They said it wouldn't happen ..

[Jay Vaughan]

> This seems like not a big deal, they ask you if you want it on or off when you first sign up, and they call and ask you if you already have it. Hardly forcing you into a filter. 


The reason its a big deal is because it is a morality issue being forced on the population by the government without much input from the people in the first place.  This is not a democratically decided issue.  If there were a moratorium on this issue, the government wouldn’t have a chance - clearly, people like their porn way more than the prudes in power think.  Instead of democratically installing this device, the UK government instead has resorted to populist tactics and velvet-glove authoritarianism (the British are *great* at this, btw, real experts) that appeals to the lowest-common-denominator position holder in the morality argument, and this is never a good place for governments to interfere - especially oppressive ones, such as the UK has produced for decades on end.  (I consider the UK to be an oppressive state.)

Look at it this way, this year its porn.  Next year, will it be “alternative societies that encourage people to think differently from the mainstream”?  Are we going to see a UK in which new forms of thought are discourage in the next decade or so?  I think we’re already seeing it.  I’m pretty sure there are, already, a large number of political sites being filtered by the UK, already, for the simple fact that those sites encourage people to change their governments in positive, constructive ways.  Porn is just the velvet part of the oppressors’ glove .. 

j.