draft of extreme porn consultation thingy

[memevector]

Finally got a version which I think is pretty much "there"!

Draft is here...
(PDF, <40k.)

If anyone would like to do me the favour of reading it before about 11am - 12am tomorrow (Friday), I would much appreciate it.

I'm not sure if anyone will have time, 'cause it is quite long, but what I would most like pointed out is:
- any obvious bloopers
- any subtle bloopers :-)
- especially, any errors of fact.

I think the bit where I am on most shaky ground factwise is the very last bit where I have put in some stuff about the use of filtering software.

(You see I thought it would be a good idea to have at least an outline of the filtering stuff even though it isn't really my area of expertise, because my impression is that some of the people trying to promote this legislation have only a very vague idea of how the net works.)

I would love to debate the politics too! so please go ahead and comment on that if you want, but I plan to email them a PDF tomorrow and then put a hard copy in the post to follow it up, and I'm supposed to be going out no later than about 13.00 tomorrow to do other stuff. So the priority is to clean it up for sending.

Thanks!

I haven't got time now to HTMLify it; not sure if I will do that eventually. But I will almost certainly stick the final version on the web even if only as PDF.

What an epic that was. And I still could make it better if I had time to simmer it another few weeks, so I'm slightly antsy now like: doh! could have started it earlier etc. etc. But I am fairly satisfied with it and at least I managed to do something.

By the way, I got really aware in the process of writing of how biased the consultation document was. It really did not help with getting the issues clear in my head. People who in the end didn't respond to the consultation partly because of that could still make a brief complaint about the consultation process. I might do that as well - I've already commented on it within the document, but the complaint goes to a different person.

Comments

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Every time I thought "but what about..." you answered that question and you seem to frame the debate in sensible ways while linking them to ways others frame the same debate. A good level of depth vs document length too.

Two minor points:
The British Psychological Society has sent in an unfortunate response supporting the government proposals (available on their website). There is internal activism going on counteracting this but when you talk about psychology experts' opinion you should know that a body claiming to be those experts has taken an offical position that disagrees with you. Other responses to the consultation by specialists in both BDSM and violent offences oppose the recommendations.

My second point is technical: that as well as phoning other countries if ISPs block certain websites, it is possible to connect to them via the internet and proxy services. Strong encryption has allowed dissidents in some of the most repressive regimes to communicate with the outside world and so has been effectively proven so far. Opponents would counter that esoteric tech knowledge is not the norm but I'd say usability of such methods is increasing and would be supported by anti-censorship activists should censorious laws get onto the statute books.

[memevector.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Added:
"There are also more technically complex ways of circumventing country-wide internet censorship, which have already been used successfully by dissidents in repressive regimes."

[memevector.livejournal.com]

Every time I thought "but what about..." you answered that question

Oooh good, that's a good sign :-)

Re BPS:
when you talk about psychology experts' opinion you should know that a body claiming to be those experts has taken an official position that disagrees with you

Didn't have time to reply to this before, but have been thinking about it today.

Their conclusion disagrees with mine, but (as I said in my roundup in a later LJ post just now), their conclusion seems to be founded partly on ignorance of the Internet. (They also didn't really look at the whole practicalities-of-policing aspect.) So the argument I've presented against the legislation doesn't rest upon their arguments about porn/people/psychology being wrong. The disagreement - or at least the main areas of disagreement I've presented - is/are outside their field of expertise.

(And my initial impression is that they and I are in fact not that far apart in terms of beliefs about human beings, though I'd want to re-read their thing more carefully before I were sure of that. My impression is that it's in the "OK, so now what?" that we differ.)

So they may think I haven't given some things enough emphasis in my writing or enough weight in my reasoning, but I don't think there's anything they said about psychology which is actually contradicted by what I said. Don't know - it would be interesting to present the writers of their response with my one and see what they thought of it.

Anyway, it was very useful to have their document, because when you pointed me at that, I was just looking for a quote to illustrate the "accidental exposure" issue, and they had a juicy one. So thanks for that too.