British Prime Minister Announces UK Will Block Internet Porn by Default

British Prime Minister David Cameron really, really does not like pornography. In fact, the PM is so against the idea of naked pictures being available to anyone with Internet access, he’s willing to work to change the entire way the Internet works in Britain to make it harder to find X-rated material. In a press conference today, Cameron announced that his administration had reached agreements with the UK’s four major ISPs to place pornography filters — which will default to ‘on’ — on all new subscriber accounts.

The filters will be put in place by ISPs, who Cameron said have a “moral duty” to do so, and when activated, will keep any device hooked up to a filtered network from viewing pornographic material. Existing accounts will also be given access to the filters, though they won’t default to active mode — it will be up to customers whether or not they want to activate them. If customers fail to select an on or off option for the filter, though, the ISP will reportedly activate it by default.

While the measure may seem extreme, the announcement is really just the culmination of Cameron’s continuing crusade against Internet pornography, which he described in today’s speech as “corroding childhood.” That’s not to say that it’s not extreme — just that it’s the sort of extremism that makes sense in context.

The announcement comes alongside a host of other regulations, including measures criminalizing some particularly extreme forms of pornography in the UK and forcing search engines to delete offending sites from their listings. It also comes as Twitter announces new measures to combat child pornography on their service.

(via BBC)

Meanwhile in related links

• Is there porn on your Internet? You may want to consider suing Apple.
• Blogger ads are going porn-free, earning the ire of many
• Of course Vine has already been repurposed for porn. Of course it has.

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Ian Chant