If it is, one has to ask: Why is sexual obscenity the only area that presents a sufficient threat to British virtue to justify action? Once this opt-in list is extant, what will prevent the government from adding other indecent terms to it? Why would it elect to put a firewall around pornography? Why not include also any of the viewpoints whose expression the British have made illegal and whose advocates the British ban from their country?

Another salient question: What records will be kept? If we have learned one thing from the NSA scandal it is that we now have no expectation of privacy when using the services offered by telecommunications companies. I’d venture that the reflexive defense that the government does not know what you said on your telephone call but does know that you made it will not be especially reassuring when transmuted into “we don’t know what you watched but we do know that you made sure that your connection was capable of receiving pornography and other frowned-upon material. Pervert!”

Smartly, Cameron is coupling his proposed measures with stricter prohibitions on child pornography. There is hopefully nobody who will resent these. Still, it is surprising that the prime minister seems to be unaware that, as Andy Dawson observes in the Mirror, “Internet service providers already do tireless work to prevent illegal material from appearing online and . . . Google has a zero tolerance policy towards content that features child abuse.” These bases are covered already, structurally at least.

All in all, this smacks of a power grab. There are so many other ways of keeping children from the dangers of online obscenity that one has to ask why the state has gone straight to direct censorship. Britain has, after all, not tried everything and been forced by repeated failure to resort to this; instead, the prime minister has plucked the issue from thin air and resolved to act.

Naturally, it is possible that his proposals will yield a small improvement. Even so, the costs appear to be considerable and, ultimately, the problem almost unstoppable. “Continuing to rise as usual,” recorded Henry of Huntingdon in the twelfth century, the tide “dashed over [Canute’s] feet and legs without respect to his royal person.” Eight hundred years ago, Canute was smart enough to know what he could and should try to change, and what was beyond his royal powers. Would that the incumbent prime minister were possessed of such wisdom.

— Charles C. W. Cook is an editorial associate at NR.