Internet Porn Escapes Europe-Wide Ban at the Last Minute

Following the lead of Iceland, the European Parliament was considering and debating a proposal to blanket ban all forms of pornography across the European union member states. This was supposed to come in the form of banning advertising porn, print media porn and internet porn. These measures were part of the proposal “Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU” and it was put to vote in the European parliament. The voting was a clear majority in favour of the porn ban, being passed with 368 votes for and 159 votes against.

The original proposal suggested Internet porn was going to face the chop by including the phrase:

“with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere.”

Unsurprisingly enough a lot of resistance was encountered because the responsibility of policing internet pornography was placed upon the shoulders of Internet Service Providers and as we know ISPs hate having to enforce any measures unless they are literally forced to by law. This is because policing their traffic is expensive, time consuming and resource intensive so avoiding it all costs makes business sense.

Consequently, this entire section was defeated by MEPs and thus limiting the ban to advertising and printed porn only. Swedish Pirate Party member and founder Rick Falkvinge also stated that MEPs removed a section calling for each EU country to create an independent body to regulate the media (all sounds very authoritarian to me).

News of the proposal did break last week and many people contacted their MEPs concerned about the issue. More controversy was raised when it turned out that the European Parliament blocked emails on the topic. The proposal that has been passed is not legally binding and still has to be drafted into legislation which then has to be voted on in European parliament before any real effects are seen. So the internet is safe this time around, although we are sure that other attempts at censoring the internet will come around again, only too frequently.

What is your view on a ban on internet pornography? Is it necessary? Is it feasible? And more importantly will it even help remove gender stereotyping?

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