I’ve been watching the news, and UK politicians are intent on setting up porn filters on the ISP (Internet Service Provider) level to filter the Internet going into people’s homes, etc. You’ll remember that I wrote an article about it a few weeks back (Britain Considers ISP Filters To Save The Children: Flawed Logic). In it, I revealed that the politicians and anti-porn pundits campaigning to filter the internet to UK citizens are basing their case and statistics off of one magazine’s puff piece. The magazine (“Psychologies Magazine”) claims to cite a study about children accessing porn – when in fact, there is no such study. (And it is possible that their “poll” is fabricated.)
In a great article today on Ars Technica Nate Anderson delivers UK ISP porn filtering proposal riddled with problems. In it the Guardian UK is exposed for being a biased vehicle for anti-porn propaganda.
The UK government has a porn plan: keep it off the Internet by default. If Communications Minister Ed Vaizey gets his way, subscribing to Internet service would come with ISP-level smut filtering activated; subscribers would have to contact their ISP and affirmatively request that the porn protection be withdrawn.
The scheme has been mooted before, but an article in this week’s Sunday Times kicked the debate wide open. Vaizey wants to hold meetings with Internet providers and hopes to come to some voluntary arrangement under which the leading ISPs would agree to this plan voluntarily. (Vaizey insists he doesn’t want to pass any laws on this… but he might have to if ISPs can’t get their act together.)
The idea is to make it easier for families to keep porn out of the house, rather than having it always a click (or one mistyped domain name) away. A recent piece in the UK newspaper The Guardian noted the concerns of those who argue that pornography inhibits fulfilling sexual relationships and generally degrades women (…read more, arstechnica.com)
The proposed filter is deeply troubling – yet so is the Guardian. I love the Guardian for so many things and I have been a daily reader for years. But the anti-porn bias there is now like a creeping cancer – not just because I’m obviously pro-porn. It’s because they keep giving me articles on the topic that are ultra-conservative and omit facts and factors key to informing me as a reader. I now can’t stop wondering what other biases the Guardian has, and how they might be misinforming me with other articles where they decide for emotional reasons not to show both sides of a story and try to tell me it’s journalism.
I have to wonder, is their coverage of Wikileaks similarly flawed?
Guardian’s bloggers hate porn too, but they at least have common sense.
Image: Holiday porn from this hardcore gallery, because porn is actually not bad – and it certainly does not devalue women by encouraging masturbation. Duh.
