Turning the Internet Off at Night…David Cameron appointed Claire Perry as his personal Mary Whitehouse. Now she gives a couple of clues about what she is working on

Read more UK Government Watch at MelonFarmers.co.uk

See article from blogs.spectator.co.uk

One of Perry’s big themes is empowering parents to be able to take back control of a space she feels adults have largely ceded to our children . It’s clear that she sees leaving a child to their own devices in the online world as akin to leaving a child to wander through a city alone at night, and it’s time for parents to take back control. She said: People say it’s so difficult to keep our kids off the laptop. There is a router. You control the wifi. So put it in your bedroom, for example, and switch it off when you go to bed, and then the household is internet free all night. It’s common sense, people are like, wow, somehow they just don’t think. It’s like locking the doors, it’s like making sure the blind cords aren’t hanging into your child’s cot. This, I think, if it’s a problem for you, you’ve got the power to change it. Beyond reminding parents of their own responsibilities, Perry is working on a filter to keep children safe online. The plan is for a filter that checks the age of the child browsing, rather than her original call for all users to opt-in to accessing adult content on their computer, which a government consultation rejected. All public wifi will have an automatic block on adult material. …Read the full article

How Pornography Hijacks the Nutter Mind…Claire Perry wheels in the nutters to preach to MPs about the sins of porn

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See article from dailymail.co.uk

The Daily Mail introduces its latest propaganda piece: Children are being scarred for life by stumbling across internet pornography before their brains are able to cope with it, according to a leading neuroscientist. Dr William Struthers told MPs that in eight out of ten cases, youngsters come across hard-core images by accident. If they are between nine and 14, when their bodies are becoming sexually mature but their brains are not emotionally developed, early exposure can lead to lasting damage including withdrawn behaviour and acting out what they see onscreen. Dr Struthers was speaking at a House of Commons seminar sponsored by Claire Perry, the Tory MP who wants to block web porn from computers unless adults opt in. Dr Struthers, associate professor of psychology at Wheaton College, Illinois, found that research subjects were able to recall the first images of porn they ever saw in remarkable detail even though they could not remember images they had seen more recently. He said that impact was profound because although the hypothalamus, the region of the brain which controls sexual development, is preparing the body for sexual maturity, the higher thinking regions of the brain are not developed enough to deal with viewing extreme sex. I wonder if the MPs were informed about where Dr Struthers is coming from. Wheaton College introduces itself on its website as follows: Welcome to Wheaton College—a community of grace. As an academically rigorous, four-year Christian liberal arts college and graduate school, we seek to honor Jesus Christ with mind, soul, body, and strength. We praise God for your interest and pray that in some way your contact with Wheaton College will serve the sacred purpose expressed in our historic motto: ‘For Christ and His Kingdom.’ —Philip Ryken 88, President Wheaton College is an explicitly Christian, academically rigorous, fully residential liberal arts college and graduate school located in Wheaton, Illinois. Established in 1860, Wheaton is guided by its original mission to provide excellence in Christian higher education, and offers more than 40 undergraduate degrees in the liberal arts and sciences, and 14 graduate degrees. Dr William Struthers has written a book titled Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain. The promotional book description reads: Pornography is powerful. Our contemporary culture as been pornified, and it shapes our assumptions about identity, sexuality, the value of women and the nature of relationships. Countless Christian men struggle with the addictive power of porn. But common spiritual approaches of more prayer and accountability groups are often of limited help. In this book neuroscientist and researcher William Struthers explains how pornography affects the male brain and what we can do about it. Because we are embodied beings, viewing pornography changes how the brain works, how we form memories and make attachments. By better understanding the biological realities of our sexual development, we can cultivate healthier sexual perspectives and interpersonal relationships. Struthers exposes false assumptions and casts a vision for a redeemed masculinity, showing how our sexual longings can actually propel us toward sanctification and holiness in our bodies. With insights for both married and single men alike, this book offers hope for freedom from pornography. Amen.

Perry and the Blockheads…Claire Perry’s parliamentary inquiry reiterates her call for a default ISP block on adult content

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See article from dailymail.co.uk

Claire Perry’s parliamentary inquiry has reiterated her call for a default ISP block on adult content. Anyone wanting to view hardcore images online [or any other adult content such as Melon Farmers] would have to opt out of the default blocking, according to a panel of MPs and peers looking into child protection. Their report said that six out of ten children download adult material because their parents have not installed filters. The use of blocking filters in homes has fallen from 49% to 39% in the last three years. They concluded that parents were often outsmarted by their web-savvy children and felt unconfident in updating and downloading content filters. Many parents were oblivious to the type of material available on the internet and were often ‘shocked’ when they realised the content that children were accessing. Claire Perry, the Tory MP who chaired the non-governmental Parliamentary Inquiry on Online Child Protection, said: This is hugely worrying. While parents should be responsible for their children’s online safety, in practice, people find it difficult to put content filters on the plethora of internet-enabled devices in their homes. The inquiry called for ISPs to offer one-click filtering for all devices within a year. This would block out adult content for all domestic broadband users and stop them accessing pornography on mobiles and iPads as well as PCs and laptops. The inquiry said that the Government should launch an official inquiry into internet filtering and ministers should seek backstop legal powers to intervene should the ISPs fail to implement an appropriate solution. Carefully selected witnesses before the inquiry pointed to changes in the availability of hard-core images: As a result, more hard-core imagery is now available in the “free shop front” of commercial porn sites, the report said. It also found that only 3% of porn sites asked for proof of age and 66% did not contain any warning that they were for adults only.

Parrying Perry…Government backs off from the idea of ISPs blocking porn unless requested otherwise

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See article from pcpro.co.uk

The Government has toned down its support for internet blocking and moved to distance itself from a leading anti-porn campaigner. Last year, the Government threw its weight behind the idea of ISPs blocking all porn by default unless adults specifically requested a full service. However the ISPs didn’t find this idea practical. They rolled out the compromise idea of providing blocking software to individual subscribers so that they could be tailored as required. ISP’s would also ensure that these facilities would be made crystal clear to new subscribers. Now it appears the Government is distancing itself from the original idea of blocking porn by default at the ISP level. Foreign Secretary William Hague explained in response to an open letter from rights groups: We believe that parents should be provided with wide tools to enable them to voluntarily block harmful and inappropriate content. It is important to distinguish between Government encouraging people to make more use of existing protections as a matter of choice, and the Government deciding what people can and cannot do online. Our plans do not prevent access to legal material, but seek to make it much clearer that protections exist, and to encourage their use. The Home Secretary also distanced the Government from MP Claire Perry, who has been campaigning for a block on all porn, a stance that has raised concerns among internet freedom groups. Hague said: The position of Claire Perry regarding the default filtering of adult content is not the position of this Government.

Nutter Talking Shop…Claire Perry’s parliamentary inquiry hears a few views on the subject of online child protection

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Based on article from telegraph.co.uk

The Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection has begun to take comments from a rather predictably selective group. The committee has heard comments from the Lucy Faithful Foundation, the Mother’s Union, YoungMinds, Marie Collins Foundation, Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology at LSE, Jacqui Smith,  the Sun’s agony aunt Deidre Sanders and Jerry Barnett, managing director of the UK’s largest adult VOD site. Jacqui Smith, the disgraced former Home Secretary, had a few ideas that caught the interest. She told the Inquiry that online pornography should be made harder to access in Britain, but that the quid pro quo for helping the industry to remain profitable might be that it could help fund sex education programmes for children. She said that the online pornography industry is not illegal, and it is being impacted by free and unregulated content on the internet. She proposed that if all adult content were only accessible to customers who specifically opted in to it through their internet service providers, then the adult industry might see its profits improved. Online porn has suffered economically in the wake of free YouTube-style sites. She added after the inquiry. If there are restrictions put on to what people can see, that will have a beneficial effect on the industry. If government or ISPs put in place restrictions that does enable the mainstream industry to [recover economically], that would be the point at which you could apply pressure. Smith was keen to stress that she did not propose limiting or censoring legal pornography, but that she wanted to make sure only people who were allowed to see it could do so. I genuinely don’t think mainstream pornographers want young people to see their material because it risks limiting what they can make for adults, she said. She conceded that her proposal may be technically challenging. She said that the adult industry was already in a parlous state and that it would be unlikely to be able to fund education programmes at the moment. She said that although the chances of her proposals coming to fruition are not great, there are reasonable people in the porn industry. The committee will take evidence from ISPs next month.

Nutter at the Helm…Claire Perry to head yet another Parliamentary inquiry child protection on the internet

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See article from publicaffairs.linx.net

Parliament has announced a another inquiry into online child safety, to be headed by Conservative MP and anti-porn campaigner Claire Perry. She got noticed due to her impractical campaign to force ISPs to block porn unless people opt to receive it. According to a press release on Claire Perry’s constituency website, the inquiry will seek: 1) To understand better the extent to which children access on-line pornography and the potential for harm that this may cause 2) To determine what British Internet Service Providers have done to date to protect children online and the extent and possible impact of their future plans in this area 3) To determine what additional tools parents require to protect children from inappropriate content 4) To establish the arguments for and against network level filtering of content that would require an 18 rating in other forms of media 5) To recommend to Government the possible form of regulation required if ISPs fail to meet Recommendation no.5 from the Bailey Review. Public evidence sessions will take place in Committee Room 7, House of Commons between 14:00 and 16:00 on September 8th and October 18th. The inquiry will include approximately 60 MPs and gather feedback from ISPs as well as parents and many others [but probably not those who actually enjoy adult material on the internet]. A final report is expected in November 2011.

Claire Perry and the Blockheads…Fiona Mactaggart joins those calling for a blocked internet by default

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See article from pcpro.co.uk

Labour MP Fiona Mactaggert has added her name to the call for internet blocking to be turned on by default. They are whingeing that TalkTalk’s network-level porn filter doesn’t go far enough because it is only enable for those that request it. Last year, Tory MP Claire Perry called for ISPs to block porn at source. TalkTalk responded with the launch of HomeSafe, a filtering system that claims to block adult websites or P2P file-sharing on all devices on the home network. TalkTalk claims 50,000 customers have already signed up for the opt-in filtering system. Mactaggart and Perry have now repeated calls for the system to be switched on by default. Frankly, the way to make sure we have this protection while still having choice is to have a network-level filter built in, said Perry: I still think that’s the simplest way to do it. I remain convinced of that. That view was backed by Shelia Eaton, president of the National Council for Women, who said such a filter needed to be on by default as parents often don’t know as much about technology as their children. However, Perry was contradicted by her senior Government colleague and Culture Minister, Ed Vaizey, who said he wasn’t fussed what sort of system the ISPs opted for, so long as he sees genuine action from ISPs to give parents easily accessible tools that [mean] that kind of content isn’t seen by children. The TalkTalk system was also welcomed by Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet, who said parents just want a simple way to control what their children can access online. It’s about offering parents the ability to stop their kids stumbling across this content, she said.