RSSWeb rates UK Web ratings proposal an 'F'
By Angela Gunn | Published December 31, 2008, 6:24 PM
Every so often, the Web provides a form of entertainment that almost everyone can enjoy -- a punching bag. Enter Andy Burnham, the UK Culture Minister, and his recent musings on a movie-style ratings system for the Internet.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph earlier this week, Burnham said that "new standards of decency" need to be applied to Web content, and that he means to approach the Obama administration to create rules for English-language sites.
Burnham's concerns, which he said would be policed by ISPs, revolve around "child-safe" content, copyright, and libel. He stated that he wants ISPs to offer service tiers that provide access only to sites deemed suitable for children. He denied being opposed to free speech, but said, "There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical."
The Internet, in its richness, responded to Burnham's opinions with an impressive variety of howls. Calmer commentators explained -- as calmer commentators have explained since the days of Martin Rimm and the Communications Decency Act -- why applying ratings to Web sites (as opposed to static products such as movies or videogames) is a project akin to emptying the ocean with a toothpick.
A great many comments from the blogosphere were more or less unquotable in polite company (or here, even), but in PC Magazine, Lance Ulanoff gently described the plan as "quixotic" and "a beauty of a goose egg." The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones opened his blog post with a kind "Oh dear Mr Burnham -- you surely cannot have expected a little light musing in the Daily Telegraph to have turned you into the blogosphere's Public Enemy Number One?" and closed with a suggestion that the secretary drop by the BBC blog to explain himself better.
And TechCrunch's Mike Butcher tried having it both ways -- explaining to the world at large in a post that Burnham's remarks were part of a grand British weekend tradition of "government minister opens mouth and inserts foot," but hijacking Burnham's name on Twitter to, um, teach him a lesson. Twitter has since stepped in; it is unclear at press time if any lesson was in fact learned.
No wonder we and the Brits get along so well...we put stupid people in office. Even "the best and brightest' don't have much common sense.
It would be interesting to see what rating BN would get.
Have a nice day:)
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|Whilst we are at it
"The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use ... to put the management of the multibillion pound database of all UK communications traffic into private hands"
http://www.guardian.co.u...privacy-civil-liberties which is hardly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
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|"The Internet, in its richness, responded to Burnham's opinions with an impressive variety of howls." LOL That doesn't even make sense. What did they do? aks the internet what it thinks? Are we being told that the internet is now one massive AI that has higher morals than all of humanity? This whole thing sounds like complete idiocy.
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|Happy New Year all! Have a great MMIX!
Can I apologise for this stupid git in our current government? He is as thick as "two short planks" and along with the rest of them is getting to be a huge embarrassment.
This is the lot who managed to leave the full details of every child in the country on a train, along with national security plans (thankfully handed into the BBC), and details of every single prisoner and every prison guard.
They have a collective IT literacy of a pile of new born kittens.
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|Briantist, this is not a forum for posting snide remarks about our government. Suggest you post such puerile comments on one of the many blogs where they would be more acceptable.
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|Seriously? That whole news post was a snide remark about your government. I'm just pleased to see after 8 years of having to put up with Bush here in the US that we arnt the only one that elects a bunch of morons. lol
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|Well, I too live in the UK and am also fed up with the daft ideas they keep coming up with. Perhaps you (sturgess) would like to point out just what briantist said that was inaccurate ? Is it not accurate that laptops have been left lying around with unencrypted information on them ? Or folders left on public transport containing documents marked 'top secret' ? You know - stuff that should never have been allowed out of government offices in the first place. How about the fact that virtually every government department insists on transferring the most private information around the country on unencrypted disks ? We've heard of banks wanting to encrypt personal info they have to send to government departments, and being told it won't be accepted unless it's unencrypted.
I think the guy with the 'ratings' idea needs sending on a course to learn the basics of how the internet works. He'd soon realise how impossible the idea is.
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|"Can I apologise for this stupid git...."
Dude, like, we all have government officials.
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|One key point that's wrong with your statement:
We didn't elect him.
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|To be fair, I didn't post the original post, did I. Perhaps your bile could be directed toward "Angela Gunn, BetaNews" instead?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7104368.stm - http://www.guardian.co.u.../12/uksecurity.ukcrime1 - http://www.telegraph.co....-year-of-data-loss.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10024550-83.html etc etc ad nausuim
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|(hee!) Hi Briantist -- um, I believe Sturgess was being sarcastic re the snarking on government officials. (Heaven knows we've got enough of it in the other comment threads.) Sorry re Burnham; he sounds like he could hold his own in any battle-of-the-doofuses contestant we could advance from our own government's ranks. Too funny for words, until one remembers that these people are in positions of power...
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|And yeah of course [smacks forehead] the UK Culture Minister is just the same as the President of The United States, so called leader of the free world (and all his flunkies) isn't he?
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|You are _so_ right.
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|That is because we don't elect presidents, we elect representatives, and these folks elect our President.
So, in a way, we do, by our choices in the people that "represent" us.
Apparently, we haven't been doing a very good job with that lately.
Of course, it does not help at all that our the choices given to our elected representatives range from the absurd to the frightening...with no sense in between.
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|My thoughts exactly... you can't really compare someone here in the UK wanting to police the internet with someone who lead half of the World into a war followed by a global economic meltdown. /golf clap
And yea, the guy who is in power in the UK at the moment wasn't elected, he just stepped in when our failed Prime Minister resigned.
As far as comparing those in power; the UK has people with brains and no real common sence whereas the US has farmers and oil merchants with neither.
Thanks for destroying the Planet... Roll on the 20th of January.
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|however 'service tiers that provide access only to sites deemed suitable for children.' another idea we all should be weary of
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|Especially from a government that treats the whole population as children.
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|And how often will these "rating" be assess and updated? What could be a "valid" kid-friendly website/domain, tomorrow could be updated/modified/transferred to become content not suitable.
So, who has the massive and impossible policing job to validate all the information on the Internet to make sure it's still adheres to the original rating it has been given?
So, moving forward a few years, I see the rating system become a form of highly valued currency. I can see ads such as,
"I'll sell you my G-Rated web domain, starting at $50,000.00, to the highest bidder. And I don't care what content you intend to place upon the domain."
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