We have to admit it’s incredibly easy to stumble across things which may be offensive, but that’s a reason to improve filters like Net Nanny and Cyber Patrol for those who want to use them, or educate more people about making sure they’ve got ‘Safe Search’ enabled on Google, or that they haven’t let their PC get infected with Malware.

Interestingly, I’ve just been reading Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, and had got to the chapter discussing how the ‘flattening of the world’ due to globalisation and communication has been used for good and bad, including for terrorism - and how a dogmatic following of certain beliefs without question is one of the main reasons for those beliefs leading to a frustration which can then lead to terrorism (paraphrasing a fair bit!)

The only regime that has a reasonable chance of making something like this work is China, and while we could probably learn a lot from their economic reform and growth, I’m not sure we should be using them as a model for internet regulation.
tbc

This interview was the scariest thing I’ve ever read.

Might be nice if Mr Burnham had some letters waiting for him when he goes back to work.

His contact details are here

http://www.chronojohn.com/censorship

Just another example of Brown and his idiotic cronies desperately trying to appeal to the Sun/Mail reading masses they’re so shit scared of. I don’t for a second believe that Andy Burnham (or Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears, Phil Woolas - I could go on) knows - or even less, cares - what the hell he’s talking about. If only there was some way of blocking the ‘content’ that these tossers come out with…

See my thoughts on the matter at http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2008/12/dont-blame-andy-burnham-for-wanting-to.html

As for openID problems - will look into it. I haven’t had any problems, but then my openID server is qwghlm.co.uk :)

Update: Should be working now, sorry for the inconvenience.

(BTW: Why the fuck have I got to provide a name and e-mail when I’ve been authenticated by OpenID?)

I think my worry comes when he starts saying: “There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical.” - which comes with no caveats. It is confusing the problem of discretion with respect to what children see, and what, legally, anyone should be allowed to see. The former is a matter for parents - the same as whether they think their kids should stay up beyond 9pm watching TV, or playing violent video games - and is quite a wide remit. The latter is a matter of law and public policy and has a very narrow remit (what is undesirable is not necessarily illegal, nor should it be). Hence my worry about a slippery slope.

Your point on video is a good one, and highlights how video particularly is incredibly hard to enforce - text filters alone are useless. Even YouTube’s filtering software (which fingerprints videos & matches against a database) can’t catch risque content posted there, let alone illegal. YouTube crowdsources its ratings - ordinary users can flag a video as being unsuitable for minors, or undesirable which is a clever (if possibly gameable) way of doing such things. I bet an ISP-enforced ratings system will be far cruder and just mark anything with a youtube.com URL as possibly unsuitable, rather than on a per-video basis.