The UK’s Looming Porn Block

By the way, this is an outdated post. After wasting millions of pounds, the government realised a porn block was technically impossible and scrapped it in October 2019. Wank freely, everyone. We’re safe for now.

The UK government has a long and staggeringly stupid history of trying to stop its citizens from looking at naughty things on the internet. If you live in the UK you might even be aware of some of its most recent efforts. Remember when, out of the blue back in 2014, it suddenly became necessary to call up your Internet Service Provider and actively tell them that you wanted to see adult material? That, my friends, was just the tip of the censorship iceberg.

Not long after that, the responsibility for policing home-brewed pornography was handed over to the British Board of Film Classification (who, by the way, renamed themselves from the British Board of Film Censors because it sounded too Orwellian).

This move made a whole bunch of stuff that had been illegal to show on British television for pretty much forever also illegal to show in British porn. Among the banned acts were female ejaculation and facesitting. The former was deemed to be “obscene” and the latter to be (I’m not even kidding) “life-threatening”.

Now, in 2018, ministers are at it again. This time the plan is to install a mandatory age verification barrier in front of any online material that might potentially tent some boxers or wet some panties.

This is a terrible idea for a huge number of reasons. The most bleedingly obvious is that it just won’t work. The technology to reliably block a whole category of websites is as ineffective now as it was ten years ago. Twenty minutes after the block comes into effect, information about how to get around it will be widely available. That’s how the internet works.

Secondary to that is the fact that any system designed to verify the age of visitors to a website will result in a huge database filled with info about who has been watching what. Given the general incompetence of any large organisation, this data will be leaked at some point. That’s not a guess. That’s a law of nature.

And, technological considerations aside, there’s also the fact that it’s not the damn business of any government what consenting adults watch consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes.

But, regardless, age verification is coming. It’s been decided, and Britain has a track record of not backing down from fucking awful ideas even when everyone knows they’re going to tank. If all goes to plan (which it won’t) you should start being wank-blocked by it sometime later this year.

The reasons given for pressing ahead with such an obviously misguided change to the law are a confused mix of general moral hand-wringing and, in essence, a repeated chorus of “won’t somebody please think of the children”. Weak as they are, these arguments work because they prey on ignorance, fear and shame. No minister wants to look as though they’re fighting on the side of porn. No minister ever wants to be accused of failing to protect children.

And so here we are, facing down a looming, stupid porn block. The change is just one of a suite of shit sandwiches the government has been preparing for its citizens, of course, with further assaults to privacy and general independence planned across the board. But, on reflection, this is the one I care about more than most.

Why? Believe it or not, it’s not just because I’m a pervert. Our sexual freedoms are some of the most foundational and intimate rights that we have. When we allow a government to regulate our masturbatory habits, we allow them into a space where no government belongs: inside our heads. We open ourselves up to shame and blackmail. We hand ourselves over on a plate.

So what can we do about it? If you live in the UK, you can write to your MP and express your displeasure at the whole thing – a move which, despite how it might feel, does have a slightly higher efficacy than just chucking the same letter into the ocean. And, on a personal level, you should also get handy with Tor. It’s a faff, don’t get me wrong, but if you value privacy at all it’s quickly becoming a necessary one.

The exact shitty nature of the porn block remains to be revealed. But it’s coming. And you should be outraged by that, even if you don’t actually watch porn yourself (it was just a popup I swear, I would never look at that kind of stuff, the cat must have stepped on my keyboard). Freedoms aren’t the kind of thing we get to retain if we’re passive about them. So don’t be passive. Fight. Get angry. Wank. It’s quickly becoming a revolutionary act.