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The British Parliament Wants to Block Porn, But Only After Looking at It

Members of Parliament attempted to visit raunchy sites more than 300,000 times in the last year.
Image via Wikimedia

I always say you can't legislate morality, and now the members of Parliament have provided a ripe example of why that's true. Just a month after prime minister David Cameron proposed filtering out internet smut with a controversial "pornwall," the secret's out that members of the UK government are looking at a lot of porn online—on official state computers, no less.

Parliamentary Network records, obtained by Huffington Post UK in a Freedom of Information request, show that MPs, Lords, and Parliament staffers attempted to visit raunchy sites more than 300,000 times in the last year.

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The number of visits varied wildly from month to month—from more than 100,000 last November to just 397 in June. Officials say some of those visits are unintentional, or just pop-up ads. But even still, that's a sizable porn habit.

What makes the figures remarkable isn’t the mere fact that government officials visit dirty websites, however. It’s the glaring irony of the situation. In July, Cameron announced that by the end of 2014, every ISP in the UK would automatically block any X-rated sites, unless a household chooses to opt in.

The idea was controversial right out of the gate. Privacy and web activists warned that the move would be a dangerous step toward internet censorship, and would have chilling effects on free expression. Like, for example, when the British Library system's online filter—meant to block porn and gambling sites only—ended up blocking access to Shakespeare's Hamlet.

That's not to say the effort isn't partly justified: Cameron wants to block sites that show child pornography, or abuse—what he called "the darkest corners of the Internet.” But the worry is the filter is too broad and sweeping, and could easily wind up censoring harmless sites along with the offensive ones.

Experts also warn it'll be hard to pull off. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who's also a top technology advisor in the UK, said it well: "When Cameron uses the example of pedophiles who are addicted to internet porn—all that these plans would do is require them to opt in," he told the Guardian. "It's an absolutely ridiculous idea that won't work."

Even for web users that don't opt in (I imagine that would be somewhat of an awkward thing to do), there are ways to skirt around the ban. For one, The Pirate Bay recently launched its PirateBrowser, which bypasses ISP filters to allow people to browse the censored web in countries like Iran, North Korea, and yes, the UK.

Try as you might to block out the smut of cyberspace, when there's a will, there's a way. And when it comes to porn, it seems there's always a will. Just ask the members of Parliament.