Iceland Moves to Ban All Online Porn

Calling all porn a civil rights violation against the women who appear in it and the children who see it, Iceland is considering a ban on Internet pornography, reports the Daily Mail. Iceland's interior minister has created a working group to find the best way of doing so, with methods like a block on offending IP addresses and a ban on the use of Icelandic credit cards to pay for porn sites under review. "At the moment, we are looking at the best technical ways to achieve this," says an adviser to the minister. "But surely if we can send a man to the moon, we must be able to tackle porn on the Internet."

Should an eventual proposal pass, which the Telegraph reports is expected within the year, Iceland would become the first Western country with such a block. But it wouldn't be the island nation's first foray into outlawing porn and the like: Residents are already forbidden from printing and disseminating porn, and strip clubs were banned in 2010. "This move is not anti-sex. It is anti-violence," explains the adviser. But the Globe and Mail reports on two studies that indicate porn doesn't increase the incidence of sexual violence: One, a 2010 look at the Czech Republic before and after a ban on porn was lifted in 1989, found no such increase. (More Iceland stories.)