http://www.guardian.co.uk/tech ... ing-plan-government-obama


This initial post is a copy and paste of a post by myself from Digital Spy, another forum, which was not the initial one. The reference to the BBC is due to mentions of the 9pm watershed, which is due to the fact it's a forum mainly about broadcasting in the UK.

Quote from ethel_wombat :

And the 2nd thread in which you have totally distorted the article.

I take it you consider "age ratings" for films and computer games are also censorship?

It's not directed at me, but yes. The computer games ones are especially pointless. Neither are needed. It's pretty obvious that you aren't going to take a five year old to see Saw.

The only requirement needed is people know what they are getting - no need for the BBFC to extort money from independant film makers and charities. I genuinely would see no harm whatsoever of abolishing the BBFC without replacement. If people don't know what they are getting, that can be dealt with by trading standards.

Quote from cosham :

Not keen on censorship,but would support a move to remove all child porn from the web and jail the scum putting it on there. But then i suppose that is also censorship.

There are already efforts to do that ... but that's technically difficult. Attempts to shut down the websites are difficult as the sites are not based in the UK, therefore do not have to comply with UK law. The Internet Watch Foundation's attempt at blocking stuff is stupid, especially when they block album covers. You heard it here first, anyone who likes Nevermind is a peado

The 9pm watershed is equally futile and is an out of date concept with things like the iPlayer. If you don't want your kids to watch certain things ... don't let them watch them? The BBC's remit is to inform, educate and entertain. Not to be a childminder!

I also don't like the word "protect". What harm is it going to do? Has anyone died as a direct result of pr0n or swearing in a films? I don't think so, if someone has at least point us towards some evidence.

Any attempt to do this would be pointless, as outlined by etldlrl. Such restriction would probably fall foul of the First Amendment in the US, and hopefully would fall foul of free speech rights in the ECHR. There's the option of hosting the site in other countries, too. Sweden is popular as they are sensible (although they raided TPB, allegedly under threats of US trade sanctions).

Yet another ploy to stop us viewing what we want to view eh, or at least making it more difficult I suppose

How long until the system gets abused?

What defines 'inapropriate matierial'? Violent porn, or just a blog that disses the government?

Seeing as the web is an international, privately owned thing, the self-appointed, 'big-police' of the world (UK/USA etc), should keep their interferring hands well off it.

There's a government push in Australia right now to filter net traffic in an attempt to limit access to child pornography sites and things of that nature. With the filter in place we can look forward to our internet speeds dropping upto 80%, which says to me that this 'solution' isn't going to work for very long. People will shout it down.

I believe that there should probably be some measure of protecting kids from harmful stuff on the net, but all the solutions I've seen so far which don't fall under the responsibility of parents seem incredibly ham fisted and unworkable. Maybe kids shouldn't be allowed to get on the net until they're 18? Problem solved.

I think if most kids can handle the nightly news, they're probably going to be able to handle the internet.