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[Loud Whispers]

He might or might not love it, but he sure was saying that stuff like the Norway option is possible if Leave wins, aka, stay in the Single Market.

"We pay a membership fee. We have the free movement of people. We have a massive regulatory burden, and we're prohibited and stopped from making our own trade friendships with the rest of the world. Do not believe them when they tell you tonight that the single market is good for Britain. That we need to be a part of this club to access the single market. Every country in the world accesses the single market, and even in the worst case scenario that Britain does not have a successful renegotiation, and simply has to rely on WTO rules, even in that scenario, the cost of tariffs will be less than our net contributions."
No he's not, he's dispelling the argument that if we leave the EU there will be a continental blockade put upon Britain that will completely cut all trade between our nation and the continent. That video is made by Chuka Umunna's neoliberal Labour faction that recently failed to get the single market protection statement through Parliament, and they've deliberately edited the guy who was loudest about leaving the single market to make it seem like he's in favour of it. This is very much worth watching, because this mythology keeps coming back.
t. Guy who spent his life campaigning to leave the European Union but not really according to libdems

[Starver]

But details as to how the scheme will work have yet to be finalised.

I'm all for "thinking of the children" (and generally against thinking about them), but I just don't see any reasonable route to enforcing all porn-sources from worldwide servers to fully comply with this legislation in any way that doesn't include a Great British Whitelisting Firewall, to stop the obvious non-compliancy that will occur, and all the effort needed.

OTOH, maybe I should proactively apply for a job with the BBFC, because they're gonna need people to do it all.  (And maybe I can ensure that, unlike BTInternet's Wifi hotspots, they don't block access to www.urbandead.com for no proportionate reason.)

[smjjames]

ROFL the picture in this: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-davis-brexit-no-notes-brexit-negotiations-a7845686.html Doesn't bode well for Brexit, does it? lol XD

[hector13]

It's obviously the EU's fault he has no notes. I mean the U.K. is still part of the EU, and the Tories have been busy courting the fundamentalists after imploding their majority last month, the EU should've been working toward providing the information we need to negotiate a non-bad deal.

I mean this just provides more fuel for the fire that the U.K. is going to be so, so much better without the EU.

[Loud Whispers]

ROFL the picture in this: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-davis-brexit-no-notes-brexit-negotiations-a7845686.html Doesn't bode well for Brexit, does it? lol XD

Not really concerned about no notes pictured, it's a non-story. Of course the Libdems believe negotiations are conducted on the size of papers you wield for photos, it's how they negotiated their way into a pit in the coalition government; to speak without notes, is an art a school child learns. There is a far more serious concern - that of the 2nd most powerful minister being at odds with May. It's particularly telling that the Independent do not play any video or provide any statement where he has clearly stated his objectives, rather they would seek to use a photo which speaks nothing to say that no objective is spoken. By contrast, Hammond is under fire for saying that train driving is so easy even a woman could do it and public sector workers are overpaid.

I do not believe the timing is coincidental, positing that the two factions will do their damndest to discredit the other and shrek their political careers to the best of their ability, for the obvious profit of gaining leverage in Brexit negotiations. Whether one faction is ultimately successful is important, yet even in victory the discord would certainly spell trouble. Cameron got his shit fucked up by backbenchers, this is a disagreement in the highest levels of office.
I miss when the Independent wasn't buzzfeed :/

[Dorsidwarf]

You'd think that as they went into what are probbably going to be the most important set of negotiations in their careers they'd be able to pull the daggers out of each other's backs for five minutes.

[Starver]

That'd just result in faster bleeding out.

Which, right now, is fine with me...

[Loud Whispers]

You'd think that as they went into what are probbably going to be the most important set of negotiations in their careers they'd be able to pull the daggers out of each other's backs for five minutes.

We are as Romans, arguing amongst ourselves even as enemies overcome our gates

Also fucking hell why do people think career politicians are a good fucking idea ffs this is the shit that happens

[sluissa]

In nine months, you'll have to prove you're over 18 to access porn sites in the UK.

Of course, this is done in the name of "But think of the children!"

So... has anyone else been feeling increasing dread for the future of the internet in the UK? I mean, especially after Brexit. At least the EU has lots of protections for it, but our government is steadily going towards "The internet is dangerous. Let us tell you how to use it." it seems.

Honestly, the EU has a lot of bullshit happening that's anti-internet as well. There's that group that keeps pushing the "linking to sites = copyright infringement" as well as the "search engines can't publish snippets in their search results without paying royalties" people (may be the same people, not sure.) Was one of the silver linings of brexit that the UK could get out from under that sort of thing.. but they seem to be perfectly willing to screw themselves over... so meh.

[Loud Whispers]

Honestly, the EU has a lot of bullshit happening that's anti-internet as well. There's that group that keeps pushing the "linking to sites = copyright infringement" as well as the "search engines can't publish snippets in their search results without paying royalties" people (may be the same people, not sure.) Was one of the silver linings of brexit that the UK could get out from under that sort of thing.. but they seem to be perfectly willing to screw themselves over... so meh.

Aye, especially what with the whole arresting people over tweets critical of the gov thing. Last I checked, the two biggest Yuro nations pushing back against EU regulation of the internet were the UK and Sweden, with the caveat being that the UK's ministers were only opposed for commercial reasons
You know it's bad when even the Americans have their factions laughing at their freedomites for their freeze peach, not realizing the value of what they want to throw away

[smjjames]

Freeze peach? Was that an intentional typo? lol XD

[Starver]

It's one of his memes. I'm sure there's some things that I say repeatedly that I think are cleverer than they actually are, too.

In many ways, though, I agree with LW (Shock! Horror!)...

But, mostly, my opinion is that the Internet is Pandora's box and has already released most of its bad things, and closing it again only traps the Hope. Attempts to throttle competitors (US), political/social dissent (China) or reality (Turkey) or whatever you might class the currently discussed version of "censorship for our own good" (UK) are doomed to either ultimately fall short (with any luck) or create schisms of far greater disruption than ever intended. (The biggest success story of this set is China, and that's because they more or less started with the schism, so everyone's used to it, but it's still leaky and not entirely as controlled as They want, because the OSI Level 8 (people!) is even more adaptive than the layers 1 to 7 are.)


What are they going to do? Block Youtube, wholesale, because there's some mild T&A imagery getting through the safeguarding algorithms (at least temporarily)? Force Facebook and Twitter to implement business-unfriendly geographic blocking on anything with a hint of bare flesh? Is this where they try to get Instragram to "Clipper Chip" its traffic (worldwide!), because they couldn't get it done in the name of anti-terrorism? (I have a suspicion that it's related to Amber Rudd's other proposal, BTW...)

I downloaded porn¹ over the Internet years before most people here, or in government, were even aware of the medium (and probably before a lot of you were even born!), this being pre-Web. Just as blocking/redirecting DNS lookup to pirate servers seems to have done nothing useful except inconvenience some people until they've been bothered enough to circumvent the system, gaining compliance across international jurisdictions is going to be on a hiding to nothing, in the end.

It's going to be seen as "doing something about it", perhaps, but it isn't actually going to do something about it. I predict. If it does, though, the collateral damage to the Information Age is going to be huge. It'd probably just be easier to Geofence to totally block (obvious) UK IPs, because setting up "You're from the UK? Please enter your Credit Card details here/use other government mandated method of age validation" is going to be too much fuss.

Best just to say "You're from the UK? Well, stuff you", or else "...stuff the UK government!" and be prepared to play musical chairs around the court-approved ISP blocking like they can if they're bothered enough. And there isn't a decent counter(counter)measure that can be put in place by where the false positive and false negative blocking² isn't obscenely huge in proportion to the number of children who remain 'protected'.


¹ Mostly imagery softer than Page 3, or textually less extreme than a Mills & Boon novel, just because it was easier than the usual sources and you know how the curiosity of youth is. Made a change from the chance discoveries of a dumped collection of top-shelf material in the bottom of a hedgerow... And about as little regard taken as to who it was who dumped it there, and why...
² An easy to cite example is that of a friend (yes, a friend, not 'a friend, who I am asking for') who had to get the University to allow a previously blocked Transgender-orientated support newsgroup into the local NNTP server feed.  Meanwhile, plenty of people I knew were looking at the whole range of abpe* feeds, entirely unfettered.

[Loud Whispers]

Freeze peach? Was that an intentional typo? lol XD

No

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It is a joke made to mock people who like free speech

It's one of his memes. I'm sure there's some things that I say repeatedly that I think are cleverer than they actually are, too.

Like fuck is this my meme, this is a piece of shit made by some American anti-American cancer who hate free speech

What are they going to do? Block Youtube, wholesale, because there's some mild T&A imagery getting through the safeguarding algorithms (at least temporarily)? Force Facebook and Twitter to implement business-unfriendly geographic blocking on anything with a hint of bare flesh? Is this where they try to get Instragram to "Clipper Chip" its traffic (worldwide!), because they couldn't get it done in the name of anti-terrorism? (I have a suspicion that it's related to Amber Rudd's other proposal, BTW...)

Dangerously ignores how they could go after much smaller and less reputable sites. See Cameron talking about how tinfoil shitposters are just as dangerous as jihadis, it's all about shutting down critical mediums that are considerably harder to control. Shit like Facebook and Twitter they can influence with astroturfing, shadowbans, data analysis and individual profiling, but they can't control the free flow of anonymised shitposts and they can't market any targeted messages to anonymous individuals.

[Starver]

Like fuck is this my meme, this is a piece of shit made by some American anti-American cancer who hate free speech

My apologies, I was sure I'd seen you use it elsewhere, but maybe you were just being similarly ironic/perverse.

Dangerously ignores how they could go after much smaller and less reputable sites. […]

Not intentionally ignored. Merely demonstrating how forcing somewhere longstanding like ASSTR, or one of the more...  *ahem*  ...'specialist' Chans, to "Comply! Or! Else!" might indeed mildly stifle the flow of depravity being placed dangerously within the unknowing and innocent grasp of the childers, but (along with ignoring the myriad other 'irresponsible babysitter' websites¹, uncountable in number and mostly untrackable by algorithm) the ignoring of Big Content sites that are hosts or transparent portals to wide and broad categories of user-generated imagery/etc means that the flood goes relatively unabated.

Ok, so PornTube should probably be secured (if it isn't already), if we assume the mindset of the proposal, but YouTube already is known to show objectionable material that already can't be controlled, so what more do we demand they do, to keep our little ones (likely already corrupted!) 'safe'. '-er'? Sure, put some age-verification on grindr, but what about flickr?  BabeStation vs eBay vs Bay12... What level of lurking/participation privileges can we/should we enforce for each, given the imperfect nature of the moderation process (of those, eBay has the best 'age validation' chances, as part of the process to allow bidding, but cannot at all be expected to prevent (theoretically) inappropriate images being browsed by someone not logged in. Assuming there's an actual BabeStation website², they probably paywall their 'best' content, but I doubt that their front-end is so bland as to not show ant enticingly-shrouded sample content, yet even more sufficient to tittilate and intrigue the teenage boy than the traditional lingerie section of Mum's old Littlewood's catalogue.


Sorry, all you Moral Guardians, the battle for Ignorance Is Bliss is lost. Maybe you should concentrate your efforts on ensuring that Sex Education is more than a minimalist "Don't do it...", for an overly wide and impractical range of mostly unspecified 'it's, from kissing on up, "...or you'll go to Hell!".  Perhaps if you let them be more responsibly guided through the first pangs of curiosity about either(/all) sex, without being forced to hide, they won't end up being introduced to the more dangerous sides of reality by someone irresponsible or downright manipulative.

But I'm probably not the right person to be a moral compass, either. I'm only sporadically magnetic. Nor am I moral compasses, as I doubt I could maintain a consistent radius.  Luckily, it's not up to me. Unluckily, some other less suitable people seem to think it's up to them.  (And this applies to more than just porn censorship. It applies to welfare funding, foreign policy, devolution, transport infrastructure, etc, etc, etc... Unluckily for this thread, today just happens to be the morning that I woke up far too early and had more than the usual time on my hands to waffle on about the subject de jour...)


¹ That is, unsuitable websites that the parents do not know are keeping their kids entertained whilst they are absent, not actually websites featuring irresponsible babysitters. Although I'm sure the latter is also a represented subset in the total gamut of possibilities one might include in the greater category...

² I will have to assume, because on this current uplink I have not concerned myself with disabling the ISP's own content-filter, which over-enthusiastically blocks some wordpress-like sites due to the possibility of hitting upon something risque, and I thus know not to even bother going for "yes, we have porn!" locations, even just for actual research. (I can satisfy any quote-unquote research 'needs' via other vectors, before you feel sorry for me.)

[Descan]

Replace "the internet" with (x) and that's basically true.