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The Internet

German Regulators Look To Block Teens From Porn Sites (gizmodo.com) 103

Posted by BeauHD from the horny-bastards dept.
German authorities are trying to force internet service providers to block major porn sites that don't implement age verification systems. Gizmodo reports: Currently, German law requires porn sites to restrict access to individuals 18 or older. What's changed is that German authorities, like the British before them, have now dubbed it a good use of their time to actually pursue porn sites they think aren't doing enough to prevent under-18 browsing, and are trying to compel them to introduce more stringent age verification systems. That in turn comes with all the complications and privacy issues that thwarted a similar effort in the UK, such as the technical difficulty enforcing the rules, censorship, and -- depending on how sites choose to comply -- the possibility third-party age verification services would build databases of who's watching what and when.

Per Motherboard, German regulators -- in an effort spearheaded by the director of the State Media Authority (LMA) of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Tobias Schmid -- are in the process of forcing telecoms like Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom to impose Domain Name System (DNS) blocks against sites like Pornhub and YouPorn. The DNS system is essentially the phonebook of the internet, translating domain names into IP addresses so users can navigate the web. DNS blocking Pornhub would prevent German internet users from typing "pornhub.com" into a stock web browser and immediately arriving at the page. The logic, apparently, is that faced with the threat of a losing the majority of their web traffic from Germany, major porn sites will cave to regulators and enforce the rules.

But it's not exactly foolproof (or teenproof). It would be trivial for German youth to evade these blocks by using an alternate DNS provider or simply downloading a browser plugin. They could also use a virtual private network, which creates an encrypted bridge from a user's device to a server somewhere else, to visit a porn site from another country. Or, they could simply drop the IP address into their browser and arrive at any site without needing to go through DNS. (Pornhub's happens to be 66.254.114.41. You're welcome, Germans of the future.) According to Motherboard, German regulators are also only targeting a handful of the largest sites on the web, meaning anyone could simply navigate to a lesser-known porn site and watch uninhibited.
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German Regulators Look To Block Teens From Porn Sites More

German Regulators Look To Block Teens From Porn Sites

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  • The scrambled generation says good luck (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @07:35PM (#60656186) Homepage

    Stopping kids from looking at porn on the internet is a lost cause even before you begin, boys most especially. Sure, you may get the big targets to implement some age verification system...but good luck with it being anywhere close to effective. Meanwhile the rest of the internet will be wide open.

    I don't even think you can make it har...difficult for teens to find porn online. The only thing they'll probably accomplish is that they'll introduce some overhead for the porn sites that choose to comply with their demands.

    • Re: The scrambled generation says good luck (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheMeuge ( 645043 ) on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @07:51PM (#60656230)

      Don't they know: the internet is for porn!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I mis-read the title as "German Regulators Look To Black Teens From Porn Sites"

      I am disappoint.

    • Re:The scrambled generation says good luck (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sabri ( 584428 ) on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @12:26AM (#60656850)

      difficult for teens to find porn online

      You don't get it. This is about finding a reason to force ISPs to implement a censorship infrastructure. We all know it starts with (kiddie)porn. Then they add "terrorist sites", followed by "hate speech". And before you know it, every political dissident is labeled a spreader of false information, and that will be censored as well.

      And let's not forget, the Germans know how to control society. They've demonstrated that before.

      • Silly non-German kid.
        Germans control *themselves*. No oppression reqiired.

        Reprimanding and shaming people for not obeying rodiculous rules is literally our national pastime.
        RULES, mind you. Not wrongdoing!
        In fact, if you do good, but break a rule that said you should do harm, you will be attacked.
        I
        We recently had our national health minister state publicly, that it is a "virtue" of the German people, to stand at a red pedestrian light, even when there is no car in the entire area! And that that was not the

        • Silly non-German kid. Germans control *themselves*. No oppression reqiired.

          Reprimanding and shaming people for not obeying rodiculous rules is literally our national pastime. RULES, mind you. Not wrongdoing!

          Thank you for putting into concise words an issue I was facing while living in Rheinland-Pfalz for 10 years. The ridiculous and often conflicting rules about everything. One has to bring used glass bottles to the glass bottle container, but lärmschutz means you can only do it during office hours. One has to keep his lawn neatly trimmed, but lärmschutz means no engine noise on Sundays/holidays and not before 9am, after 5pm or between 1pm and 3pm on working days.

          As a foreigner, one is supposed to ta

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Would it not make far more sense to create a secured and controlled internet for minors, encrypted running different protocols on the same hardware, to connect students and schools with a controlled internet environment. The whole internet is adults only, letting children play on it, to be straight up honest, IS FUCKING STUPID.

      It is the same shite every time, they are just waffling shite about protecting children, when their real interest is politically censoring their parents, trying to force the adult in

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      This is a fools'e errand, and the people pushing it have long been known to be fools. As to finding porn, just google some keywords in Google image search.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tmmagee ( 1475877 )
      For what it's worth, I am in China and online porn is next to impossible to find here, and while I am generally against censorship my anecdotal experience is that children are much more innocent here. So, yes, with enough draconian enforcement you can keep kids from porn.

      I don't support the great firewall, but I have to admit I do agree with keeping kids away from porn. I watched porn as a kid too, but now it is ridiculously easy to find practically endless supplies of it. It just can't be healthy for 11

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Baki ( 72515 )

        I watched porn too as a kid (around 10), end of the 70s. It was easy to come by.

        B.t.w. research shows kids are not damaged by porn, only by violence, and by violent porn of course.
        But violence seems to be totally accepted on TV, I have hardly seen any poticitians stir outrage about that topic.

    • Stopping kids from looking at porn on the internet is a lost cause...

      You miss the point; like the Drug War, The War on the Human Body isn't actually intended to solve anything; it's meant to control - and divide.

      How else do you cultivate innocent boys into millions of potential rapists that get a stiffie when they see an ankle??

  • Wrong problem (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @07:38PM (#60656196) Homepage Journal

    Focus on stopping teens from being exploited as porn models. That's an actual problem. The imaginary harm to society when adolescents look at dirty pictures is relatively low on the scale.

  • My favourite genre of porn.

  • Even if it's difficult, reducing porn consumption pays dividends in our economy and society that our well worth the effort. It's well known that content produced that includes underage or non-consenting people is exploited for profit for years by these companies who should be held more socially responsible. If you're interested, there is a petition against PornHub that has already been signed by over 2 million people here: https://www.traffickinghubpeti... [traffickin...tition.com] Take a look and you would be welcome to sign it a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      What "underage" or "non consenting" (it does not count if she changes her mind later...) porn are you talking about? Both is illegal and making or distributing it is a crime. This sounds very much like a direct lie to me.

  • We could go full Japan and have you put black boxes over dirty bits even for the adult viewers.

    I predict it ends in machines vending used panties and tentacle porn, and marriage rates plummeting. (Because all that already happened.)

    • > We could go full Japan and have you put black boxes over dirty bits even for the adult viewers.

      I don't see even that working. Because the internet is a worldwide thing. If it exists anywhere, it's available everywhere.

    • I predict it ends in [...] tentacle porn,

      Ends in?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      that's from 1814, so I don't think internet censorship was much of an issue then.

  • Sex starved teens are very resourceful.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skapare ( 16644 )

      change "teens" to "pre-tweens". that's how it is these days. and now they also want the money they get from their "cam rooms".

    • Sex starved teens ...

      "It's a movie. It's where tweens go to get fingered."
      -- Hayley Smith, American Dad

      "Good evening finger-ers and finger-ees"
      -- Principal Lewis, American Dad

      The message here is, teens have sexual needs at an early age, and express them.

      If sex education was about fucking, we'd be teaching school-girls about hand-jobs, anal sex and consent.

  • Yeah, good luck with that, let us know how it works out.

  • Require all porn websites to require a minimum 3EUR payment/month to access. Allow payment only via methods eg. credit card that adults will have access to.

    Then, simply block all sites which fail to offer this to German IPs.

    As a bonus you will also address porn addiction.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )
      And short of blocking the entire internet outside of Germany, how exactly does Germany go and enforce that?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skapare ( 16644 )

      and how will you block the teens and tweens that use IPs or alt DNS servers or VPNs on port 443?

      • and how will you block the teens and tweens that use IPs or alt DNS servers or VPNs on port 443?

        Or firefox (which IIRC defaults to DoH).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pimpy ( 143938 )

      This was tried before in other countries and failed miserably. The main issue is there is no ability to deduce age from a credit card, many children are more than capable of obtaining a valid credit card (either on its own, or debit-backed) from their bank or other third parties. When I was a kid in the early 90s, even my cat received a credit card in the mail that was fully functional. The second problem is that now a site that may not have stored credit card data becomes a repository for credit card data,

  • But think of the children!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by paiute ( 550198 )

      But think of the children!

      Sir, you are going to have to come with me. You have the right to remain silent....

  • It's and endless game of Whac-a-Mole, Germany, they'll go to 4chan, or somewhere else, if they want to see naked women having sex. So don't waste too much of your taxpayers' money on this.

  • That 66.254.114.41 IP address is going to be too hard for porn fans to remember. I wonder how much it would cost to buy 69.69.69.69 from CenturyLink, it's current owner?

  • Impossible (Score:5, Insightful)

    by esperto ( 3521901 ) on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @09:09PM (#60656418)
    It is amazing how politicians can't understand that at this point in time porn can't be blocked. Trying to block teens to access porn is like trying to block the sun from rising in the morning. Not even the great firewall of china is capable of blocking porn. But if you really think that excess porn access may damage teens you could try, I don't know... EDUCATE THEM! like talk to them openly about sex at school and specially at home and not try to hide stuff, hiding will not make it go away!

    Let people masturbate in peace, at least they are happy, not miserable like you.

    • Fight fire with fire. Fill the internet with government sanctioned, wholesome pornography. Make it impossible for the average lazy teenager to find the really reprehensible stuff. All they get are pictures of bored looking women in poses slightly more revealing than a department store underwear catalog.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • It's textilism that fucks with the mind. The idea that showing skin automatically means it's sexy sexy time is the seed of rape culture. A person should be able to NOT put on clothes, as they were born, without it being assumed that must mean they want sex now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Misagon ( 1135 )

      There are more aspects to the issue than keeping teens away from porn. For one thing, parents often want to prevent pre-teen children from being exposed to porn, accidentally or as pranks.
      Politicians also have to juggle demands from multiple interest groups, including parent-associations and religious groups, so sometimes the result will often have to be a compromise -- even if it is something that can't be enforced.

      But of course, this should be combined with proper sex-education, and absolutely before they

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      The people behind this are known to be irrational rule-enforcers that have no understanding how things actually work. They have long plagued Germany with their efforts and they will continue to do damage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pimpy ( 143938 )

      Germany is not the US, children are not raised in a bubble where they are taught to save themselves for marriage until Jesus comes riding into town on a dinosaur bearing condoms or some such nonsense. The age of consent is also varied - it's nominally 14, but this is really only because it's expected that kids of this age are likely to be sexually active with one another, and anyone that's an adult (21 and over) would be exploiting their immaturity and committing a crime by engaging them similarly. Germans

  • Gratuitous Scenery vs Nudity (Score:5, Funny)

    by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @09:11PM (#60656422)

    Many people have campaigned against gratuitous nudity in movies and TV. Content that could just as well be made without any nudity. Nudity only added because people like to watch beautiful nudes.

    But I think we need to start a campaign against gratuitous scenery. How many times have you watch something with gratuitously beautiful scenery in the background. Mountains, waterfalls, or just rolling hills. Completely unnecessary for the plot. Films that could just as well have been made with a freeway as the backdrop.

    It is terrible, and something needs to be done about it. Gratuitous scenery needs to go. We need to raise awareness of this endemic problem. Just because people like to watch beautiful scenery is no reason to show it.

    CAMPAIGN FOR NO GRATUITOUS SCENERY!

  • You'd think ISPs would provide a $2/month service that uses DNS blacklisting. Not perfect but it provides a basic level to protect younger kids who aren't looking for it. Cheap easy solution with the opportunity to make money. The people who run these giant companies are g*( (@^ed idiots with their thumbs up their ass.

  • Gut luck mit zis new effort, ja? Just put zer wiener back in ze lederhosen...

  • Yet another weak excuse to seize control of DNS. The justifications keep coming, and keep get weaker.

    These are all just excuses to justify building the apparatus needed to prevent you from reading about the wrong information about our political overlords.

    DNSCrypt is your friend: https://www.dnscrypt.org/ [dnscrypt.org]
  • VPN!
  • the internet is for kids!

  • As a pre-internet teen in Germany porn was plentiful and easily available. Shit, it was broadcast on TV, or if you wanted something more hardcore there were plenty of shops, or nip across to Holland for a different flavour.

    It feels weird that the Germans are coming over all puritanical now.

  • Naturally this came as a big surprise to 15 year old me reading a porn magazine.

    To our German neighbours: "LOL Good luck"

  • Whenever I read about efforts to try to stop teenagers from seeing porn on the Internet, I'm reminded of this Dilbert cartoon from 1996: https://dilbert.com/strip/1996... [dilbert.com]

  • They're going to learn real fast that this is a battle of attrition and not in their favor. Horny teens will find a way, we've all been there so we know it's true.

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