Another muppet in charge

Recently the culture secretary, a muppet by the name of Andy Burnham has been talking to the papers about inappropriate content on the internet. I'm just going to copy and paste a few things he's said (via the BBC, the Telegraph and The Register).

Because I believe the man should be stripped of any power - and for that matter, clothing - locked into a public stock in London and publicly humiliated for failing to understand a problem that's intrinsically related to his job.

Quote 1: "There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. 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."

Translation: There are somethings the public shouldn't be allowed to view, read or say. Because it may harm or upset people.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that IS a freedom of speech issue. But a freedom of speech issue that's already addressed. There are laws against the related harm - child abuse, incitement and liable laws.

So what he wants to do is...ban things that aren't illegal. He later gives an example of "...which I would say is unacceptable. You can view a beheading."

Right, now correct me if I'm wrong, but what's the alternative? The beheading he's almost certainly talking about is something that happened in Iraq - a hostage was beheaded.

Such a thing is a gruesome act that will offend - in fact, this event was a message intended to upset. But in banning it what do we achieve? We can't hope to remove it from the internet and the only person it harms is the viewer.

Oh, wait, I forgot. Think of the children...

Quite: "Leaving your child for two hours completely unregulated on the internet is not something you can do. This isn't about turning the clock back. The internet has been empowering and democratising in many ways but we haven't yet got the stakes in the ground to help people navigate their way safely around."

Why in the name of green tomatoes are you leaving your impressionable children to browse the internet on their own?? Would you leave your child in the hands of strange people for 2 hours?

Nope - it's called supervising your children. Making sure they don't run into dangerous things is a part of responsible parenting.

More to the point, how are your precious little angels supposed to find this material? *Accidentally* search for "beheading infidel"? It's not something I'd imagine most children would look for.

The odds of children accidentally stumbling on something unsuitable is slim to none. Further more, the odds are that anything they stumble on will be passed by as boring.

We view things as unsuitable for children. But children...filter out things they don't find interesting. Actually, to be honest, most of us do. Which is why unless they're looking for something they're perfectly safe just web browsing.

The other side - how do we stop them looking at things. If a child wanted to get online and look at unsuitable things....do we think we could stop them?

Even if we had a "perfectly secure system" - we locked down the DNS system, prevented proxies, limited direct IP address lookups - it still wouldn't work.

Lets be clear - there is no practical technological fix to prevent access. Why do I say that? Because even outside the huge techie issues, there's a massive classification issue. What is a child allowed to see?

Quote: According to the Telegraph, Burnham's main goal is to compel ISPs to offer "child-safe" services.

Now, what's the problem with this? There are two main ways of filtering. You allow everything except things that have been complained about...or you allow only things that have been checked.

Now, the problem is simple. He wants the ISPs to pay for all this. Now, how many people do you expect this would take? People to check every blog, picture, site and video file. Oh, and remember that the content keeps changing.

Daily.

The answer is - lots. Paid for by ISPs. Now, since they are all private companies that means that the people who pay for it are us, the customers. So that isn't going to happen, because it can't. The one body that already does part of this job - the Internet Watch Foundation - yep, that should familiar - does what it can, but as recently shown is fundamentally incompetent.

A big enough staff to filter the internet is simply impossible.

So what we have here is a complete moron wringing his hands and saying "Oh, something must be done! Won't someone think of the children!!"

What he really should be doing is promoting the idea that parents should be careful in how they allow their children to be exposed to the collected thoughts, desires and idle mumblings of the human race. Because the internet isn't a pretty place.

Because humans aren't a very pretty people.