A few days ago the UK culture secretary Andy Burnham announced that the government was looking into new internet safeguards to protect children, apparently, and that movie-style age ratings were being considered as an option.  I say apparently because he also said that “some content, such as clips of beheadings, was unacceptable and new standards of decency were needed” which sounds rather more like Chinese levels of Orwellian censorship to me, not that I think beheadings are something that should ever be seen, it’s where the authorities decide to draw the line that bothers me.

Now let’s set aside for a moment the fact that this is never going to work.  There isn’t an organisation on Earth big enough to individually rate every single website.  It could only work with websites that submit themselves for vetting, which would cost money and therefore exclude hundreds of thousands of perfectly good sites, like this one.

It’s this quote I like most though.  He told the BBC “There isn’t a body, an obvious body, that could do this type of classification here in the UK at the moment”.  Isn’t there?  Last time I looked there were countless organisations and software companies providing net-nanny software, sometimes for free, containing regularly updated whitelists of suitable websites for children.  These things have been around for many years now, how can the culture secretary have missed them?

As regards any censorship for adults we can forget that ever happening in a free world.  I’m perfectly capable of deciding what websites I will and will not visit, as are you I’m sure.

This is yet another case of politican’s logic.  Something must be done, this is something therefore this is what we will do.

I can’t help thinking if something important in the minister’s department has gone by the wayside, while he’s been formulating plans to create a service that dozens of software companies have already been running for years.