography contributes to increased sexual assault behaviours." 

In fact, the evidence I've found suggests the opposite. A recent study in the US found that a 10% increase in internet access correlates with a 7.3% drop of reported rapes. Reported rapes have declined 85% over the last 25 years in the US. India, a country with high levels of pornography restrictions (distributing it is illegal) is notorious for brutal rapes and high gender inequality. Perhaps gender inequality and rape fantasies are the cause of violent pornography, and we're targeting the symptoms instead of the cause?

This evidence is nowhere near conclusive. A lot of rapes are unreported and even if rapes are decreasing, the reinforcing and internalising of misogynistic attitudes by porn may still be increasing the frequency of other, more casual sexist acts, such as wolf-whistling.

As should be clear by now,  I oppose the government's proposed porn filter for a whole host of practical reasons. The plan is misconceived, unfounded in evidence and could actually harm vulnerable people. It needs to be stopped. 

The Open Rights Group has started a campaign and petition against Cameron's proposals. Sign it here: 

Some Thoughts On The World's End

The World's End is a zombie film, but not as we know them. Forget the trademarks of Romero-esque zombies such as groaning and pallid skin. Pegg, Frost and Wright already covered that in Shaun of the Dead. The World's End, however has taken the essence of zombie and updated it to the modern world.

When you think zombie, you think of a literal corpse. You think of decayed skin and blank eyes. You think of death. That's ultimately what Zombies represent, but they also represent other, subtler things. The pale crowds of near identical rotting faces, shuffling and groaning in time, represents the fear of losing individuality and identity. Zombies aren't unique. All zombies have the same skills (none). Unlike Vampires or Werewolves, no part of you except your body remains, and even that goes eventually. That's what makes zombies scary.

Why else would they make us afraid? They're slow, dumb and lack the most basic of co-ordination. Unlike Vampires and Werewolves, Zombies can easily be hacked, whacked, maimed or even out-run. You don't even need any specific weapon, like stakes or silver bullets, just any blunt object will do. Zombies are tenacious, but easy to defeat. This provides hope, the most crucial aspect to any horror film. It provides hope against the collectivist threat. (Perhaps why Romero was popular in the Cold War?)

These traits, the essence of zombie, are ever present in the antagonistic "blanks" of The World's End. A group of 5 drunk, middle-aged males can defeat a whole room of these mechanical drones, whose limbs come off as easily as a zombies and will continue to writhe despite being disconnected. While they're fast and seem to have mild martial art skills, they can be beaten.

However, the fears of losing individuality have been updated. The blanks are still blanks. Sure, the automatons have the personalities of the people they replaced, as well as looking and sounding like them, but they still all give the impression of being the same. As the number of blanks grow the individual voices get lost in the masses of the connected network. The individualism is still lost, not because everyone becomes the same, but because they are all connected into a system where their individual contribution is negligible. Sounds a lot like this thing called The Internet. Hopefully, since you're reading this, you've heard of it.

The World's End is a very clever film. It adapts the spirit of the zombie (paradox?) into our modern, hyper-linked world, all the while weaving it into a story about the teenage desire to rebel and do what you want. This may just be a load of rubbish, the classic ploy of finding meaning where there was none intended. I'm not forcing my views onto you, just putting them out into this connected world we live in.

Thanks for reading.