Do you want porn with that sir?

So kind of as predicted earlier on this blog there's a growing head of steam around this "Opt in for porn" thing with your ISP. The Daily Fail has got its panties in a bunch and started a campaign and Labour, always quick to spot a rolling bandwagon particularly when it comes to nanny stateism, have jumped on board

"Block online porn!" screams the banner, which without a trace of irony is placed right next to a photo link about someone called Kim Kardashian "Vehemently denying nude photos whilst stepping out in very tight trousers" because that right, isn't porn yeah and doesn't objectify women, right?

You would have a better chance of blocking the tide coming in Canute style. The majority of internet innovations were driven by or became mainstream because of porn. Grumble, I read somewhere, accounts for the majority of the web's traffic. Hell back in the day the video recorder war was won by the technologically inferior VHS system mainly because all the "adult titles" were released on that format.

And you are up against one of the most powerful forces in the universe, the raging hormones of a 14 year old boy. It cannot be bargained with, it cannot be reasoned with and it absolutely will not stop until it's found a way into wobblybigjugs.com and had one off the wrist. I know, I was one once; of course back then it was the magazines passed furtively around your mates and on one memorable occasion we managed to hire Ai No Korida from the video shop and it wasn't out of any desire to explore and critique Japanese cinema I can tell you. And have you met kids lately? They grew up with computers and probably have forgotten more about configuring anonymous proxies than I've ever known and will probably end up helping their dad's bypass the filters.

Its all utterly pointless gesture politics of the "something must be done" type as per usual. It's surely up to parents to bring their kids up, police their internet use and yes, accept that their teenage sons and daughters are a seething cauldron of hormones and talk to them about it, explain what porn is and about the difference between what's depicted in  porn and what real relationships are about.

What's that Mr Government? Ordinary people taking responsibility for their lives and children? That'll never do will it, after all, we're not qualified.

The problem with PR is always the other guys

I was in The Netherlands over the new year and one evening went out for dinner with friends. Our walking route to the restaurant took us past a small concentration of what the Americans quaintly term "Adult Bookstores" (although books are about the one item you're guaranteed not to find in them). Now you can't walk past without having a quick look in the window can you and I noticed something seemed to be missing.

"Hey," I asked my Dutch mates, "Where's the horseporn gone?" for indeed there appeared to be a dearth of magazines depicting, as Bill Bryson once put it, "A horse receiving a certain oral service a horse would not normally expect to receive, not even from another horse.

"Oh it's been banned. It's illegal to sell it or even possess it now."

I was rather shocked. Not because I have any fondness for horseporn beyond its comedy and shock value, it's about as erotic as a wet weekend in Whitley Bay, but it, along with similar "on the edge" forms of porn, are to my mind a good bell-weather of how free a society is; a measure of a state saying "You know what, this is not hurting anyone so its absolutely none of our business." and it saddened me to see a country I'd rather admired for its socially liberal values take a lurch towards the kind of blue nosed "we know best" shite we have to put up with here.

Not only that, but my friend told me that they have made any representation of bestiality illegal, so I suppose the Rijksmuseum will have to had taken this down.

Now the reason for this is down to a small political party, the PvdD (Partij voor de Dieren, "Party for Animals") who, thanks to proportional representation, gained a couple of seats and this rather ridiculous law was their price for playing ball in the coalition that was formed (and subsequently collapsed as it happens).

Now you might think that not being able to legally buy the collected DVD box set of Bodil Joensen's barnyard movies is no big deal in the grand scheme of things* but just for a moment swap "Party for Animals" with "Party for Sharia in the UK" who, with PR, win three or four seats in a hung parliament.

What would their blood price be?

Now PR has been kicked into the long grass here thanks to Nick's university fee U-turn and some clever play by the tories but it'll come around again and you'll be asked again to vote on its introduction. Before voting ask yourself whereas you might be happy with your little party getting some power all those other little parties will as well and you might just find the pork gets banned along with the piggy pr0n.





* especially as Teh Interwebs has more or less made all forms of censorship moot.

Church of England "Threatens" on porn.. oh noes!

I think being "threatened" by the C of E must be like being savaged by a half dead chinchilla; bizarre, not dangerous and you just end up feeling sorry for the chinchilla.

So what are the men who go around wearing frocks getting all hot under the dog-collar about today? Well if that bastion of accurate and unbaised reportage the Daily Fail is to believed "War on web sleaze: Church of England threatening to withdraw millions invested in ISPs over rise of internet porn. OK so you have "invested" these "millions" how exactly? That would be largely through shares sold in the open market I would expect, so you sell your holding and lose all that lovely dividend income, depress the share price which provides a buying opportunity to other investors who purchase these shares and raise the price. Your net contribution to "stemming the tide of these sick and depraved images" is the square root of fuck all.

Look, we have had porn forever, and "extreme" porn at that; there is a cave painting in southern France that is tens of thousands of years old, well before any form of civilisation existed, it depicts a crude stick figure of a human shagging some kind of animal. Porn isn't going to go away despite what you think your sky fairy would want. Rather amusingly and sticking with animals for a moment the much heralded "Extreme Porn" laws introduced last year get a mention along with the fact that hardly anyone has been proscecuted under these laws; well that's for a reason, it's nigh on impossible, with the exception of bestiality, to mount a case as to what is "grossly offensive... and realistic" (and you only get bestiality under the wire because it's pretty obvious its an animal and not a human) so all the cases have been for possession of bestiality images, and even there one case got dropped as the video clip in question was a CGI render (and cartoons don't count - so all you Furry and My Little Pony rule 34 fans are in the clear).

Of course the reason why this has all come to the surface is the recent Vincent Tabak conviction for murder where it transpires he'd been looking at "violent porn". The usual suspects in the Daily Wail and elsewhere start their knee jerk "It was the porn what made him do it" blissfully ignoring the fact that presumably these websites were not solely set up just for Vince and therefore tens if not hundreds of thousands probably paid these left handed mousing sites a visit and then didn't go on to strangle their neighbor. If you're the sort of person who would take someone's life I would posit that you're that kind of person and watching some S&M porn isn't going to make a blind bit of difference if you are going to act on your impulses - in fact I would say and the studies bear out that having a safety valve of knocking one out over some staged smut might just act as a safety valve*

The bishops might want to consider that before they sell their ISP shares and buy cassock futures and tofu bonds.


* incidences of sexual assault have decreased in countries such as Denmark and The Netherlands after the legalisation of porn.

Thinking of the chiiiildren, again.

Ah yes, the Tories. Just like Labour always ready with their ban-hammer when it comes to the thought that someone out there is having a good time. Following on from a report from that bastion of all things blue rinse and prudery the Mother's Union (whose leader appears to be a bloke called "Reg" for some unfathomable reason) your lovely nanny state will insist that the main broadband providers will offer a block on "adult content" to all subscribers.

Of course there's no detail on this but I would imagine it'll be some sort of BT Cleanfeed and so easily subvertable by any moderately tech savvy twelve year old (and they all are) who can configure a proxy.  In  other words this is a fig leaf, a sop to those members of the party faithful bluenoses who wander around with a disapproving expression and looking for all the world like someone has just rammed a pine cone up their arse.

And how is this going to work in terms of opt in or opt out? The Daily Fail is saying "opt in" whereas everyone else reporting the story is non-commital on that point.  Mind you opt in is going to make for some amusing conversations in PC World.

"Do you want porn with your new Dell laptop?"
"Er, yes please."
(Turns on tannoy) "Mr Verity to the checkout please. Can you bring a porn opt-in form. Gentleman wants internet filth on his PC. Now sir, what sort of porn do you want? Straight, gay, midgets, horses, horses with midgets..."

And who, exactly, is going to administer this list of what is "adult material"? Sure so it's a fair bet that a website with a name like "HotSexyDragonsDoingItWithAnythingThatMoves.com" will end up on the list¹ but how about some gay advocacy sites that offer advice to to teenagers struggling with their sexuality? What about stuff that's not actually sexual or illegal in any way but maybe you really would not want your kids looking at such as these "pro anorexia" sites?  What about "dangerous" political sites that you find distasteful such as those from extreme right and left wing parties or Muslim extremists?

See where as it's nice an easy to block something obvious that we can pretty much all agree on a definition of such as child porn² it starts to end up like a quagmire of The Dead Marshes proportions as soon as you try to categorise what's "adult" and what isn't.

And as ever, with politicians in charge, they are bound to monumentally fuck this up.

¹ memo to self: register that domain name ASAP.
² and even there, if the spam I get in my mailbox inviting me to come to sites with names like "hot-teens.grubbysmut.org" is to be believed, where I am sure the models are of legal age but are pretending not to be so, where do we stand with the ban-hammer on this one?

Rule 34

I've noticed a bit of an upswing in visitors recently. A quick look at the referrers gave the reason why and it's all down to that animated film that's out at the moment called "How to Train Your Dragon".¹

So why is this driving traffic here? Easy, people are searching for "How to Train your Dragon Porn" on Google.

So is there HTTYD porn out there? Stupid question, this is Teh Interwebs and we have Rule 34 which states "There is porn of it, no exceptions".

Here you go... NSFW and Not Safe After Lunch: Toothless being trained to do something very naughty indeed

Dunno, he is kinda cute... I might.





¹ No I haven't seen it yet. The thought of sitting in a cinema with loads of screaming kids makes me feel physically unwell, I'll wait until one of my colleagues at work gets a good rip of it.

Drop that pencil!

Ok so I was given to understand that photos and videos of child abuse were illegal because, well, quite simply chidren are abused to make them and even a libertarian dragon such as I realised that a person's freedom has to be restricted when it impinges severely on the freedom of another, and the freedom not to be killed or raped comes pretty high up that list. So, no problem banning kiddy porn videos from me.

Now what if someone takes an application like Bryce or RenderMan, creates a wire-frame model, renders it and it just happens to look like a small girl in a swimming pool of lard getting it on with a lizard-creature from the planet Zod? Ok so that someone has not so much got a few nuts and bolts loose but rather is missing Screwfix's entire fixings inventory but, get this, NO ONE HAS BEEN HURT. There is no victim, just a bunch of pixels pushed into place by software, therefore there can be no crime, no matter how personally appalled you might be by what the person behind the computer just did.

Well if the rabid control freaks in Za-NuLabour get their way, and they will, it will be a crime. Indeed it would seem that at least one police force during the recent "Extreme Porn" debacle wanted not only sexually suggestive drawings of children banned but also writing.

So everyone of you who has a copy of Nabokov's "Lolita", 3 years in the nick. Guess that's why they have just let out all those muggers and burglars early, they need room for you. Oh and The Koran, The Bible and Shakespeare (Juliet was under 16)... all you lot as well.

No people, I hold no breif for the kiddy fiddlers but this has gone way too fucking far. We need not to be voting these twats out of office we need to be throwing them out, via a twelfth floor window and into the paths of speeding fuel tax protesters in 18 wheel trucks.

This goes way beyond "protecting children", indeed there is evidence that this will actually put more children at risk,¹, this is pure and simple "We will control what you imagine and think. You may think of Government Approved topics only" and puts us in the shameful company of Saudi Arabia, Iran and China when it comes to freedom of expression.

Kill them. Kill them all. (and don't forget to bring lots of crimson Prismacolors so you can draw the fountains of blood accurately).




¹ There are a number of studies that show that where porn is freely available the rates of sexual assauts and sex crimes generally are lower than countries where it is not. Not conclusive proof but certainly strong evidence for a direct causation.

An exercise in futility

Flapping around the InterWeb yesterday evening I stumbled upon the XXX Church, a website both hilarious and deeply sad in equal measure. It isn't what you would expect from the URL, no nuns with donkies or pics of Father O'Murphy's latest choirboy but it's a site devoted to helping cure you of your "pornography addiction".

It's very clever on a lot of levels, first unlike most Xtian sites that seem to have been designed by a kid off the special-ed bus using HotDog v1.0 on a 486 this one is well built, quick and engaging so you think you might well have stumbled on an adult site, secondly getting that URL was fucking inspired. Thirdly they have gone for the "it's an addiction, it's not your fault" line, see it's not your fault, it's the nasty booze, heroin, porn that has made you an addict so don't feel bad, we can help you. It's a pernicious lie if ever there was one; of course it is impossible to be physically addicted to anything that isn't a chemical you put in your body. Sure you can become obsessed with anything, stamp collecting, restoring vintage cars or, indeed, looking at online smut but you don't see sites devoted to helping "stamp collecting addicts" do you. Of course once you have something labelled as "addictive" (which immediately equates to "dangerous") it's a lot easy to get your campaign to restrict or ban said something - and make no mistake this is something the followers of your Middle-Eastern Sky God would love to to, even the moderate ones.

What heartens me though is the utter futility of their task. Firstly take a look at the hatemail section. You would expect the hatemail to be from, well, folks like your favourite grumpy dragon telling them what a bunch of wankstains they were and that they could have my horseporn when they pry it from my cold, dead claws but nope, virtually all the hatemail is from other Xtians telling them what evil scum they are and, showing true Christian charity, that they will all assuredly burn in hell where devils will repeatedly poke their nether regions with tiny pitchforks¹

But for the real giggles you need to go to the "Prayer Wall" where the sad sacks who have been drawn in by this nonsense make their confessions and ask for prayers. These are just hilarious, Mrs Dracunculus had to help me back into my chair I was laughing so loud. From the guy who posted his e-mail asking them to repent of their sins and stop running a porn site he'd sent to the customer support address of "Virtualgirls.com" and was still awaiting a response from the management, to the guy who had finally beaten his "porn addiction" and his wife still left him, to the high school student who is doing his "365 days of purity" and keeps falling off the wagon every three or four days never has a group of people deserving of more derisive laughter been gathered in one place.

Equally however I do feel saddened and not a little angry at the whole thing; look porn has been around ever since Ug the Neanderthal picked up a burnt stick and scratched it against the wall of the cave and it will be with us long after we are all wearing one piece silver jump suits on our day trips to Betelgeuse, it is not going to go away, no matter how much you would like it to and how much you pray. Sex is an integral part of the make up of any animal, us included. We think about it most of the time, it's a basic biological drive and uniquely among the animals we can answer part of that biological drive by looking at pictures of other individuals in a sexual context². There's nothing wrong with looking at mucky pictures or indeed having one off the wrist, it's as natural as breathing and going to the lavatory and the only thing making it unhealthy is getting all tied up in guilt over it because you're a subscriber to some mediaeval unreality cult whose way of controlling you is to make you feel bad about anything that might be pleasurable. I want to go on there and just tell the poor fuckers writing in that "You know, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing, keep it up, just don't do it 24/7."

In fact I have applied for an account as I think there is some prime mischief making possibilities here and the opportunity to maybe to make a point at the same time.

If I get the account I'll start messing with their heads next week... see if you can spot which one is me.



¹ Alas! Spare my posterior!

² Does not seem to work with animals that. As a control I printed off some piccies of hunky stallions and showed them to my mare Sunshine. She sniffed them, nibbled them to see if they were edible and then wandered off and started eating the hawthorn hedge.

Goede Morgens Jonge

It means "Good morning lads" is Dutch. I'm getting a quick brush up on my far from l33t Dutch language skills at the moment as I nipped into an internet caff in Amsterdam to check the mail and everything is coming up in nederlands. They have just served me some very tasty chcolate brownies too and they are making me feel all light headed¹

The reason I'm in the 'Dam is I called my friend up this morning. "Best not come up until the vet has been," he said, "Maybe best to remember doglet like he was." Probably best, he was such a nice and full of life woof it would be upsetting to see him now, better to remember him how he was. He's had a stroke apparently and probably wouldn't know who I was anyway.

Fuck - there have to be a billion and one shitbags on this miserable rock who should be dead before doglet. Why can't Tony Blair be breathing his last right now.

Ah well, at least I got to spend a couple of hours wandering round Amsterdam. I haven't been here for a while, last time would have been TechEd in 2004 and I spent most of that at the RAI and only made the occasional foray into the city centre and then spent most of the time in various alcohol retailing emporia. I letf the car up at the airport where they have named all the car park areas after typically Dutch things like "Farmers Wife", "Windmill" and "Tulip" so you can remember where you're parked. I think I left mine in "Spliff" but it might have been "Brothel", it was next door to "Horseporn" I remember that much.

Speaking of such things Amsterdam round the centre seems to be precious little else these days. It was always a bit like this round the Damrak but it does seem to have increased. And blimey, you should see what the sex shops are putting in the windows these days, back when I was a student and we came here for the recreational herbs the window displays were a bit tame, these days the animal porn is in the window in a fetching display; dunno, maybe they had a sale on or something, buy two horse shagging DVDs and get a free dog one.

Christ alone knows what they keep under the counter these days.

Midget porn probably.





¹ To any law enforcement personnel or company snoops reading this, this is a joke. However I recon if I do stay here much past my half hour's alloted net time I'll be high as a kite from the secondary smoke. Coffee is good though.

Another roll of cotton wool to wrap your sprog in

Well it would seem that today is "Internet Safety Day" which is meant to raise awareness of the dangers kids face on the InterWeb and how to protect them against it. Your humble green scaly friend is of course happy to take part and would caution anyone under the age of 18 to stop reading right now because I'm about to say "fuck".

The Cyberspace Research Unit (CRU) at the University of Central Lancashire is the UK co-ordinator for Internet Safety Day

That would be that venerable centre of learning that used to be Preston College of Further Education then. Jesus Christ these morons were't even a polytechnic and now they are telling us how to run the fucking internet.

The scheme is being launched as research in the journal Pediatrics reports that 42% of young people aged 10-17 questioned for the study had seen sexually explicit material online. Two-thirds of those who reported seeing this material said their viewing of it was accidental.

"Although there is evidence that most youth are not particularly upset when they encounter unwanted pornography on the internet [it] could have a greater impact on some youth than voluntary encounters with pornography," said the study.

First up what's "sexually explicit" because there's a bit of a world of difference between a piccie of Janet Jackson's boob flash during the superbowl and the movies made by the late Bodil Joensen (for the Love of Fafnir do NOT click on that link if you are at work!). And can we play "spot the weasel words" here - we have "evidence" that young people are not upset or harmed or pretty much anything really when thy stumble of a bit of flesh on the web but it "could" have a greater impact. In other words the data shows it doesn't make a flying fucks worth of difference to the mental, physical or emotional wellbeing of little Johnny if he thinks he's pirated "Happy Feet" but in reality he's accidentally downloaded "Hot Penguin Lust Vol XIV" but that doesn't tie in with our "porn is nasty and should be banned because, well, people like it and men look at it" moonbat views so we'll just make up shit that it's probably bad anyway.

Mind you, what the fuck do you expect from Preston C of FE.

Oh and, icing on the cake, out comes John "I'm really tough, me" Reid who can't find all those foreign murderers, rapists and paedophiles or, come to think of it, his arse with both hands, with his attempt to hop on the bandwagon...

In the UK, British Home Secretary John Reid has said he is considering making paedophiles add their chatroom names to their other details on the Sex Offenders Register. And sex offenders could be forced to register their e-mail addresses to prevent them approaching children on the internet, the UK government has said.

Yep, that ought to do it, can't imagine that they would just go off and register a new IM and hotmail account.

Bloody hell I need a "Voluntary Encounter" with some pornography. Wonder if I have any of Bodil's movies hanging about...