Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
Banning "whatever" isn't about stopping something completely, it's about reducing the number of incidents of "whatever" is.
Banning drink-driving hasn't completely stopped drink-driving, but it has reduced the number of cases and the consequent mayhem caused - there were 1640 drink-driving fatalities in 1979, and 230 in 2019.
Health and Safety Laws at work haven't totally stopped deaths and injuries at work, but they have reduced the number of workplace deaths from 620 in 1974 to 124 in 2024.
Saying you can't fix everything so you shouldn't try to fix anything isn't really an optimal way of trying to progress things...
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Yes, quite true Hugh, but the two examples you cite are absolute offences, irrespective of the age of the people involved. If you contravene said laws, and are caught, then expect to be punished.
But it is not illegal to view porn on the internet, nor have a social media account, or view some ‘dodgy’ content (for some definition of dodgy). The whole point is that the OSA is trying to legislate methods to block under 16s from viewing material that is mysteriously fully available to them on their 16th birthday. It’s not that under-16s need to verify their age, but
everyone does.
Everyone will be expected to hand over personal information to some third party just to access perfectly legal material.
This is what many take issue with, not the aims of the Bill itself. Will it cause more problems than it ever solves? And when it is pointed out that this regulation can and will only apply to UK-based companies and it will be trivially easy to work around - the proponents become more strident. Bans on VPNs, age restricted use of VPNs - which is a bit of a circular argument, special magical children’s phones, etc. all of which rely on a degree of magical thinking, similar to demands for backdoors into encryption while still keeping them secure - these two things are mutually exclusive.
Going back to one of your arguments, this is equivalent to not only making drink-driving illegal, but mandating that every single car in the UK is fitted with a breathalyser - you have to prove that you are sober before the engine will start. You have to first prove your innocence before you can go about your legal business.