The Student Room Group

Online Porn Ban

Scroll to see replies

Reply 60
'A person has needs' might be a joke option, but it is possibly the most important:

On a similar subject, drawings of fictional paedophilia is illegal. Obviously I don't defend child abuse, however I would much rather a paedophile with urges let them out by looking at fake drawings than thinking "well, I'll get the same sentence than if I had sex with a child, so I may as well have sex with a child".

Additionally, someone looking at Simpsons porn for a laugh will be arrested for possession of paedophilia, jailed and put on the Register for life. I wish I was being dramatic, but it's already happened.

So yes, it's dangerous to stop people's urges when they're not hurting anyone to begin with.
Original post by electriic_ink
Well, a) and b) are an entirely different issue and if the state were to mandate that ISPs had to inform new customers about the child-unfriendly material available online and how to prevent access to it then that sounds like a fairly sensible thing to me.

With regards to c), I have just explained to you that childless parents already contribute generously to parents' childcare costs in the form of child benefit. The purpose of this handout is to cover costs like this. Why is this so special that it deserves extra funding?


Presumably because, like education, this is deemed to be important enough not to be left to the individual parents. As for child benefits - a) I don't think they're as generous as you make out and b) they're not for the sake of enforcing aspects of the common good; they're mainly about helping individual children/families by redistributing money for discretionary spending on children, or providing for the essentials that children need.
Reply 62
I think parents need to take more responsibility & realise that computer use is something that needs to be monitored.
Reply 63
Original post by thecrimsonidol
I'm sure people who have been jailed for murder, theft, assault etc. all did what they wished....should they have been allowed to?


That analogy doesn't work; by definition murder, theft and assault all require that the victim be non-consenting. In all currently legal types of porn every party is consenting. The performers are consenting, the website their material is on is consenting, and the viewer is consenting.

People do say "it's the parents job to raise their children" and while this is true, not all parents will do it.


I do not care. I don't want anyone to be punished because someone else is a crappy parent. And frankly the "children" (most of whom are teenagers anyway) aren't negatively affected and would probably be rather frustrated if this law came to pass.

Finally, the government will overestimate the age at which they think someone can start viewing porn without being horribly scarred. An appropriate age would be something like 11 or 12 but it would be redundant anyway because most people below that age probably aren't interested.
Reply 64
Even though i don't watch internet porn, i'm against it being banned because it would be yet another one of our freedoms being eroded.< Now that i cannot stand!
Reply 65
Completely disagree with it, the notion that viewing porn is detrimental to a persons psyche is wrong in my opinion. Although it is anecdotal, I have been watching "soft" porn relatively frequently since i was 13. Am I some overly sexualised, callous monster? no. The video's I, and the overwhelming majority of teen's watch involve consenting adults. The vast majority of teenagers I think should be able to understand that the content they are viewing, does not happen in "the real world".

I mean, it is legal to have sex in the UK at 16 but the media and the supporters of this bill seem to think that watching porn at this age is damaging?

The Government should not have the power to stick their nose into what anyone is watching, legally online.
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by dreiviergrenadier
Presumably because, like education, this is deemed to be important enough not to be left to the individual parents. As for child benefits - a) I don't think they're as generous as you make out and b) they're not for the sake of enforcing aspects of the common good; they're mainly about helping individual children/families by redistributing money for discretionary spending on children, or providing for the essentials that children need.


Too important not to be left to the parents? What a ridiculous assertion. The government mandates that it is ultimately the parents' responsibility to ensure that children are adequately clothed, housed and fed, all of which are important things. But there aren't great numbers of hungry homeless children begging naked in the street.

Every parent, regardless of wealth gets their child's education paid for them (£6000/yr), £1000/yr child benefit and most parents receive further benefits in the form of "child tax credits". There are also various other perks including VAT-free children's clothes. It's a lot.

All of us do things everyday that are for the "common good", without the government's involvement. A good example can be found in the supply of food. Supermarkets play a very important role in ensuring that we have fresh food to eat. But I don't see why they need government incentive to do this. Besides, what makes you think ensuring children don't watch porn is for the common good? I have not seen any proper evidence that children watching pornography is as damaging as people are making out.
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by Sadsnail
I think it needs restrictions because some of it is absolutely disgusting


I negged you for a narrow-minded reply. A lot of porn out there is disgusting, but nobody is right to say "I think jar-squatter is disgusting, and because of this nobody is allowed to watch it." Porn is subjective, as are most forms of entertainment.

In reply to OP, I think if anything happens to internet porn then there'll be hell to pay, and there will be mass protest. Also they would be throttling a large and expansive industry, and one that has been key in developing much of what we use today. VHS won out over its competitor - Betamax - because VHS allowed the porn industry to use their tapes to record.

Sex makes the world go round, pornography is just another part of that.
Why don't they try to hunt down the founders of these child pornographic and brutal porn sites?
And its normal for a kid over 11 to think about these things, and look at them, why does the government insist on taking away adolescent freedom?
Also everything we see has got something to do with sex, especially advertisement. There may be restrictions but there are still loads of adverts which appeal to someone's sex side
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by Nick100
That analogy doesn't work; by definition murder, theft and assault all require that the victim be non-consenting.


That's not true. Other than theft, a non-consenting victim can be both assaulted and murdered.


Original post by Nick100
In all currently legal types of porn every party is consenting. The performers are consenting, the website their material is on is consenting, and the viewer is consenting.


Original post by phonk7
The video's I, and the overwhelming majority of teen's watch involve consenting adults.


How do you know?
Reply 70
Since when has it been society's job to parent other peoples children? I am pretty sure you can buy software for your computer that stops children accessing these websites? How are they going to enforce the "prove your age" if that's what they put into play? Ask you to give out credit card details? I get that its peoples choice, but surely an ADULT should be able to choose their own lifestyle and be controlled by someone elses lack of parenting skills.
I know this may sound daft, but, why is my initial post being thumbed down so much? =(
Original post by Scienceisgood
I know this may sound daft, but, why is my initial post being thumbed down so much? =(


Because four monkey spankers don't want the computer in the front room with mummy or daddy :holmes:

PS your OP is bias. You need some against links.
(edited 11 years ago)
You wouldn't let a child wander down a street on his own, unsupervised. So why should the internet be any different? If you are worried about it, you can employ simple parental firewalls which are effective.
If it's so much of a problem, how about taking the computer out of the bedrooms and into the family room?

It is NOT rocket Science. :smile:
Reply 74
How do you know?

I suppose the word 'consensual' is quite ambiguous, clearly none of these people 99% of the time are being forced, physically to appear in these videos, but there are obviously countless other methods a person can use to pressurise a person into pornography, the chief one of course being pecuniary. However, I do maintain that the vast majority of people appearing in pornography do it by their own consent, the reason being, that they are grown adults and can make their own decisions. Besides, a non consensual sex act are already illegal both to perform and watch, banning normal "soft" porn is not going to affect to prevalence of that.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 75
Original post by dreiviergrenadier
That's not true. Other than theft, a non-consenting victim can be both assaulted and murdered.


Only a non-consenting victim can be assaulted or murdered. If they consent to a fight then they aren't being assaulted per se (unless a boxing match counts as mutual assault), and if they consent to someone else killing them that would be assisted suicide.

How do you know?


Because most of the people who upload the videos are amateurs, or professionally paid actors. There probably are some people who are forced into porn in the same way as there are probably people forced to make T-shirts and shoes. That doesn't mean we should ban all porn or T-shirts or shoes; almost everyone involved in porn consents to it, and everyone who seeks it out consents to it.
Original post by dreiviergrenadier
Well, that's not a matter of principle - so at the very least people need to qualify their comments about parental responsibility.

Even so, there is no reason why the state should expect each and every parent to a) be technically aware enough to know how to deal with the problem; b) be adequately aware of the problem; or c) to devote their individual resources to the solution. Given that the issue is about the common good, I have no problems with childless parents contributing.


:rofl: Oh go away.
Trying to police the Internet is such a ridiculous task to waste your time with, and one which is really beginning to frustrate me. Digital Economy Act wants ISPs to take responsibility for users' filesharing and disconnect them accordingly; gives power to block websites for an array of ridiculous reasons; and if it's pushed ahead, it's going to cripple small ISPs and force up prices all round.

Similarly, trying to block porn is both very expensive and impractical. Think how many porn websites there are; how quickly they're made; how it's shared elsewhere e.g. peer-to-peer sharing; how many users will view it - monitoring alone would be a near-impossible task for GCHQ, let alone ISPs.

And let's be honest, there are always ways around. You can access The Pirate Bay through proxies for example; one of the most basic forms of bypassing. People will always find a way.

Then we come on to the morals. Now, I do feel it does a lot of damage in relationships, health, and psychologically; it's also objectifying and sometimes just distasteful; but a ban isn't the answer. Education and a culture shift is needed if it's something the government wants to change - either a realisation that most porn isn't realistic, and the health issues associated with over-exposure to it. Each to their own though - if consenting adults enjoy making or watching it, that's cool.

In terms of age, I think we need to realise that age of [sexual] consent is a non-working form of generalisation. What is it about being 16 that makes me suddenly able to consent? Why can we have sex at 16, but can't watch people having sex until we're 18? It doesn't deal with people as individuals.

Finally, at the end of the day, if someone wants porn, they'll find a way - TV, DVDs (do porn Blu-Rays exist?), magazines, or whatever.
Reply 78
As is often the case with 'adults' lacking responsibility and free thinking, they're condemning something they've been told to condemn, which they've never tried, to protect their children from their own 'parenting'.
The only things that should be banned or censored on the internet are

-Child Porn
-Beastiality
-Real Violence/Rape/Torture etc... as in sites like Best Gore
-One Direction & Justin Bieber (the names should be blocked online and their music banned)
-Extremist sites that support murder or violence
-Bullying Facebook pages etc... or sex videos put online without permission should be removed and the person that put them up punished.

Quick Reply

Latest