Carr said: �The UK should not provide succour and comfort to porn merchants.�
If said porn is legal (i.e. not rape or other illegal porn), why shouldn't the UK encourage it any more than any other form of business? What would be wrong with the UK hosting 100% of the legal porn in the world?
Other than that, there's little else to comment on. Your link is behind a pay wall, and unless you're prepared to break its rules and quote the facts, figures and sources of this data we can hardly argue with the statistic quoted.
Try:
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/inte...
UK - 2% of worldwide porn revenues (90% is China, US, South Korea and Japan).
The site also claims that 100,000 sites offer illegal child pornography, however your link doesn't state what "3rd" is. Is 3rd 20%, 2% or 0.2%? If the UK is 3rd, I take it the readers are left to assume that the UK is also 3rd for hosting child porn (a completely different statistic, but not made plain in the first few paragraphs of the article).
My point is that the ST is at present on a crusade against porn. Now they should go after illegal porn, but we've seen far too many catch-all statements, statistics and frankly nannying silliness on this matter. I've also seen an article where the author doubts a different ST article's data, because it comes from some someone in the net nannying business.
http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2013/06/18/sex-lies...
Whether that author has any veracity is beyond me, but you can have a read, and read the longer of the comments at the end. It might provide a touch of balance. For all I know the author has a vested interest (but until we know either way, we can make no assumptions). By the way, the 'net nanny' chap is also connected to the site I linked to. See the bottom of:
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/
School Is Out, Porn Is In
Parents, take heed. Summer means fun and sun for young people, but there could be a dark side to all that free time. Is your teen home alone? Are the computers in your house protected from porn sites?�
Very psychological. That ought to be looked at as scare-selling.
By all means go after the vermin that do child and rape porn, but legal porn is legal. Just as legal gambling is legal. It may not be to everyone's tastes, but it is legal.
It's slightly ironic that the net nannies won't allow the illegal porn folk to be punished in manner befitting them. Excessive liberalism promotes all sorts of nasties in society. Would I let a child under my supervision near an Internet ready device? Not without locking it down completely, and explaining to the child that until they have their own Internet connection, they would have to put up with my security measures (for their safety, and my peace of mind).
As for your stats link, there's far more service (Internet) based business in the UK than in some other countries, so one stat does not make another stat more valid, when the two are completely unrelated.