Misanthrope Girl

It is with great sadness that I have to report that the incompetent and dictatorial former Home Secretary ‘Jackboot’ Jacqui has once again managed to get herself noticed.

Yes, this depresses me dear reader probably as much as it does you.

On Thursday last our darling Jacqui appeared in front of the Parliamentary Public Inquiry into Online Child Protection. This inquiry is the bastard off spring of Claire Perry, last seen haunting these pages back in February when I wrote about the stupidity of internet censorship.

The inquiry was launched on August 24th this year and would, I’m sure, have made front page headlines in the MSM if it weren’t for the continuing economic malaise, the dethronement of Gaddafi and the resignation of Steve Jobs.

Still, for those who are interested, Perry helpfully puts the entire press release on her own website and includes an obligatory “won’t someone think of the children” quote:

Parents are understandably worried about the ease with which their children can view pornographic content on the Internet and this Inquiry will provide the ideal platform for all interested parties to discuss how best we can protect our children online.

To which the answer is still to put the computer in a family room and install parental controls. By the time they are using a smart phone with ‘net access and have got around your controls they will have either figured out or been told that tab A goes into slot B (as well as slots C and D), probably know more than you and shouldn’t care if they sometimes come across pornography. All the government intervention in the word won’t stop that so why bother? (Yes, that is a rhetorical question, Ed.)

Anyway, I’ve digressed. Easy enough to do given how much stupidity on is on display here.

The inquiry is taking evidence in two sessions, the first of which was on September 8th, and featured amongst its witnesses the aforementioned Mrs Timney.

In her evidence (MSM only, can’t find the official record) she suggested making it harder to access online pornography in the UK:

She proposed that if all adult content were only accessible to customers who specifically opted in to it through their internet service providers, then the adult industry might see its profits improved. Online porn has suffered economically in the wake of free YouTube-style sites.

Well I can spot two things wrong with that idea immediately:

1. As a responsible adult it isn’t up to anyone else to decide what I choose to view online; and
2. Whilst profits made by business concern you in so far as how much you can tax them (I’m ignoring the arguments on who actually pays the tax here, Tim!) regulating to try and save and industry that apparently needs to evolve in order to solve its piracy issues is a bloody stupid idea!

After giving evidence (if offering suggestions isn’t twisting the word too much) she said that a quid pro quo for government help (i.e. the stick) would be that the industry could help fund sex education programs.

Do we really need more sex ed programs? Or are you trying to suggest that the current ones are under-funded? I seem to recall being taught the birds and the bees at school once a year every year from 10 to 14. And my parents also made sure I knew about it. Given that the previous government certainly considered, if not actually implemented, the idea of teaching kids this from an ever younger age I’m not sure there is a child in the country who doesn’t know about what can go on between consenting individuals.

What purpose would more lessons have? Are they do take the shape of a teacher/adult telling the pupils ‘pornography is bad, yeah?’ because I’m fairly certain that that approach has never worked. Ever. Not for drugs, not for smokes, not for booze and not for sex.

So why bother with more of the same?

Political lobbying group and some time parenting site Mumsnet has been forced by its members to back track on its support for censoring pornography on the web. Needless to say this hasn’t pleased the new Conservative MP Claire Perry the “won’t someone think of the children” authoritarian nut job who is apparently the current cheerleader in parliament for such a scheme.

Why the change of heart?

It seems that pressure came from two directions. Firstly, the more technically savvy members threw their children’s toys out of the pram over the site’s bandwagon jumping, pointed out that as a result of the law of unintended consequences the site itself could well be filtered and downed tools – an action that resulted in no technical support for those in need. Secondly, a few members mentioned the obvious issue: that it is not the job of the state to raise children.

Strangely the second one didn’t appear to fly with one of the site’s founders:

“I think there have been some really valid points about workability raised here but the “this is the thin end of the wedge on censorship” one doesn’t make sense to me. We already censor loads of things in the name of child protection on the internet and elsewhere. Of course there are valid concerns about where you draw the line but you can’t deny that we do draw the line already all over the place – we censor illegal images, we rate dvds, we have a tv watershed.”

Who, unsurprisingly, completely misses the point. Don’t want young children to see pornography on the internet? Then don’t let them have a computer, x-box etc in their bedroom. Set up an account for them on the computer in the communal area that has proper filters in place to stop them seeing it. Don’t know how to do that? Then ask a friend, neighbour etc. Use some bloody initiative rather than expecting the state to act as backstop for your stupidity!

/takes blood pressure tablets and calms down.

Ahem.

Eventually however Mumsnet did decide that perhaps it had acted too hastily and the same person who posted the previously stupidity said:

“We are not going to back any solution… what we are interested in is protecting children online. However, everything we do on Mumsnet is a conversation and our opinions evolve with our users.”

Translation: We got our fingers burnt and next time we will talk to the membership before leaping on any passing bandwagons.

We aren’t of course out of the woods as yet. The government, in the shape of Culture Minister Ed Vaizey as well as the aforementioned Clarie Perry, is already talking to ISPs about getting them to filter the web. Perry, writing in the Telegraph, explains that she would like to see “a home network level ‘opt-in’ filter for internet porn”. Additionally the head of Ofcom (that government quango) said that, “given the technological convergence, if the ISP industry does not come up with a workable opt-in solution, regulation may be the only answer”.

Safermedia – a Christian charity (fake charity status unknown) also campaigning for internet filtering – said about the proposals:

I am surprised that parents would be critical of the campaign because the idea is to help parents. If internet users have to opt in to view pornography parents don’t have to worry about protecting their children from it… I think there has to be censorship to protect children. If you’re over 18 you won’t be censored [under the proposals]”

For crying out loud, when will you fools get it? You’ve recently been berating various countries like Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia for closing down the internet in order to try and stop anti-government protesters. You frequently complain about China locking down the internet and employing an army of thousands to police content as well as companies such as Google who have bowed to the regime there and acted as censors.

Even after all of that you want to employ similar tactics in this country? And all because of the emotive rallying cry of “Won’t someone think of the children”. In the name of the children we have the Criminal Records Bureau, the Independent Safeguarding Authority and others. Have they made children any safer from the paedophile that would otherwise be living under every bed and stalking the corridors of our schools, youth centres and any other place where children might go? No, of course they haven’t. All those bits of paper have done is ensure that innocent people are dismissed from their jobs and that children are being taught to fear all adults.

Can such a scheme even work? Well the Australian government under Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have been trying to do the same for some years now without success (as yet). It has been dogged by controversy with banned sites so far including such horrors as a dental practice and various education sites – quite amusing given that Stephen Conroy, the idiot charged with trying to implement the scheme, has said that it would be “100% accurate”. An opinion poll has suggested that over 90% of the Australian public don’t want the scheme and even children’s charities out there have dismissed it as a waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere.

In the end though it is not about the children – that is just a convenient hook to use and one that can be hard to argue against without being smeared as someone who supports child pornography and other such nonsense – but about control. The internet, allowing the rapid dissemination of information, is a threat to governments around the world regardless of how democratic they appear to be and for that reason they want to place limits on it.

Such behaviour must be resisted at all costs.