Old Professions

Last week, Harriet Harman insisted that a foreign government take action against a website that's legal both in its jurisdiction and ours.

As far as I'm aware, prostitution is still legal in the UK. Having an opinion about a service most definitely is! And yet here we have one of the most powerful politicians in the country creating an international incident over something she personally dislikes, on the flimsiest of excuses (very few prostitutes are trafficked...).

Tom Miller, Labour PPC for Woking, has suggested that since the site isn't doing anything wrong and is in a foreign jurisdiction, Ms Harman should take matters into her own hands with an illegal (in both jurisdictions) Denial of Service attack. WTF? Is that not Hate Speech?

I wonder how long before the Internet Watch Foundation is either replaced, or leant-on, to block access to Politically Undesirable sites such as PunterNet. As most ISPs in the UK - covering something like 98% of users - accept the IWF blacklist, that would be a rather trivial step... and yet another towards 1984.

Here's a radical notion: websites don't create demand for prostitutes.

A review site simply makes the existing market more efficient by providing a basis for price information, and might even reduce consumption by adjusting the supply curve. Not that I expect our business-illiterate government to understand that argument...

(Hat tip to Dizzy, for Tom Miller's imbecilic contribution to the debate)

- KoW