The one sided consultation into whether UK internet users should have to opt-in in order to access adult content has now closed. The response forms provided by the government were only relevant to parents and ISPs. Presumably the government didn’t want to hear any negative comments from anyone else caught up censorship scheme.
Over 2,000 responses had been submitted by the eve of the deadline, the Department for Education told the BBC.
Proposals for an opt-in system are supported by several MPs, but fiercely opposed by internet rights campaigners. Internet service providers (ISPs) have also voiced concerns, favouring instead an active choice system. This method, already in place at several ISPs, prompts a new customer to choose if they want anything vaguely adult to be blocked out by their provider.
The findings of the consultation are due to be published later in the year.
A nutter petition signed by about 110,000 people demanding internet companies block access to hardcore pornography as a default setting to protect children is being handed to the Government. Strangely such a system has never been on the table. The current ISP systems block a much wider range of material: hardcore, softcore, and even just textual information about adult topics.
Peers, MPs and church figures are among those who have signed the Safetynet petition demanding ISPs be made to compulsorily block access to pornography on computers, mobile phones and tablets, organiser Premier Christian Media (PCM) said.
The petition, written as a letter to Jeremy Hunt, the previous Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, claims one in three 10-year-olds has “stumbled upon pornography online” and that youths aged 12 to 17 are the largest consumers of internet porn.
MP Claire Perry told the BBC:
We quite happily accept watersheds on TV and we are happy to accept adult films sitting behind PIN systems on satellite channels.
Somehow when it comes to the internet, all bets are off and the onus is entirely on the consumer. Continue reading the main story Porn plans
However, the petition has been criticised by some campaigners for citing surveys with small sample sizes. In particular, a statistic claiming that one in three under-10s had been exposed to pornography online was taken from an issue of Psychologies Magazine in 2010. The magazine had surveyed a group of 14-16 year olds at one North London school, asking them if they had seen porn before the age of 10.
Any organisation that quotes statistics based on a once in a life time occurrence and then presents them as if this was regular usage is certainly telling porkies.
Ms Perry distanced herself from the bollox statistics presented with the petition. That is their number, she told the BBC, referring to campaign organisers Safermedia, which was a small scale anecdotal study.
