Obviously, I believe in the free right of every adult to watch porn as much as they please. If that wasn’t obvious by the fact that I created a whole site dedicated to my number one love in life, porn, it should be now! In the EU, new regulations have just been passed which would make it illegal for Internet Service Providers to block porn sites, even if a customer opted in to that idea. The new laws were put into place to preserve net neutrality, which just means that ISPs should give people equal access to all websites. Some people want porn websites blocked on their networks for good reasons, but according to the new regulations, they can’t do it.
In the UK, which at least for now is still a part of the European Union, some stringent laws were put into place a few years ago, and the governing body which oversees video-on-demand was given even more power over the porn biz there. The laws, which were widely protested, outlawed showing fisting, squirting, facesitting and some other kinkier sex acts like caning in porn make in the UK. In addition to that, UK ISPs put in “porn filters” which would automatically filter out offending content, and made sure that the people of the UK wouldn’t see anything that would offend their eyeballs. This made all the people who actually wanted to rub one out to Skin Diamond or Chanel Preston very frustrated! It was kind of like a chastity belt.
In 2015, the EU ruled that these filters were illegal, but said that they could be considered legal as long as people opted in. However now, they aren’t sure if opting in to blocking sites on the service provider level does enough to preserve net neutrality, even if people do opt in! Some EU policy makers believe that the only way to preserve net neutrality is if consumers are the ones blocking specific sites on their devices, not having them blocked by an internet service provider. That is exactly what the new regulations passed by the EU state should happen.
What all this legal mumbo jumbo means is that many UK internet service providers now find themselves in the wrong, it doesn’t seem that they are scrambling to right the situation, as the new regulations are more like guidelines than an actual law to be followed, and the UK has the future Brexit to look forward to. However, it’s possible that they could become law in the future.
The point is, that if you want to block porn, go ahead be my guest, but don’t let anyone else tell you how or where to do it. Any blocking should be done at the device level and should be able to be easily turned on and off, in my humble porn-expert opinion!
