Europe

Yes but we were righteous about it this time, it should have worked!?

Wait... You mean the experts warning that this exact thing would happen were right?

Who would have thought? Surely not the experts!

Username checks out

The other half lied.

I assume that, given the focus of the article

whether or not Britons are going to sketchier sites or not than they had been prior to the legislation coming into force

that this number doesn't include users who are simply using a VPN or Tor or similar to ignore restrictions on regulated sites doing IP-based geoblocking.

I’m concerned that the sites people are flocking to will not only have less protection for the consumers, but also less protection for the performers. Sites that break the law in one way may be breaking the law in others, such as in regard to whether the actors are being coerced to perform, or are underage.

I know nobody wants to think about the ethics, but those are real concerns that all these laws conveniently forget about. Pushing people to the dark web means they’ll be exposed to some very concerning content.

"backfire"? It's working exactly as intended. Does nothing for the children but the nanny/nazi state foundation is getting stronger.

Now they want to check ages for using VPNs, which is obviously another idiotic thing to do, and would lead to more idiotic laws, until the UK is more restricted than China.

Even in a world where one assumes that they do this

which the present British government has stated that they are not

and it is successful and enforce it, then the next problem will be stuff like Tor. No commercial providers involved, so they can't lean on payment processors. Now the British ISPs need to be compelled to try and detect that

and one can make Tor a lot harder to detect than it presently is, where people just don't care that much

and block it. Let's imagine that Parliament successfully gets Britain's telecom infrastructure modified and manages to fix all this and enforce it.

If you've got OpenSSH on your computer, any Linux box out there

which could be a cheap VPS, say

running SSH is pretty easy to turn into an exit node for a SOCKS5 proxy:

$ ssh -D 1080 <remote host>

Now your local host has a SOCKS5 proxy listening on 127.0.0.1. Tell your browser to use localhost as a SOCKS5 proxy, and all your browser traffic is magically coming from Country X. This Firefox plugin allows toggling use of a proxy on and off by clicking a button in the toolbar, so you can bip on and off as desired.

Okay, now maybe they manage to make it illegal for Britons to obtain access to SSH-capable servers elsewhere in the world.

Then people head over to fully-darknet stuff like Hyphanet. So then you're down to trying to tamp down on a darknet system that, unlike Tor, is already structured to be resistant to state-level censorship that might involve detecting and blocking traffic.

I mean, we can play this game forever, but the practical point here is that there are fundamental, really hard enforceability issues, if you want something beyond political theater. Yeah, okay, some of these things are going to take some technical knowledge, but if there's real demand to use them, it's also not hard for someone to slap a pretty front-end on up and make one-click solutions. Do you make all British Internet access systems trusted, closed, and state-controlled? Do you shift over to trying to punish (by definition, local) people who might view pornography rather than go after some source of pornography somewhere on the Internet outside of British legal jurisdiction? Like, you're talking about a very different world.

North Korea has some success in controlling the information environment that its citizens have access to, but that would involve such a transformation of Britain that I think that it's safe to say that few Britons, no matter how opposed they are to pornography, would likely welcome it, and even there, it's limited:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_North_Korea

North Korea forbids the possession, production, distribution and importation of pornography. This is punished harshly by the government. Nevertheless, pornography is widespread in the country because people secretly import it, or locally produce it.

In the past, pornographic videos were also made in North Korea.[1] They began to appear during the leadership of Kim Jong Il,[3] who himself reportedly had a significant collection of pornographic films.[5] Domestic titles were usually immediately seized by the authorities. North Korea has also exported pornography in an effort to gain hard currency. Some of these efforts were through North Korean websites.[6]

Watching pornography became widespread among the country's elites in the late 1990s. Thereafter, the practice has spread to other societal strata as well. Domestic pornographic works usually feature nude or bikini-wearing North Korean women dancing to music. The Literature and Art Publishing Company secretly published a pornographic book, Licentious Stories, for the use of party officials. In 2000, the Korean Central Broadcasting Committee also published a pornographic videotape for officials. Imported pornography has nowadays largely replaced domestic pornography. Political and army elites are the most active consumers of pornography. In 2007 renting a CD for one hour cost 2,000 North Korean won.[7] In 1995, a pornographic film could be sold for as much as 80 dollars. In recent years, prices have fallen dramatically due to increased supply,[8] with one Chinese smuggler stating he regularly hands out porn for free for customers who buy pirated K-dramas.[9]

South Korean pornographic films are smuggled into the country.[10] Propaganda balloons sent from South Korea to the North have featured sexually explicit material to appeal to North Korean soldiers, too.[11] Henry A. Crumpton, a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations, explains that he has "never met a North Korean diplomat who did not want porn, either for personal use or resale."[12]

The State Security Department is tasked with monitoring illegal imports of pornographic materials. Involvement in illegal import results in the culprit being shot or sent to a kyohwaso (re-education camp) for 10 to 15 years.[16] Executions of several persons accused of watching or distributing pornography took place in late 2013.[17] It is illegal for tourists to bring pornography into the country.[citation needed] Access to "sex and adult websites" on the Internet has been blocked from the country,[18] but in the past BitTorrent downloads of pornography have been detected, likely relating to foreigners residing in Pyongyang.[19] Likewise, North Koreans living near the border with China use mobile phones equipped with Chinese SIM cards to access Chinese porn sites.[20]

Wise words though you might be able to live out the fantasy in the Tropico games idk off the top of my head.

Oh, good shout. I normally nip across to New York when I'm wanting to prepare Special Interest websites, but the latency sucks. A jaunt over to the Emerald Isle might make a nice change.