So, the failed attempt to censor the Internet cost us £2m.
More than £2m of taxpayers’ money was spent preparing for the pornography block before the policy was quietly dropped in early October, the government has revealed.
The bulk of the spending, £2.2m, was paid to the British Board for Film Classification to do the detailed work on the policy from 2016 onwards. Before then, additional costs were borne by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, where civil servants were tasked with developing the proposals as part of their normal work.
Perhaps we, the taxpayer, should demand our money back from the BBFC – a body that is entirely unnecessary anyway.
Meanwhile, quite rightly Tom Watson is outraged by this exorbitant waste of money on an attempt to emulate China and its control over what citizens see on the Internet.
Watson attacked the figures, telling the Guardian: “This was a popular policy to protect children that the government has completely botched. It was beset with delays and has now been dropped completely despite the government spending £2m on it. We urgently need comprehensive new tech regulation to be introduced to protect our children.”
Ah. Right. No, he isn’t. He is outraged because this bit of control freakery has not only been abandoned, but didn’t go far enough – popular with whom, one wonders. I think that tells us all we need to know about Tom Watson – as if we didn’t know that already. The man’s an idiot. As any fule no, this would have been bypassed with ease by any teenagers seeking porn with the use of a VPN. Meanwhile, less savvy consumers will have been blocked from legitimate sites due to heavy handed filtering. And, eventually, control freaks in Westminster would have expanded its scope to censor out “far right” sites and rhetoric. It would only be a matter of time.
That the decision was based on a pragmatic assessment of its uselessness doesn’t mitigate the underlying control freakery that lurks in the heart of politicians and uncivil servants across the divide and still needs to be fought off every time it raises its ugly head.
It is not just government funds that were wasted on the abortive scheme. Multiple private companies had developed systems that they were hoping to license to pornography providers.
More fool them.
Maybe being barred from seeing on the Inter-Web what was taught in primary school was a hypocritical step too far.
Poor kiddies not allowed to do follow-up research before deciding on a gender.
Wouldn’t they love to put the internet genie back in its bottle, i suspect sites (blogs?) unapproved by our self appointed leaders will find other means of censorship attacking them in due course.
The internet has been a revelation for me and millions of others, for years the MSM propaganda arm of the state was all we had in the way of news, they would rather we went back to that happy for them standard.
Indeed, as with other forms of nanny-stateism, the “Porn Block” was just the foot-in-the-door to get the plebs used to the idea of needing some sort of government mandated (if not necessarily issued) permission slip to use the Internet. A permission slip that could be revoked (and would be soon enough).
The next step would have been requiring sites to be licensed (in order to prevent the spread of “Fake News”) and clearly those sites not expressing “correct-think” would always have problems getting (or retaining) their licenses.
Far better to throw this on the shit heap along with ID cards.
Tom Watson would be better advised to watch his back for lawsuits from the relatives of all those people he defamed by calling them kiddie fiddlers in Parliament during the now disgraced Police investigation.
I have no problem with porn companies developing their own solutions to the problem of age verification or whatever, but when companies get into bed with government, you’ve got the roots of fascism in the making. Not a good look.
Multiply that by the number of currently “unlicensed wankers” in the UK and you’ve got a nice little earner.I’m guessing Serge is pissed because he was expecting hefty earnings from flogging his “Porn Pass”, which is now just money spunked up the wall. Tough titty Serge.
Quite. My sympathy for the scumbag is measured in minus Kelvin values.
I was just talking with my boss this morning about auditors who we have to employ to ensure we are meeting various Government regulations and accreditations; How these people are earning a fortune of the back of bad Government regulation
Seems it’s the same with these private companies who want to sell this new porn pass software. Sod ’em!
There is always the possibility that they will think twice next time. I can live in hope.
Just actually thinking would probably be a first.
This is just another example of Friedman’s Law of economics, where the spending of other people’s money has no relevance on cost, quality, or result.
In the case of using taxpayer’s money, more will always be found.