Dante Posted December 30, 2008 Share Posted December 30, 2008 The kind of ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the Internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Britain's minister for culture has said. Andy Burnham told The Daily Telegraph newspaper, published on Saturday, that the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites. "The more we seek international solutions to this stuff -- the UK and the U.S. working together -- the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying in an interview. Giving websites film-style ratings would be one possibility. "This is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Burnham told the paper. Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said. Any moves to censor the Internet would go to the heart of a debate about freedom of speech on the World Wide Web. "If you look back at the people who created the Internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach," Burnham told The Telegraph. "I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now." He said some content should not be available to be viewed. "This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it." Burnham, who has three young children, pointed to the example of a 9 p.m. television "watershed" in Britain before which certain material, like violence, cannot be broadcast, and said better controls were needed for the Internet. The minister wants new industry-wide "take down times" so that websites like YouTube or Facebook would have to remove offensive or harmful content within a specified time once it is brought to their attention. He also said Britain was considering changing libel laws to give people access to legal help if they are defamed online. uk.reuters.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayseven Posted December 30, 2008 Share Posted December 30, 2008 I've been saying for a while; we're living in the golden age of the internet. We've got pretty much unrestricted access to any content we please, and we'd be fools to think it'd last forever. While the internet currently poses unlimited potential for getting around all sorts of laws and restrictions, it can't last forever. Personally, my conspiracy theory is that basically computers will be produced without hard drives, as web sources begin to provide 'personal' user space on their own self-managed servers. Then the companies behind this will begin to be controlled and shaped by the government as they restrict and oversee the files kept on 'personal' hard drives. The 'silver' age will be one where people with their own hard drives will still be able to control their own content, but I forsee restrictions applied to the access available to the purchase and ownership of hard drives, leading to the reduction to availability of such hardware. I'm sure most people here will deem me a FEWL, but it's one possibility. Currently the government can prod restrictions onto any self-respecting website that floats upon the stock market; companies that seek to exist within governing law in order to make a profit. The whole "www2" phenominon is currently being massively preyed upon and extorted for individual or corporate gain while largely not affecting personal choice, and it will always be a shame to see this freedom, liberty and sharing consensus belittled and shorn into an entity where the whole nature of economy are fully in effect. But that's just my personal opinion. From what I see about the OP is that domains could be restricted currently by prompting a user to insert their age. In the long run surely the ideal situation would be for a personal user to have an entire internet profile where their age would be a preset configuration that would have to be verified before net access is enabled. The next step after this is surely calling into questions the verification process of such age quantification, which could potentially lead to extranet activity (lol I made the word up -- extranet being REAL LIFE shizzle) being required before internet personas can be realised. This is building up to be a bit of a rant; personally I think the 'dangers' of the internet are vastly misidentified and largely can be attributed to poor education or poor observation by 'senior' citizens (by this I mean adults who don't understand the internet at all); the latter most certainly is something that can dissappear over time. Another worry is perhaps the technologocal evolution phases occuring more and more rapidly; in the last 20 years we've had mobile phones and the internet hit the mainstream, and the forecast suggests that such life-changing technology will only continue to occur more and more often. Even if this is the case, all it suggests is the government may as well either rely on us 'kids' to grow up into responsible adults RE: the internet, or await the next technological leap and try and police that 'effectively' from the start, rather than make a problem out of nothing as they are doing with this. Ok, I'll stop now. This is rapidly becoming an essay topic, with roots and branches into all sorts of areas; each leaf a paragraph, etc. BYE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaggis Posted December 30, 2008 Share Posted December 30, 2008 This is a other pointless idea by the Government. It will never happen because tbh it's impossible to fully "police" the internet. Plus, what the fuck does it matter if websites have certificates? People are still going to go on them no matter their age. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan_Dare Posted December 30, 2008 Share Posted December 30, 2008 this just reminds me of an article The Onion did recently headlined 'I am under 18 button pressed for first time in history of The Internet' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The fish Posted December 30, 2008 Share Posted December 30, 2008 Now this is what I call a waste of money. It will achieve nothing, and just get annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rummy Posted December 30, 2008 Share Posted December 30, 2008 Surely the internet is constantly evolving? What happens when you rate a totally harmless blog/website as U and then one day it has the word fuck used in it, does it get an automatic bumping to a 12A/15? It's a novel idea, but really quite ridiculous(and I agree with some of jay's sentiments, though maybe on a less extreme scale). The internet is too fluid, and if any such thing was imposed, it'd also evolve out of it, too, into something else, maybe even something underground. If there's two things I know about the internet, it has cleverer people than those setting the policies, and none of them will ever appreciate having any of their liberties or freedoms taken away. There will be a reaction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReZourceman Posted December 30, 2008 Share Posted December 30, 2008 this just reminds me of an article The Onion did recently headlined 'I am under 18 button pressed for first time in history of The Internet' Hahah, brilliant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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