UK Prime Minister David Cameron is waging war against online pornography by demanding Internet Service Providers block such content automatically.

In a letter leaked to the BBC last week, the PM is asking the ISPs to, instead of providing subscribers with “active choice +” – the ability to opt in filters – to turn those filters on by default, which would mean that if you really want to view adult content, you’d have to manually turn off the filters, or tell your ISP that you want access to it.

These rumors were put to rest when the Prime Minister officially announced his war on online porn.

Cameron is asking for ISPs to put family-friendly filters on by default for all new customers by the end of this year, while existing customers will be contacted by their providers and will be asked whether they want to turn these filters on or off.  Aside from that, he asks that some “horrific” internet search terms be “blacklisted” from Bing and Google so even if filters are off, no results will be given to the searcher.

“It sounds like a good idea until you think it through,” said one industry source.

“There are three reasons why it doesn’t work. First it may be illegal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers. Then there’s the fact that no filter is perfect, and finally kids are smart enough to find their way around them.”

Cameron expects to have a “row” with ISPs but he believes that they were “not doing enough to take responsibility” despite having a “moral duty” to do so.  He is also ready to “force action” by changing the law and that, if there were “technical obstacles”, firms should use their “greatest brains” to overcome them.

Other measures announced includes:

• New laws so videos streamed online in the UK will be subject to the same restrictions as those sold in shops

• Search engines having until October to introduce further measures to block illegal content

• Experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre being given more powers to examine secretive file-sharing networks

• A secure database of banned child porn images gathered by police across the country will be used to trace illegal content and the paedophiles viewing it

An Exercise in Futility?

Cameron states that online pornography is “corroding childhood” but while what he is trying to do is quite admirable, will it actually be effective?  Is Cameron’s plan perfect or would it just call for ISPs to protest?  And what about those who actually work in the porn industry? Did the Prime Minister just condemn them?

There seems to be an almost insurmountable number of obstacles in the way of pulling this off, and indeed the move has immediately been widely criticized by many in the UK. One of the major critics, Paul Bernal poses 10 questions about Cameron’s ‘new’ porn-blocking that need to be addressed in order for this war on porn to be better understood.

Some of the questions asked were:

• Who will decide what counts as ‘pornography’, and how?

• Does the government understand and acknowledge the difference between pornography, child abuse images and images depicting rape?

• Are you planning to make all pornography illegal?

• What happens when people ‘opt-in’?

• Are you going to get the ISPs to block Facebook?

These are all valid questions.  How would one define porn?  And who would classify materials as pornographic?  Will Cameron be creating a group that specializes in categorizing online content, or is he intending to rely on automated software to identify porn and decide whether its legal or not? Given the staggering amount of porn available online, viewing and rating this all individually would be a mammoth undertaking, and so it would seem that the latter method would have to be used, but then how reliable would this software be?

And again, supposing someone opts out of the filters, will they be automatically subject to investigation?  Will all their online activities be scrutinized or will they be suspected of watching child pornography?  What about social networking sites like Tumblr, will these be blocked?  Lastly, is porn really responsible for corrupting children’s minds?

In a perfect world, what Cameron wants is reasonable enough.  Who doesn’t want to keep porn from being seen by kids?  But this is not a perfect world, and in many cases kids are smarter than their parents and could easily find ways to watch explicit content even with the filters – after all, they always seem to find a way to get their hands on alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, so a poxy internet filter is unlikely to hold them back.