US Shouldn’t Be Blocked From Downloading UK “Just Porn” Sites
The hypocrisy is telling, but for some reason, most people who are in the “just porn” camp have no problem linking illegal download sites to their profile pages. A quick search for something like “illegal file sharing” and your browser should return a list of criminal-related sites.
There are probably hundreds of millions of illegal download sites that link to this article. Now there is a vast amount of good, legitimate, and legal download sites.
As a community, we can come together to stop illegal “porn sites” from using encryption technology to avoid being blocked by ISP’s. The new law on IP blocking was supposed to help protect kids and teenagers from these sites, but in reality, it has actually served to kill many free sites. Now it is up to us as citizens to set the precedent that all web-based files, be they porn or not, are safe from legal and illegal access.
In many parts of the world, it is already the case that internet users and businesses will not use public or private networks to connect to the internet. This causes a substantial amount of concern for ISPs. They need to know where their customers are going online, and some of them will not.
For example, if a pizza delivery man was to sit down and surf the net while delivering a pizza to one of his customers, he might “download” videos of women having sex while having a bath together in the tub of his house. Then, when he returns to his customer’s house and opens up the door to let the man in, he might see one of the customers in bed with the woman from the video. Would he sue the pizza delivery man for downloading something that he did not own?
Could you imagine a scenario in which your ISP makes you forfeit all Internet access simply because you happened to open a YouTube window on your laptop and happened to view a “sexually explicit” video? It would be the same thing if you just looked at some Wikipedia video. What would happen? In either case, the customer could file a lawsuit against the pizza delivery man.
The “just porn” crowd is quick to point out that teenagers and kids get access to all sorts of videos and other files on the internet, so this is really no big deal. I agree with that sentiment. However, I cannot help but think that the adults who do not use the normal rules for downloading can also be a target for parents and/or law enforcement officials. The politicians that push for getting tough on this issue seem to want to lock up any site that allows “unlicensed” downloads, as if somehow the “just porn” crowd had not already shown their criminality.
The politicians want to make an example of those sites that allow anyone access to copyrighted material. In the case of this particular battle, it may be the “just porn” sites that will suffer.
My wife and I made a list of websites that were OK for teenagers to view, and we called a friend who is a family member to check on the safety of each one. We considered blocking the sites on our own, but since we have control over our children’s computers, we wanted to make sure that our children were not allowed to get involved with illegal download activities.
The sites on the list were not necessarily the sites that they wanted to go after, but we were careful to not annoy or inconvenience the law enforcement authorities. That means that if we found that the website we wanted to block was not available in the country that we live in, we had to look for the next site on the list. As you can see, “just porn” is not always such a great name.
In the UK, downloading porn from a US website is a federal offense. For example, most states in the USA have very stringent laws against the “illegal” downloading of movies, music, and games. The U.S. actually has some of the toughest anti-piracy laws in the world.
Therefore, we would never consider downloading a movie, music, or game from a site that is not in the U.S. Therefore, we really shouldn’t be lumped in with “just porn” sites. any more than we would be interested in downloading “just porn” videos from the United Kingdom.
