I've resisted this one since Saturday, but can manage no longer. In the BBC news story Website age ratings 'an option' it's reported 'Culture Secretary' Andy Burnham wants to apply film-style ratings to websites in an attempt to 'save the children'. The lack of understanding this man shows regarding the internet is quite astonishing. I can only suppose his civil servants dislike him as well, given that they didn't actually stop his gibberish getting published.
It wasn't so long ago that the government was talking about having chat rooms policed to 'save the children', and a fat lot came of that. Quite how a rating system is going to stop children looking at anything is baffling to say the least. The best that it'll do is encourage children to look for X rated sites, leading to the exact opposite of what Nitwit Burnham wants.
I love some of the things he says: "content standards online are not as clear as we've all been used in traditional media". No, that's right, and that's because the internet is not traditional media - we do things differently here y'know. (I'm going to sidestep the whole WWW v Internet debate since I suspect it'll be a definition too far for him). The classic political doublespeak however comes when he says that he doesn't want to curb free speech while in the same breath saying that he wants to protect the public from 'unacceptable' material. So that'll be censorship then?
I could weep sometimes, really I could.
It wasn't so long ago that the government was talking about having chat rooms policed to 'save the children', and a fat lot came of that. Quite how a rating system is going to stop children looking at anything is baffling to say the least. The best that it'll do is encourage children to look for X rated sites, leading to the exact opposite of what Nitwit Burnham wants.
I love some of the things he says: "content standards online are not as clear as we've all been used in traditional media". No, that's right, and that's because the internet is not traditional media - we do things differently here y'know. (I'm going to sidestep the whole WWW v Internet debate since I suspect it'll be a definition too far for him). The classic political doublespeak however comes when he says that he doesn't want to curb free speech while in the same breath saying that he wants to protect the public from 'unacceptable' material. So that'll be censorship then?
I could weep sometimes, really I could.
Haven't we been down this road before? It was some years ago - 1990s?- but it rings a bell and nothing ever came of it then, thank heavens. Children and teenagers will always find a way around any form of censorship or site blocking.
Real conversation in one of my workshops:
Delegate #1: We are fed up with our IT department blocking sites just because they mention football teams or alcoholic drinks. Our biggest clients are in those sectors.
Delegate #2: Our IT people do the same. My kids told me how to get round it.
Posted by: Karen Blakeman | January 01, 2009 at 04:42 PM