There is pretty substancial technological gulf opening up between the "ruling class" and the "reasonably well educated folks" out there. This could be as disruptive and problematic as the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor.<p>Porn filters will be of no concern whatsoever to anyone under 40 with the most rudimentary technical chops (and appetite for porn). What else will be banned? It is getting to the point where fearmongering and shameless populism and shilling for votes by politicians result in useless laws being enacted only to incriminate anyone at all, when the opportunity presents itself to make an example of somebody.<p>I suspect this technological gap is going to get much worse before it gets better, if it does get better at all. The types of people who participate in the game of politics have very little in common with the types of people who have an understanding of the technical world. But can that last forever? Kids now live online with few exceptions, and a technical understanding of the world will hopefully become second nature to most people, eventually.
Aaaaand ... the other shoe has just dropped:<p><a href="http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-say-sue-claire-perry-guido-has-instructed-lawyers-to-commence-proceedings/" rel="nofollow">http://order-order.com/2013/07/24/poll-result-86-of-readers-...</a><p>Guido Fawkes is talking to his lawyers about Libel. (Which under English law -- the reforms haven't gone through yet -- places the burden of proving that she <i>didn't</i> damage his reputation squarely on Claire Petty's shoulders.)<p>I'm just astonished that an MP appears to have been so ignorant of the law of her own land (and how it applies to twitter) that she left herself wide open to this.
I've mentioned this before on one of these threads: I think any focus on the sexual morality of politicians, political point scoring and such is superfluous.<p>Porn and other "offensive content" has been restricted or banned in pretty much every time and place by various means. Even if an outright ban does not exist in blanket legislation, there <i>are</i> restrictions, codes of practice, industry bodies, laws applying narrowly to certain media channels or something like that.<p>Basically, porn gets regulated/restricted/banned always by whatever authority has the means to do so. Always. And some authority always has jurisdiction in some way over every mainstream media source. The difference on the internet is that no one <i>could</i> regulate it. There was no authority or industry body. No power that could be appealed to. Now the internet can be regulated, seemingly.<p>That is the story here. Not "Cameron is a prude" or "Cameron is pro-censorship."<p>The internet is regulatable now. <i>That's</i> the story. This probably means that the same restrictions that apply elsewhere (TV, radio, print) will apply online.
It worries me that people that have absolutely no understanding of even the basics of how a system works have any ability to regulate it. The worst part is, there are MPs who do have a good technical understanding, but for the most part they're drown out by the shrill cries of 'save us from ourselves!'.<p>I cannot imagine how much torture it must have been to try and explain the concepts to someone who just does not care. It's wilful stupidity.
I find the technological incompetence of our political leaders and advisers very worrying. I doubt any of them could describe the difference between The Internet, The World Wide Web, a web browser and a search engine.
I am not usually the one who laughs at technologically illiterate, but this is hilarious, not because she is blaming the blogger for hacking, but because her people are the ones who are deciding how the internet behaves, and yet they have no understanding of even basic stuff. So I find the idea of them making the decisions about something they are literally illiterate about amusing, and haunting.
Carl Sagan once famously said "We live in a society dependent on science & technology, in which hardly
anyone knows anything about science & technology" Nowhere is this more true than in Parliament!
Libel and blackmail from an MP, why am I not surprised. Does anyone know if Kickstarter allows funding of legal actions? I would be willing to donate some money into putting her in the dock for this.
So now that we can see in real time the ways government tries to censure, control, and surveil the Internet. The speed in which they try to incorporate the Internet under their domain of control is one where we don't need to guess anymore about their intent. Its obvious, clear and show no sign of slowing down. Rather, they are increasing the speed in which censure, control, and surveillance are added.<p>We can't even claim that this is the initial battle. That fight has already been fought. We had the discussion around common carrier principles when peoples talked about net neutrality. We had the discussion when people discussed piracy. We had them also when wikileaks and SOPA was in the news. Even some of our allies has turned. ICANN is now days dictating under what purpose people are to be privileged to do the simply act of buying a name.<p>Allowing government to censure, control, and surveillance the Internet produce news article as this one. Expect to see more. Its that, or invent around it in such a way that the censure, control, and surveillance can't be used by the government from an technical standpoint.
As a father of a young child I'm quite keen on being able to provide him with a clean connection to the internet. I want him to be able to explore without having to watch over him.<p>We should have solutions to this problem, at the router level, where we can be in charge of the blacklist, and the times various items on it are ok or not ok.<p>Politicians cannot be blamed for trying to do what is popular, and because we as a community have failed to solve the problem for less technical parents than I, an imperfect solution has been proposed. We should not be surprised.<p>We are the ones best suited to find the optimal solutions to such problems, and carping on about politicians doing something when we have done far too little is pointless.
The porn filter could be debated in the House of Commons if this petition got 100,000 signatures > <a href="http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746" rel="nofollow">http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51746</a>
Even if we ignore all the technical things she seems to be confused about, how can a government official think it is ok to publicly and childishly accuse and threaten this man on a social network. I'm not surprised by her technical ignorance at all, but the lack of professionalism and , well, manners is very worrying.
There's several issues that are worth raising here, but I struggle to understand why the Parliamentary Private Secretary for the Secretary of State for Defence needs to attend a meeting with ISPs about unrelated civilian matters.
Stating the obvious, but there are MAJOR first amendment problems with trying to get ISP's to block porn sites by default. I don't see how something like this could come to a vote without major controversy. There is still such a thing as freedom of expression, last time I checked.