ST says .uk is world 3rd highest porn site domain

Sunday Times linky.

Including "rape" domains. Ed Vaizey says he has written to Nominet asking about its plans to prevent abusive behaviour. GoDaddy were apparently advertising an obnoxious one, saying "snap it up before someone else does". They have now withdrawn it pending review.

Isn't it likely that '.uk' is the 2nd or 3rd most populated country code? Hence the correlation.

http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/top_level_d...

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.

Only 3rd?

Slackers.

because it doesnt fit in with government ideals.

We need to be their perfect society nice and clean.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

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).

If that would be your way of handling said child, it's your choice nanny .

Presumably visiting friends' houses or looking at their phones and tablets would also be prevented by you in some way.

As for the personality disorders probably engendered in the child, from its own observations of its peers, and by the ridicule/peer pressure said child would suffer, no doubt you would know how to prevent any such harmful effects.

La-la land I'm afraid.

Not really. Just a different set of standards when it comes to what a child should be doing with his/her time. I would be taking the child out walking or doing other sports. The child would not be looking for online life as the default opttion (perhaps in the dark, winter months, that would be more sensible).

As for friends houses and so on, that would be the responsibility of the parents of the friends, and they would have the blame if something was amiss. It's not nannying to block a child access to adult content or pursuits. Is it nannying to discourage under age drinking?

Of course not, so address the subject matter of the post, rather than the person.

I was addressing the solution proposed, not the person. The solution proposed is unworkable, and would also be nannying by the poster, as deplored by the poster when the state proposes ISPs and search engines should deal with it.

Pointing out to a poster their self-contradiction doesn't seem to me like an attack. Just reasoned argument.

However, I also believe the approach by the state is na�ve in the extreme. Unfortunately I'm not clever enough to think of the solution, far better brains than mine failing so to do.

Nor do I believe access to adult material should be an opt-in on broadband connections. It should be opt-out, but the facility should be easily available and the blocking mechanism well constructed. The latter, even when implemented as the default, is very unlikely.

One of the things I think is bad about account-level blocking is that the status of the switch will presumably be accessible by support. Whatever the setting, I don't think it should be.

But we are way off topic, which is a pity.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But we are way off topic, which is a pity.

Exactly. My original post was discussing the UK as 3rd etc, but you then focused on my hypothetical example, rather than the stats.

Incidentally, Seb has a good article on this:

http://blog.thinkbroadband.com/

Parents shouldn�t consider the Internet a safe haven where their kids can play unsupervised, nor can they outsource parental responsibility to technical gadgets which will inevitably fail. Of course, using appropriate tools as part of a package to protect your family is a great idea, and I would expect key companies to be promoting ways in which you can use the Internet safely.

Which pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter. Parents should be aware of the risks and the possible solutions.

Quick introduction, I'm Unity, the author of the article on porn statistics you've linked to and to clear up one thing straight away, no I'd have any kind of vested interest in the porn industry or in trying to protect it beyond a general dislike of censorship.

In fact, if there is one group that would almost certainly welcome some degree of network-level blocking of porn sites, it's commercial porn producers who are currently struggling badly to make any kind of profit due to the growth in free porn tube sites and bittorrent downloads, which are making it extremely difficult for the industry to generate subscription revenues from pay sites.

As for Internet Filter Review and it's 'statistics' the issue there is not just that it's in the business of selling net nanny software but in the fact that I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to track its figures back to original sources.

In doing so I've found that most of the statistics quoted are either hopeless out of date or, in some cases, a complete and utter fabrication, that he promotes net nanny system merely supplies a possible motive for his activities.

IF you'll notice, the big difference between my article and Ropelato's site is that, wherever possible, I scrupulously identify and link to my own sources. I don't expect anyone to take what I have to say on blind faith, which is why I provide that information, and those link, so you can decide for yourself whether or not what I've written is factually accurate.

So make of that what you will...

U.

The problem with linking .uk to any statistic cannot be valid. You do not need to have any link with UK to register a domain .co.uk. There can be on others such as .net.uk

Anyone with name to register normally looks for .com ( international;), if registered, looks for .uk.
Also, for me, it is websites such as facebook where problems lie, not porn,
Porn you can only watch. Facebook etc chat rooms which are not policed can be dangerous.

Hi there. Thanks for the reply.

No I wasn't assuming vested interest, any more than assuming that either article has reliable stats and so on. I'm inclined to be undecided about the subject. It's such an emotive one after all.

My own bugbear is the habit of sweeping regulations to catch everyone (and hopefully the bad folk).

e.g. I have never caused an accident to warrant, nor driven in a manner which would warrant speed bumps, and yet I have to suffer them.

Any factual data on any subject where a lack of knowledge results in biased news reporting or unwarranted legislation for the collective is always welcome.