Should, could the EU ban online porn? - Geektown.ca

Could the EU really ban porn online? Next week, hundreds of European parliament members will vote on a report that calls for banning pornography across 'all media' - including the Internet.

The report, called 'on eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU', calls "calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media."

This is pretty vague wording, written at a time when the commercial Internet was just getting going. Google and Facebook didn't even exist at the time. But the Internet is still a form of media.?

So are ebooks, come to that. It turns out that the Kindle is also a haven for porn. An investigation by CNET turned up a whole bunch of gritty, pixelated books designed specifically for the Kindle, produced and self-published by amateurs.

Amazon has a content publishing policy that forbids porn in self-published e-books, but many are still slipping through. A quick search here turned up titles such as "Bottoms Up" from Camera Erotica, and lots of cleavage titles offering for four bucks what porn seekers can find for free online.

Amazon does its best to scan for this stuff, but it uses proprietary software, and in some cases, manual scanning. So many books make it through the net.

If nothing else, this shows how difficult it is to police porn. If Amazon can't do it effectively on a platform that it controls, how would the EU ban online porn, given that an awful lot of it is hosted outside the region??

It sounds like another example of politicians not understanding technology.

If they did succeed, it could signal a complete cessation of all pixel-based visual naughtiness, mortifying one-handed surfers everywhere.?What do you think? Could the EU ban online porn? More to the point, should it?

Danny Bradbury, MSN Tech & Gadgets

?

Source: http://www.geektown.ca/2013/03/should-could-the-eu-ban-online-porn.html

missing reese witherspoon pregnant billy joel bent new york jets etch a sketch romney sean payton