This decision by Tumblr is lazy, cowardly, and short-sighted. All attempts to place a blanket prohibition on sexual material, whether in books, magazines, films, or digital media have always been doomed to eventually bite the hands that place the prohibition.

Problems include:
  - Defining sexual content, like "obscenity", risks a descent into ridiculous nitpickery. "I know it when I see it" is not an objective measure.
  - Considering exaggerated violence more acceptable than sexuality is a peculiarly American disease. Both here and in the many places where I see it elsewhere in the world, it seems descended from religious dogma. I am sick to death of people forcing their beliefs on others. I believe it's far more healthy to "make love, not war" and I don't believe in suppressing this belief to just go along with the cultural norms of the week
  - "Kids shouldn't have access to this" is not an unreasonable position, especially if the kids being referred to are one's own. So I'm not against the use of parental filters, but of course they will be circumvented easily enough when the kids get interested enough in seeing the alluringly forbidden material, whatever it is.

Enough. I'm just preaching out of frustration born of decades of sliding down the slippery slope toward institutionally promulgated "morailty", and the steadily increasing tyranny of the majority.

Thank you. I deeply lament David Mills's absence from the original article. He should at least have been mentioned, as he deserves far more credit for innovation in distributing time than does Judah Levine, while still intending no disrespect for Dr. Levine.

Many headlines these days are poorly written, with word forms that can be hard to parse before you read the associated article.

Ok, I'll give it a shot. "Fake Pub Studies Drinking Habits"

What is the news here?

Fake studies about pubs are drinking all these habits.
The fake pub is studying how people drink habits.
I order you to fake some pub studies that drink habits.
This is about the drinking habits of fake pub studies.

And so on.

Add your own parsing, and for each one you add, enjoy another habitual fake drink in the studying pub.

Re: "Police and civilian IT forensic staff have to witness all kinds of completely illegal images/content on a daily basis and there is no question of any wrongdoing on their part."

Factually this is unarguable but it does raise the question: if viewing a site is considered in itself "wrongdoing", and since police must operate within the law to enforce the law, then doesn't this prove the relevant law to be the epitome of absurdity?

The concept of censors viewing material to be censored has always amused and perplexed me. It's easy to imagine prison censors stashing porn mags for their 'personal research' as I am sure has been done for time immemorial. The logical absurdity of all censorship is so blatant that I am sure that to pass legislative hurdles, most censorship laws must be written intentionally to be very broad, obscure, or both.

Logic insists that censorship is both tyranny, and obsolescent.