Have you ever noticed how bizarrely disconnected from reality most anti-porn proposals (whether cultural or legislative) seem to be? Here, in the context of the latest British anti-porn madness, is an explanation:

Plans to control overseas porn sites tend to work on the framework established by efforts to curb overseas gambling. Namely, they go for the financial service provider, the middle-man who takes the money from the user and gives it to the website they are joining. As anyone with even the most basic understanding of how online porn operates knows, this will be ineffective, because most sites are free. But the people organising the consultation do not seem to know this.

This level of ignorance is not unusual in anti-porn crusaders. I first came across the financial transaction approach when looking into a private members bill from Baroness Howe, which did largely what the government now intends to do (they were always going to approach the problem by stitching together various backbench bills into a Frankenstein’s monster). When I called Baroness Howe to ask about the bill, her staff were unable to explain it in even the broadest terms and in fact became quite irritated by my having asked. It eventually became clear that the bill had been written for her by a Christian family values group, seemingly in its entirety.

When I asked their resident policy expert what good it would do to target financial transactions when most sites were free, he repeatedly insisted to me that this was not the case and that the majority charge. It was quite amusing. This is a common theme among anti-porn campaigners, both among Christians and radical feminists: they are so disgusted by it they have no experience of it. They quite literally have no idea what they are talking about.

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