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Wannabe Prime Minister Andrea Leadsom Thinks Websites Should Be Rated Like Films (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report fro The Register: The UK's possible future prime minister thinks all websites should be classified with minimum age ratings, just like films. Andrea Leadsom is one of two candidates left in the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party; the winner of which will become the country's Prime Minister. Although many are concerned with the authoritarian stance taken by her rival, Theresa May, Leadsom's views on many topics -- including the internet -- have come under scrutiny following her unexpected success in the leadership election. Key among those is Leadsom's apparent belief that the best solution to troublesome content on the internet is to have film-rating organization the British Board of Film Classification rate all websites, and have any unrated websites blocked by ISPs. [Writing in the New Statesman back in 2012, she focused, initially, on the need to protect children. "There are two sound ways to ensure that children are not exposed to dangerous or disturbing content," she argued. "At the level of Internet Service Provider, individual sites can be blocked 'at source' by ISPs [...] The other way is with a move away from the standard '.co.uk' and '.com' top level domains (TLDs) for more explicit content, to separate entirely inappropriate sections of the web."] She argues: "Outside of cyberspace, we have bodies such as Ofcom and the British Board of Film Classification that continually work to ensure our children are not exposed to the wrong things. This could be implemented in some way online, whereby a website would have to have its content 'rated' before being accessible online. While it sounds like a massive leap, the majority of new websites already go through testing when they are hosted to make sure that a site is intact and that files and content are free of viruses. This would simply be adding another check to the list, and in reality it is a burden already carried by film-makers."
How about rating Prime Ministers like films? Wouldn't that help even more?
Please forgive me if I decide I don't want the government to determine what is appropriate or inappropriate for my children and then enforcing it. I think the rating idea doesn't hold water, but I wouldn't be terribly offended if they decided to rate as many websites as they like. In fact, like movie ratings I would take it under advisement. However, I certainly wouldn't want them blocking the content based on their decision to rate or not rate. I am the sole authority in deciding what is right for my children. The government gets no say in it beyond an advisory role.
For those not familiar with what is happening in the UK at the moment, we are about to get a totally unelected leader.
Our Prime Minister resigned after the Brexit vote. Most of the Brexit supporters went to ground too, there was some backstabbing worthy of Shakespeare, and now it's down to two candidates to replace him.
Only members of the ruling party get a vote on who it is. The general electorate has no say, and this new ruler can stay in power for at least another four years unless something unpredicted happens.
The choice is between Theresa May, an authoritarian bigot who is openly racist and wants repeal our human rights, and this woman who is a religious fruitcake and, for good measure, also bigot. She lied during the Brexit campaign and lied her CV.
At least with Trump and Clinton you get to vote.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Films only need to be rated if they're in theaters and even then they're not rated by the film's producer but rather by the MPAA, which isn't a free service. Home videos, as an example, pretty much never receive MPAA ratings.
If you require websites get rated by an independent third party you make it a lot more expensive to launch a website. So much so that unless you're in it for the money it probably wouldn't be cost effective to actually do it. I mean, if they wanted to create a search engine that only shows sites that have been rated, that'd be one thing, but to expect the whole of the internet to be rated is naive
And what happens if the content of the site changes? Does every wikipedia editor need to pay $100 to have their addition of a semi-colon reviewed by this hypothetical MPAA-like agency?
You'd think the 'A' at the and of 'MPAA" would be a clue, but nooooooo....
No sig today...
I tried to submit my home videos to the MPAA for rating, but they just ignored me. Apparently, they didn't take seriously a three-hour documentary about a man who dresses up his penis like action figures.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's nothing to stop non-British websites from being rated by a UK body, and blocked by British ISPs if necessary; they already block non-UK pirate sites for example. They could easily set criteria such as revenue or visitors per day, so sites with say more than 500 visitors per day, or sites with a certain amount of traffic per day would need to be rated, or whatever.
That's not to say the whole idea isn't incredibly dumb and impractical, but there's no technical barrier to those parts, other than scale. The bottleneck would be actually doing the rating, which would be pretty much impossible unless you're talking an incredibly small subset of websites.
Oh no... it's the future.
Ummm.... this horse has already bolted.
The Internet is built on porn. Nothing she can possibly do will change that.
"There are two sound ways to ensure that children are not exposed to dangerous or disturbing content," she argued....
I think there might actually be a third option: Take responsibility, be a parent.
No sig today...
If rating Web sites is a good idea, then why not rate books too? This is a long overdue initiative, which would put the UK right up at the top of the Fahrenheit 451 Censorship League. Of course there are some practical drawbacks, such as the unlikelihood that any government flunkey or private contractor would be willing to read the whole of any book. But it would be very amusing (not to say revealing) to see a list of books that Andrea Leadsom would consider dangerous.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Seriously, I have an immediate visceral reaction to any politician that tries to play up the 'think of the children' angle, especially conjunction with technology. Such people inevitably have a poor relationship with technology.
"There are two sound ways to ensure that children are not exposed to dangerous or disturbing content,"
Yep: mothers and fathers. Not, however, big brother.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I have three grown children who grew up in an internet connected house. I never used a filtering system of any kind. Do you know how much of a problem I had with them accessing content they shouldn't have? None. Zero. I suppose parents actually have it a little harder now that 9 year olds have smartphones, but not much.
(Ok, there was that one time when my son was about 10 and and found a naked she-hulk drawing while searching for superhero pictures. We all thought it was pretty funny, but if you want to count that as a "problem', then have fun.)
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Presumably she understands quite well how it works. After all, if every bit of content has to be 'rated' before publication (same as with movies), and assuming there will be a large, slow, and expensive burocracy to perform this rating (with all sorts of forms to be filled in, no doubt), it will put a certain end to anyone voicing his opinion outside of large, rich organisations. And that, I suspect, is not an accident but very much the whole point of the exercise.
Poor Brits. After succesfully escaping the totalitarian clutches of the EU, they get this kind of asshole as a potential future leader...
Having ratings applied by a secret cadre hasn't made them all that meaningful either. "Rated PG due to scenes of minor peril." What the fuck does that mean? Is that really useful for information for deciding if you should watch "Ice Age" with your 6 year old? Is the mild peril in "Ice Age" slightly less mild or more perilous than the G-rated "The Lion King"?
PS: I can remember (barely) when movies didn't have ratings. Shocking, right? Oh, and when ratings were new, people understood they were guidelines that had little real meaning. My father took me to see at least one R rated film before I was 10, the only lasting impact of which was an appreciation for the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
I have the impression that most of the time when people say they want to protect children from being exposed to something, what they really want is to protect themselves from having to answer questions that make them uncomfortable.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
You never voted for David Cameron in the first instance. You voted for your local member.
Actually this is technically true for the US as well - they do not actually vote for Trump to Clinton they vote for someone who will go to Washington and cast a vote to select Trump or Clinton as the US president....which could lead to some interesting events if they change their mind after being elected.
She seems to be very confused... she compares it to virus scanning, for example. So perhaps she thinks we can invent an AI to judge the site. Personally, if I invented such an AI is charge serious money for it, and use that to build a mansion to put my Nobel prize in, but still...
I don't think she even understands what she is proposing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
She is a Christian and feels she has to force her dubious morality and beliefs on everyone else. She opposed same sex marriage on the grounds that Christians "own" it and everyone else can have a civil partnership.
Naturally, she feels shame over internet porn and wants to make sure other people feel it too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Poor Brits. After succesfully escaping the totalitarian clutches of the EU, they get this kind of asshole as a potential future leader...
Any one with any sense knew the EU were the ones holding back this tory authoritarian nightmare.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Remember that she's over 50, so grew up before the Internet was endemic. As a result she doesn't have an instinctive understanding of how it works. She therefore parrots the phrases that she thinks make sense, whilst the kids who grow up with it merely giggle at their elders ignorance.
[I'm in my 50s myself, but as an IT professional, I can claim to be an internet colonist, even if not a resident]
Seconded, also the French will not accept TTIP and will block the EU from adopting it. The Tories are crawling over each other to be first to join it with no conditions asked so long as they get good directorships after graduating from being MPs.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Those rating systems aren't meant to be enforced, they're just advisory. I can say from my experience growing up that at least some parents used them.
That said, this idea is terrible.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
While there's no "standard rating system", pretty much any site that is not appropriate for kids have either on its rules or on the main page a warning that its not for minors.
Of course, this might be just a censorship move that both the old conservatives and new libs want, while the old libs and new conservatives dont.