In an effort to protect children from ‘harmful and offensive material’ the UK government is looking at adding cinema-style age ratings to websites.
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham told the Daily Telegraph the government was looking at a number of possible new internet safeguards.
Burnham believes that new standards of decency need to be applied to the web. He is planning to negotiate with Barack Obama’s incoming American administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites, according to the newspaper.
Burnham describes the internet as “quite a dangerous place” and says he wants internet-service providers (ISPs) to offer parents “child-safe” web services.
When asked directly whether age ratings could be introduced, Burnham replied: “Yes, that would be an option. This is an area that is really now coming into full focus.”
“If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now. It’s true across the board in terms of content, harmful content, and copyright. Libel is [also] an emerging issue.
“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it,” he added.
“I think there is definitely a case for clearer standards online,” he said. “More ability for parents to understand if their child is on a site, what standards it is operating to. What are the protections that are in place?”
“The internet has been empowering and democratising in many ways but we haven’t yet got the stakes in the ground to help people navigate their way safely around… what can be a very, very complex and quite dangerous world.”
Mr Burnham also wants new industry-wide “take down times”. This means that if websites such as YouTube or Facebook are alerted to offensive or harmful content they will have to remove it within a specified time once it is brought to their attention.
The Ministry of Justice is also considering changing libel laws to give people access to cheap low-cost legal recourse if they are defamed online.
Comments
extent said: If your internet provider prevents the browsing of certain sites to keep you safe then just like being in china trying to browse selected american websites i doubt theres anything you could do about it you are being told what you can or cannot do Lol
DrAT said: A Police State needs to control the mediaHopefully the original designers of the Web knew what they were doing and any attempts at censorship thats what is being proposed however it is presented will fail
Blob said: Who are they to control what I can and cant look at on the internet
Doubtful of the motives... said: Sounds like more of the typical governmental Ban what we dont like mentality And we see how well that has worked with GUNS right First the UK then Australia bans handguns and now the only ones with cheap easy access to handguns are the criminals who have plenty of them and use them unopposed Wonderful thinking there politicrats If it wasnt such a sad state of affairs I would laugh at the similarities between losing the right to own a firearm to defend oneself and losing the right to speak ones mind whether in private in public or online
tricky said: He says that there is content which should not be available to be viewedWho is going to decide because one persons idea of disgusting content is somebody elses idea of innocent fun