Back in December 2012 the British people were asked in the public consultation if they would like a UK porn block on their home broadband connections. The result was a reasonably clear "no" with only 35% of those asked keen on an automatic block being put in place. However the government has decided to do exactly that anyway.
At the time ministers noted that the lack of public support was a reason not to push forward with the plans. Everyone knows that many adults will simply use a VPN to access porn instead. Things have, it seems, changed again though with David Cameron making a speech in which he claimed porn was eroding the childhood of British youngsters.
Under the new plans the government will ask ISPs to offer users the choice of either blocking or unblocking content. If no selection is made then the filters will be turned on by default. Criticism of this includes claims that it's building a database of people who want to look at smut online, something which could be exploited by hackers if that data leaks.
The idea of all this is to keep kids safe. However the problems with blocking porn sites doesn't really help with the content that appears on other services. Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr and image hosting sites all have copious amounts of adult material for those who care to look.
Unless ISPs start to block these services too, they won't be able to do much about children from accessing porn. And it's arguably harder to restrict what people look at on their phones too, perhaps making kids less safe and more easily able to see unsuitable material.
However you look at it, this porn debate has been rumbling on for a long time now and it doesn't look like it will end soon. With ISPs already making efforts to offer tools to help parents heavy-handed legislation doesn't feel that reasonable, especially when the general public are against it.
