Internet: April 2008 Archives
Hat tip to Pete Black, whose blog brought to my attention a story on the Times Online which he describes as 'a disturbing report on a new form internet censorship being proposed in the UK'. From the article:
Social networking sites will be required to remove material unsuitable for children, such as nude or violent images and comments, within 24 hours of receiving a complaint, under a tough new code for internet safety.
The Byron Review on e-safety, published yesterday, also recommends that search engines such as Google and Yahoo display a "safe search" button prominently on their home page, to filter out potentially harmful material when children search the web.
The report, by the clinical psychologist and writer Tanya Byron, also recommends that websites promoting suicide be closed, using existing laws on assisted suicide. Those that promote self-harm and eating disorders should also come under greater legal scrutiny.
Dr Byron, a mother of two, said yesterday: "Many parents seem to believe that when their child is online it is similar to them watching television. In fact it is more like opening the front door and letting your child go outside to play unsupervised."
Assuming that Byron's analogy is correct, if a parent opens the front door and lets their child go outside to play unsupervised, and something bad happens, is it the fault of the outside world or is it the fault of the parent?
Dumbing down the Internet to a level where it's supposedly 'safe for children' is not the answer. What's worse, is that this is merely one part of a disturbing trend of the abdication of parental responsability to the government. The Internet is supposedly harming children, so instead of parents supervising and educating their children, the government will tame the Internet. Children are too fat, so instead of parents controlling their children's diet, the government will ban advertising of junk food when they're likely to be watching television. The government isn't a babysitter and neither is the Internet!
You can verify this yourself on the cleanfeed.com website, using their 'test a site' facility on the front page.
But, there's a very serious side to this very funny example:
- Filtering products are inaccurate. There will always be overblocking and underblocking.
- Blacklists and categorisations of websites are subjective. Whether One Nation in fact engages in 'hate speech' is dependant on your point of view and there are arguments for and against.
- Government mandated filtering that has effects such as this may run into constitutional problems. We have an implied freedom of speech on political matters in Australia. If a government-mandated filtering system is going to block access to political websites -- especially websites of actual Australian political parties -- it would seem to be succeptable to a constitutional challenge.
