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UK Culture Secretary Wants Website Ratings, Censorship
kaufmanmoore writes "UK culture secretary Andy Burnham calls for a website rating system similar to the one used for movies in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. He also calls for censorship of the internet, saying, 'There is content that should just not be available to be viewed.' Other proposals he mentions in his wide-ranging calls for internet regulation are 'family-friendly' services from ISPs, and requiring takedown notices to be enforced within a specific time for sites that host content. Mr. Burnham wants to extend his proposals across the pond and seeks meetings with the Obama administration."
*cringes in agony* Please, please, please don't bring censorship into UK. It will certainly be used in the way that the Chinese censorship is used. Why the hell does someone in every country think "Let's censor internet!"? Internet is not something to be censored, it's composed of the work of people who want to communicate. The government shouldn't choose what people can communicate to each other and what they can't.
No ascii art.
There is content that should just not be available to be viewed.
Don't tell me they can do that? I'm pretty sure that would be completely unconstitutional here in Belgium. And why do these idiots keep messing with our internet. You don't like, don't visit it.
I friggin' hate Modern Art and that's why I stay away from museums.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
I think I speak for everyone here when I say: "Good luck with that".
In practice, of course, this is not really a serious proposal - it's merely a way of seeing (from the reaction) who amenable the public would be to being censored.
Sadly, most people have such a degree of scorn for this and other governments, that they won't take this seriously - or make any comments about it. The consequence being that the "public opinion" - whichever way it comes out - will be decided by a small, ignorant, but vocal minority who have their own agenda or fears.
Whatever happens, it won't represent the opinions of the people - but that's "democracy" for you.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Burnham is a moron. This is another great example of a minor politician grasping at something to make him-/herself seem more important, and resulting in him appearing more stupid than dirt.
If something in the region of 90% of all websites are outside the UK, how on earth can this be implemented and enforced? The US has strict laws on censorship, so this cannot work there, so I can't see why he's wasting his time trying to get the US involved, unless he's simply posturing and trying to boost his ego.
Andy - wake up, you'll end up being a laughing stock, not a hero.
I unreservedly apologise for our stupid politicians. Unfortunately, many of them don't reveal themselves as barking until after they get elected and then get given a Government job. I believe that you in the US have had similar problems in the past.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
so myspace and msn gets blocked from under 18s I take it? brilliant, bring it on!
The Internet Watch Foundation, protectors of the British citizenry against uncceptable material on teh intarweb, have declared Wikipedia illegal in the UK.
Several police forces had advised the IWF concerning the site, swearing their actions had nothing to do with anything in the site about senior policemen or their behaviour.
"The fourth most popular website in the world is an encyclopedia," said IWF Obersturmgruppenwhitehouse Myra Hindley. "What sort of message does that send about the youth of today? They should be using mobile phones, dealing drugs, smoking cracks to 'jazz' music in discos and knifing each other in the streets. God help us if they see record covers!"
Police across the country used sophisticated hammer-detecting equipment to swoop on the homes of rumoured Wikipedophiles. All computers, mobile phones, televisions and any technology more sophisticated than scissors will be confiscated for investigation, and will be returned in due process in twelve to eighteen months when the filthy fucking nonces have been brought to trial, assuming they survive multiple beatings in jail.
"Fuck these filthy fucking fuckers," said Zoe fucking Hilton of the NSPCC. "And give us money, or you're a filthy fucking kiddie fucker yourself. Turd."
"We absolutely won't be adapting the system to discussion of ID cards," said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. "Nor will MPs raising the issue have their offices or homes raided. Probably."
Virgin Media users had failed to notice any difference, assuming the connection problems were service as normal, and went back to watching the football except for the last ten minutes of the game.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
There is nothing in principle wrong with "movie style ratings" for sites. The question is two fold:
- How will it be enforced?
- Who will [pay] to enforce it?
If the answer to the first question is "software that users put onto their systems" then I am fine with that. Parents should have the power to control what their own kids view. We're always talking about parents taking parental responsibility so let's give them TOOLS to do so.
The second question is who will enforce these movie style ratings? Now that is really the hard part as you have 90% of the internet outside of the control of the US and UK governments unless they wish to put up some kind of firewall (bad plan).
I think everyone should get together, Governments, ISPs, and internet standards bodies and come up with a cheap, and simple way to mark all sites.
Then the UK and US should mandate it within their own borders and put international pressure on other countries to do the same.
That way we will give parents control, make the parental software really work, and give governments less ammo to firewall the Internet for us adults.
Run it through the English->American translator. Yes, they said the word "censorship". However, you will find that you do indeed have censorship the other side of the pond too. You just have a taboo against calling it censorship. Is kiddy porn illegal? Yes? That's censorship. The only difference here is that people in the UK actually call it censorship instead of tiptoeing around it to double-think ourselves into maintaining the belief that the First Amendment is absolute. Nowhere is free from censorship. Every nation on earth has agreed that it is a good thing in specific circumstances. Even Sealand, the data-haven that was against censorship, had two laws. Both censorship. No spam, no kiddy porn.
So please, let's everybody get past the word "censorship", and move on to the actual proposals, shall we?
The rating system. That can be implemented in a benign manner. We already have technological solutions such as PICS that allow websites to self-rate. The family-friendly services from ISPs? Just disallow unrated content and let the parents set the permitted PICS content labels or analogue. Takedown notices within a timeframe? That's a tricky one. Obviously it can be accomplished for the cases where something is obviously against the sites terms of service, however in some cases, especially in cases of dishonest complaints, it can require effort to establish if something should be there or not, and mandatory takedown notices are going to push providers into just taking everything down upon a complain to be sure.
Virtually everything in the article can be implemented in a benign way. The important thing is not to rage against the machine, but to ensure the government actually goes about this in the right way, instead of being dumb and just trying to get the BBFC to classify things.
Mr. Burnham wants to extend his proposals across the pond and seeks meetings with the Obama administration.
Same with Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other notable world leaders. Let's hope peer pressure doesn't sway anybody to think that censorship is a good idea.
Proxies are only useful if the government can't control them. Things aren't looking good now that democracies are taking the example of dictatorships and clamping down on the Internet. Having a proxy chain composed of different government regulated servers (and honey pots) isn't security.
This notion simply disgusts me and is a dangerous development, which clearly sets dangerous precedents which may be used to supress certain political dissent and create a saudi arabia like totalitarian state where everything from perfectly harmless pornography of consenting adults for consenting adults, to certain kinds of music and political views are illegal. this creeping vicious totalitarian trend is quite disturbing to me and creepy. As a supporter of free speech and liberty, I strongly oppose this idea, and that to protect our freedoms and human rights, this horrible idea which threatens the rights of the people should be totally defeated. It is quite clear that many countries are degenerating into a totalitarian police state where powerful elites may decide what you are allowed to see and hear. People did not fight and die in vain so that we would give up the freedoms we fought for. I am surprised that a country like the UK, which had a near death experience from the Nazis and was nearly invaded, and barely escaped having a totalitarian Nazi regime imposed on it, and fought hard to defend their rights and freedoms, will now willingly give up those rights and freedoms it worked so hard to protect.It seems, the mentality is, they saved their rights and freedoms from the Nazis just in time for them to willingly give themselves up themselves and turn their country into a big brother totalitarian police state of horrific proportions from within. The UK seems to be especially degenerationg into a police state very quickly, with more cameras per capita in London than any other city in a western country, and with police state tactics including mass surveillance and ID cars (nazi phrase: your papers please!).
I strongly hope that the citizens of the UK do not tolerate this gross abuse of power and erosion of their rights and liberties. Government should not be in a position to determine what people are allowed and not allowed to look at, and what they are allowed to say and publish and not allowed to say and publish. Government is clearly treating people like children, by creating a nanny state, a big brother state, which endangers the well being and safety of all people. Privacy is an essential part of freedom, and so is free speech and both are being totally violated by the UK government, through net surveillance and now censorship. The surveillance is an enabling factor which further allows establishment of a police state tyrannical order and destroys basic privacy expections at the cornerstone of any free society. This power can very easily be abused by governments seeking to create dossiers of views and opinions of its people,. this is the first step that allows them to be singled out and attacked by a government. And even if i am just e-mailing my grocery list, its not really any of the governments godd*#% business if I prefer to drink 2% lowfat organic milk. Just the concept of government of prying into our daily lives and personal communications and preferences, should outrage us and should be completely intolerable to us.
The censorship aspect should be completely defeated. The only thing which even remotely one could say it might be justified to censor is child pornography, but I am concerned that even that system could be abused, it would be too easy to add websites which might be politically unpopular by some to such a filter, "accidentilly", such as socialist or communist websites or ones critical of the prime minister or the queen. So for that reason i am opposed to the idea of any filter at all since it is a far greater danger to our freedom and is not warranted. Child pornography should be combatted by going after producers of it.
As far as a self ratings system which would encourage websites to self label themselves with a PICS label in the HTML code, for instance for violence and such,and thus allowing the consumer to choose whether or not to allow such content, this might be acceptable, as long as the consumer is control and will decide if any filtering will be applied. I do support putting the consumer in control and being able to opt-in by installing a filter on their computer. I am against any forced filtering which would be in direct violation of basic human and civil liberties.
I don't like the man. he was previously in charge of identity card legislation and was also a big supporter of the right of the state to detain 'terrorist suspects' for 42 days without any evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever.
While like everybody else here I'm absolutely opposed to anybody censoring my internet connection, I wonder if the politicians have ever thought that this could maybe be a public service that people could opt in to?
A decent content rating system that's made available by any ISP to customers who want to use it, with an independent body doing the ratings could be very useful to people who actually do want their content filtered. I can see it being useful to parents, some old folk would certainly use it, as would a few religious types.
Done as an opt in system (maybe even opt out at a push) it could achieve pretty much the same results, without antagonising all of us who feel we're old enough and mature enough to decide what we want to see.
This is something I've wondered whenever this topic comes up. Suppose I have a home server, and I've helped several friends build their own web sites on it. One friend has registered JoesKiddieSite.org and the name points to my IP address. Another friend has registered SuziesPornSite.com and that name also points to my IP address Yet another friend just uses my example.com domain, and I've set up SamsPetPics.example.com and SamsNudeMidgets.example.com domain names for him.
Are there one, three or four "sites" on my machine? Would a rating system give them all the same rating (presumably X), because they all have the same IP address and are thus the same "site"? Or would it give each of them a different rating, because they all have different domain names and are independent "sites"? Or would all pages owned by the same owner would be a single site, even if Sam keeps his two "virtual sites" strictly independent?
So far, I've never heard a coherent answer to such questions.
I have a curious case on my real machine, and on a remote account where all my stuff is mirrored in a guest account. Over 10 years ago, I got tired of the claim that if you put something online, any child can find it. So I put a naughty picture on my web site, an "artsy" picture of a naked woman, and challenged visitors to find it. So far, according to the server log and "ls -lu", nobody but me has ever accessed the photo. It's hidden by the most trivial method I know: the directory has an index.html file and there are no links to the image. So you can only find it if you type the bizarre random-looking name that I gave it. The question is: Because I state openly that the image exists, would my site get an X rating? Would a court subpoena the image's URL, and would I have to tell the judge how to find the picture?
It's pretty easy to come up with absurdities about such site ratings. As long as it's only search sites that are doing the rating, it doesn't much matter if they are occasionally nonsensical. But if written into law without dealing sensibly with questions like the above, it seems fairly clear that a legal rating system for web sites would be simply wrong much of the time. It might give JoesKiddieSite the same rating as SuziesPornSite the same rating due to a common address, or might give Sam's two "sites" the same rating due to a common owner.
Or perhaps someone has worked out a scheme to reasonably define "site" for legal purposes in a way that solves such problems. Anyone have a link to such a scheme?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
His idea seems to be (although he is being vague about it, probably on purpose) to have ISPs only allow access to sites (in context presumably meaning IP addresses) that have a certificate - one we can only assume has to be applied for.
If this is indeed what he is suggesting, its horrific. For crying out loud, Iran only operates blacklists. We would officially have worse Internet censorship than a nation that executes women for being victims of rape.
The reason totalitarian nations haven't tried a whitelist by the way, is the amount of work it requires. Of course, that may work to the advantage of the UK government. A slow process of being allowed to publish controversial material on the web would prevent non-government groups being able to react quickly to government abuse. By the time your web page got through the government approval (after your personal details have been lost a few times) the controversy has died down, government wins.
I don't want to live in a society where you need to apply to the government for permission to speak.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Not to be melodramatic, but computers and the Internet are probably the single-most important human acheivement in the past 1,000 years. Free communication has the power to transform our society from warring tribes to a true global civilization, concentrating efforts to better our lives. It's the first truly accessible bidirectional network (or "peer-to-peer" as corporate/government drones like to say).
It has the power to dislodge those who seek to position themselves between productive people (for tax or ideological control). These are people who don't produce anything useful; they are simply parasites on the system. Thus, the loss of a global communication network is of little negative consequence to them.
And these are their opening shots; thousands of petty little dictators from all walks of life (government, religion, busybodies, corporate) have zeroed in their guns and are beginning to fire. If they are not stopped, the end result will be disasterous. I did not spend the last 20 years of my life building another glorified cable TV entertainment network.
We, the technically inclined... the engineers who conceptualized, and then actualized this network... we hold the cards. We build and install the equipment, we write the software, and we understand what's at stake. We need to organize, and we need to do it now.
Perhaps a worldwide RBL that completely deletes a hostile force from the Internet, based on a vote. Australian government implementing a censorship plan? No packets to any subnet associated with the Australian government until those responsible are found and punished. New bill to restrict anonymity on the Internet, forcing people to use identifying information? Let's see how well that senator does without email. After all, if he gets his way - to damage our ability to communicate - should we not get ours?
Perhaps a worldwide union of engineers for a collective maintenance; all member engineer will refuse to cooporate with unethical requests (routing to censorship hardware, violating principles of net neutrality, etc), and the union will pay their salary, and assist in finding a new position, if they are terminated for insubordination. In any case, firing an engineer is expensive. Let's make these companies hurt.
The net routes around damage... yes. But nothing is invincible. If we fail to defend it, we lose everything. If a critical mass of governments succeed in inserting themselves as gatekeepers, we have lost. Not because secure communication will be impossible... nothing can stop the individual. But because it will stop the masses. And that's all they want.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
"The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe."
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Why is it that the larger a nation grows (in terms of population), the more oppressive its laws become ?
Statistically speaking, more people should mean more diversity. More diversity would then imply a place for everyone and everything, without the need for some ruling dictatorship to impose draconian restrictions on the freedoms of life.
The only thing that will come out of censorship is more and better ways to circumvent it. The UK has 60 million people, you don't think one or two of them have the smarts to set up proxies ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Enjoy your Threat Level ORANGE.
I think someone in Government had put a heavy paw on his shoulder in the interim because there was a interview on BBC Radio Four a few minutes ago in which he was much more reasonable - the word "voluntary" was used repeatedly and "censorship" was omitted - and, in any case, there was a counter-interview (didn't catch the interviewee's name or affiliation) which tore the whole thing to shreds - the probability of 100 per cent international cooperation on this issue was zero and, in the end, "policing" would best be done by parents taking responsibility rather than some half-baked State attempt which would be full of holes even before it was switched on.
In passing:
1. The Telegraph is a Tory newspaper and Burnham is Labour, so I can be sure that the most negative spin possible was put on the interview;
2. The notion of the British government negotiating with the US government on this issue is risible - the President-elect, as a former professor of constitutional law, would presumably tell it to retreat across the Atlantic with all possible haste.
If Australia has a culture minister, that would be a very little thing indeed.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is nothing in principle wrong with "movie style ratings" for sites.
Absolutely and completely incorrect.
To begin, look at the premise of movie style ratings and what's wrong there:
1. Pre-code movies are more realistic w.r.t. interpersonal and social interactions and - for me - more interesting and entertaining.
2. The movie code led to nothing more nor less than political oversight of Hollywood.
3. The modern movie ratings system (an outgrowth of the code) has destroyed many a good indie film's chances of recouping costs - there have been a number of decent shows on the IFC (Independent Film Channel) detailing this.
4. The ratings themselves are set by people whose values and reasoning make me wretch (again, I refer to interviews with them in the aforementioned shows on the IFC). I would urge you to really think about who will set these ratings of which you speak - and to further think about the criteria.
5. Anecdotally, I watched the original Jurassic Park sitting next to someone else's 5 year-old kids while they were being mentally numbed by the raptors ripping living human limb from limb - raised to be as slack-jawed as their parents.
Movie ratings don't work at all - therefore, there is no principle for you to apply.
When theory and data disagree, you validate the data and when proven valid, you throw out the theory and start over.
You're taking what appears to be a measured argument on this subject, but your premise is completely screwed up - that the ratings themselves will be fair (whatever that means!!!!) or fairly applied (whatever that means!!!!) or will be rational in the first place.
All that your support will accomplish is a dilution of quality and a growth area for narrowly-focused political interests to become the middle layer in yet another immoral currency exchange.
History has proven this with the movie ratings - and they got away with it because the back-end arguments **sound reasonable**.
When the front end is drek, the back end is, too.
All I'd have to do to kill a competitor's website with a G rating - and a comment space - is to constantly hound the comment space with X-rated remarks and report the site to the "authorities." Think it wouldn't work? Sure it would. The door is then open to regulate all blogs with higher "standands" than non-interactive sites.
The whole idea for rating web sites is just so wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to begin - or stop - so I stop here.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Har har.
Don't tell me, you're British? From the land of intelligence and sophistication. The Sun, the Star, the News of the World, Eastenders, mass drunkenness, pissed punch-ups in every town every Friday and Saturday night, racism, narrow-minded bigotry, intolerance, ignorance, greed, stupidity, piss-poor education, corruption and appallingly bad management at every level of business and government... The list goes on and on and on.
Truly a culture to be proud of - and a sound basis from which to sneer at other cultures. And you clearly don't know as much about Australia as you think you do.
The context was the 2nd amendment. In this case the American Government got a bigger army together then the revolutionary army and put down the insurrection.
Now civil disobedience, general strikes, etc do work very well. In this case just refusing to pay the tax was enough to repeal the tax.
I'm a firm believer that the populace is better of just sitting down and saying fuck you then pulling out the arms and shooting. Even G.W.Bush might listen when most of the country sits down and says NO whereas pulling out the arms leads to the leaders screaming terrorist and mobilizing the better armed minority to put down the insurrection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You're jumping to conclusions sonny. I think Britain is a sewer and it sickens me that the rats that infest it think they're better than everyone else in the world. But that doesn't make me Australian. Sadly, i was born on this godforsaken, cold, grey little island, populated by cold, grey little people. My ancestors were born in Britain too - going back as many generations as there are records.
You haven't got Shakespeare, Wilde, Darwin, and the rest - you've got Victoria Beckham, "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here", and non-stop documentaries about the second world war. You may have seen a programme or two about some aspects of Australian history - but that clearly hasn't educated you much.
By the way, it wasn't Australians who colonized Australia - it was the British.