UK to censor online videos of 'non-conventional' sex acts

[anon67149139]

[eems]

I feel naturally aligned with the dis majority on this and not sure I’m entirely following Casserole’s argument, but reading the thread has got me thinking about how overlapping freedoms cannot always be granted to all who want them without other freedoms being limited.

The porn industry, and possibly moreso the amateur porn ‘market’ for want of a better term are definitely not populated entirely by consenting groovy adults expressing their freedoms or taking part in fair economic transactions. I massively mistrust the motives of this bill, and I know that the problem I’ve described is not the problem it’s going after, but I think there’s a grain of truth in what Elaina’s getting at - ie there might be positive consequences.

At the time of the smoking ban for example it felt to a lot of people like freedoms were being unjustifiably limited. If customers and staff didn’t want to breathe in other people’s smoke they could go/work elsewhere. However many years on I think there’s a massive consensus that this idea was misplaced and we can all see the benefit.

Maybe, just maybe, stuff like this - though I re-stress that this is not the stated aim and there are worrying potential precedents - will lead to a world in which yes porn is really sterile and homogeneous and some people don’t get to create or consume content that they want to, but that also far fewer people’s lives are ruined by an industry that is exploitative in an almost celebratory manner.

[Otto]

If they make it illegal to watch this stuff, why not make it illegal to actually do it?

Doing either is obviously bonkers, and the government is clearly trying to pander to certain groups who think “sex on the internet is ruining the morality of today’s youth” or whatever. I doubt anyone involved with implementing this censorship thinks it’ll have any kind of beneficial effect. People will find a way to watch this stuff anyway, and this won’t make a difference to the sexual relationships of anyone. There’s bigger problems in porn.

This is all for show, but I’m sure there will be people who think it’s a good idea!

[Aggpass]

Banning it won’t stop it though. It never does. And if the concern is the exploitation of the workers (which it 100% should be), banning it will make that massively worse - Prostitution being the very easy example to point towards

[eems]

on a different note, if the BBFC thought they had it bad having to watch the occasional extreme slasher movie good luck to them watching and classifying all porn on the internet.

[Aggpass]

extreme slasher movies are exactly what they’re proposing to ban

[eems]

[hip_young_gunslinger]

How is this going to work in practice? Are MindGeek (the owner of PornHub, XHamster, XVideo, tonnes of others, basically all the big tube sites) just going to not show any videos tagged as e.g. female ejaculation if you’re coming from a UK IP address?

[Aggpass]

They’re basically Partridge blocking out the grot channels on his travel tavern TV, then?

[hip_young_gunslinger]

So it will block those sites entirely? Or just various pages on them? What if those videos are poorly tagged? I mean, those sites obviously have their own rules about what can be uploaded, that are very simply ignored by uploaders by simply naming them wrongly.

[Parsefone]

Cigarette smoke is objectively harmful both to the user and everyone who comes into contact with it. Porn doesn’t have to be.

Legislation like this legitimises “mainstream” porn, i.e. the generic, male POV, misogynist shit, often heavily focused on blowjobs and anal, that’s pumped out by the bucketload. Pushing non-conventional stuff to the fringes won’t make it disappear, it will simply make the lives of the people who make it significantly less comfortable, as well as essentially criminalising stuff like BDSM which is perfectly safe if you know what you’re doing (perhaps by watching a video?) and a good way for ordinary people to release stress and explore their sexuality. It helps vulnerable people exactly jack.

[hip_young_gunslinger]

That’s mad… they’re literally some of the biggest sites on the internet. Is MindGeek going to accept being banned from the UK market? I guess they don’t particularly pay tax here or whatever so they don’t have much lobbying power, but I can’t think of a comparable thing on this scale that has simply been banned online.

[profk]

guys, its fine. we can still use proxies.

[eems]

I thought I’d put enough caveats in that post to demonstrate my non-support of the bill but hey-ho.

I guess the nub of what I’m saying is that I find it hard to get upset about assaults on an industry that in many ways I think is inherently immoral - not from a sanctimonious standpoint but from an equality and justice point of view.

[first the they came for the etc]
[delete’s browsing history]

[Aggpass]

MindGeek users with record collections

[Parsefone]

I get that blud, but like prostitution and drugs the problem doesn’t go away by criminalizing it as hard as you can.

[anon67149139]

first they watched, then they came*

[profk]

what is MindGeek? I’m at work so obviously don’t wanna be searching for FILTH if thats what it is.

[hip_young_gunslinger]

The company that owns an absurdly large proportion of adult websites.

[anon67149139]

ESA?