After being cheered by everyone for sorting out their economy by locking up the bankers of folding banks, Iceland has taken a step backwards by trying to ban internet porn. The move to completely ban web pornography will involve using a Chinese firewall-style device to block online content.

Apparently the government is worried that porn has a bad effect on children and women, but insists against all evidence that it is not censorship. Iceland interior minister Ogmundur Jonasson insisted that porn was having a detrimental effect on children. While this sort of moralistic bollocks is the sort of thing we expect from religious wing-nuts who believe that their god is scandalised by boobies, but Jonasson is a lefty working for the Left Green Movement. This seems to suggest that the horseshoe of extremism has been proven right, while there is censorship in a fascist state, there is fascism in lefty paradises too. Both sides claim that censorship is to protect children, but both have control issues.

Jonasson said his plan was that young people would not be able to see unsuitable content that was now accessible through computers, games consoles, and phones.

“We have to be able to discuss a ban on violent pornography, which we all agree has a very harmful effects on young people and can have a clear link to incidences of violent crime,” he said.

It is interesting keeps repeating the assertion that porn has created harmful effects on young people and increases violent crime. Iceland has one of the lowest crime rates in the world the distribution of porn has gone through the roof since the 1980s and yet there has been no noticeable increase in violent crime.

Yet Jonasson’s plan is to make it illegal to use Icelandic credit cards to access pay-per-view porn. So that means that because some couples decide to overpopulate the world, and can’t stop their spawn watching porn, the rest of the world are forbidden from doing so. Pröstur Jónasson at the Association of Digital Freedom in Iceland has branded the proposal to block online pornography unfeasible and would just give the government the ability to decide what is suitable and unsuitable.