UK Culture Secretary Wants Website Ratings, Censorship 377
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."
Noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
scarily ignorant (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
...Why the hell does someone in every country think "Let's censor internet!"?...
The less open communication you have the more control they have. It's all about making our decisions for us. I thought we were starting to get used to the idea. At least here in the states we are.
Ha-ha-ha-ha .... this is sooooo funny! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Censorship = Bad; This = Good, maybe? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Noooo (Score:3, Insightful)
*cringes in agony*
Please, please, please don't bring censorship into UK.
What do you mean "bring"? The UK already has a lot of censorship. The BBFC has been censoring media for quite some while.
Re:Noooo (Score:3, Insightful)
[fx: wipes a tear away that was brought on by the laughter]
It's the kind of diversity that NuLabour are best at: now we're taking choice elements from the best despotic societies such as China and the Soviet Union and integrating them into our culture. I'm almost moved to vote but I'm not convinced that the other lot are going to do that much about it.
"Papers please." --- get used to hearing that.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Before all the Americans get up in arms... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Peer Pressure (Score:3, Insightful)
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 will be useless in the future (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Must be stopped (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free speech (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that would be completely unconstitutional here in Belgium.
Is child porn legal or censored in Belgium?
How about opt in? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
If any realistic options were available, they'd be illegal -- and dangerous to talk about.
So how would the courts define a "site"? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of that sci-fi story where in that world people thought for themselves, and parents took responsibility for their kids.
The think-of-the-children arguments are just a red herring; if there weren't children around then people would think of other reasons to censor. There will always be excuses to control people.
Re:Noooo (Score:4, Insightful)
See my post below: If they implement a whitelist as opposed to a blacklist, then they can very well decide what can be viewed because your proxy servers will never get a rating.
Of course, it will require so much manpower and money it may bankrupt the country - but that won't be a shock as it seems to me the UK workforce will in a few years be employed solely in checking people aren't peadophiles. Think of the children!
Re:Free speech (Score:4, Insightful)
Excuse me, but don't they have free speech in the UK?
Alas, no. That's the USA you're thinking of.
Don't tell me they can do that? I'm pretty sure that would be completely unconstitutional here in Belgium.
It's going to go in through the back door (no pun intended). First they'll say it's about child porn; then they'll say it's about "violent" porn (the UK has a history of denying certain basic rights to people who engage in BDSM). Then it's going to be regular porn, although it won't be banned outright - there'll just be rating requirements. And then they'll make it more and more difficult to actually comply with the requirements, de facto killing things that they cannot kill de jure (check out 18 USC Section 2257 record keeping requirements in the USA, for example). And finally, when public support for regular porn has waned, it'll be outright outlawed, too, in a step-by-step strategy: first it's going to be porn that "degrades" women, for instance, and then that definition will again be expanded until any and all porn will be included.
And so on.
More people = more problems (Score:4, Insightful)
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 ?
Re:The IWF's competence is unequalled! (Score:1, Insightful)
Big Frickin' deal.
By the time you've driven to an airport and checked in a few hours in advance you can drive to virtually anywhere in the UK you might want to go ( i.e. anywhere but Wales Scotland and Newcastle)
Re:On behalf of the UK (Score:3, Insightful)
Haha! This happens because every government reflects its people in one way or another.
Yes, I am very much afraid you are right about that. Which also explains why the UK Conservative Party does not offer any useful alternatives to Labour Party policies - the same applies to the Democrats and Republicans in the USA. (As Gore Vidal memorably put it, the USA is ruled by one party with two right wings).
The leading political parties no longer offer significantly different policies because they have adopted marketing techniques that show them what the people want (or will put up with, which is good enough). None of them have the guts to offer policies just because they believe in them - which is probably quite rational, as they would get stomped in every election.
Why do the people have such low standards and such rotten ideas? Because of our lousy educational systems. Which are perpetuated by the incumbent political parties...
media necessary for democracy to exist (Score:1, Insightful)
if there is one thing that should be left totally uninfluenced by government, this is media, because media are necessary for the function of democracy as they directly influence the minds of voters. Therefore whoever controls the media can control what people are going to vote. When media are not owned by the people, someone other than the people infuences the elections.
Ahahahahaha~ (Score:2, Insightful)
Enjoy your Threat Level ORANGE.
Re:Free speech (Score:1, Insightful)
Still Child porn is something different
No, it isn't. The quote you brought up was:
It seems you agree with this. The content you believe "should just not be available to be viewed" is child pornography. And if you try to hide behind "oh, that's different", just bear in mind that others can do the same. You really want to hide censorship and pretend it doesn't exist, or do you think it would be better for it to be obvious to all? Which tactic is most prone to abuse?
Re:Free speech (Score:3, Insightful)
It shouldn't be too difficult to win at least one seat with a viral campaign and enough supporters
Except that we have a first-past-the-post system in the UK, which means that winning one seat in parliament means persuading the majority in one constituency. It doesn't matter if you persuade 5% of the national population, you still won't win unless they are the same constituency.
Re:Noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. There are invented or blown-out-of-proportion threats such as communists, terrorists, witches, and the war on drugs, poverty, terror, etc...
Well that's what they control us with in America anyway.
Re:Free speech (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Censorship = Bad; This = Good, maybe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
As the Internet Watch Foundation demonstrated vividly the other day with wikipedia, silent and secret censorship is unfortunately already alive and well in the UK today. Since participating ISPs block the list without question, and in fact are required to, and the list is not vetted by any other organisation, we have no idea what pages are being 404'd for the majority of british internet users already.
Add this to the european-wide expansion of state monitoring of email, web-traffic, phonecalls and text messages, and the capability - and willingness - for a great firewall of the UK like the chinese or coming australian firewall is rising greatly.
Of course, we all know that it won't stop knowledgable people from circumventing the blocks, especially those who are supposed to be blocked in the first place. So the only end result will inevitably be more secret government censorship of the UK web of legitimate sites for ordinary people, while not affecting the already illegal activity they're supposedly trying to stop. For all we know, the IWF already filter political websites they disagree with. It's a slippery slope, and the British government has not not only jumped right onto it, it's running downwards as fast as humanly possible.
Absolutely and Completely Incorrect (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Free speech (Score:2, Insightful)
What realistic options are left to us?
It's called "civil disobedience", dude. Try it sometime. Worked wonders for us, back in the day. Looks like it's time for it, again.
Re:Free speech (Score:3, Insightful)
Staying silent may harm your defence, as noted in the caution you are given, but it can never be used as a presumption of evidence of guilt.
And the difference between that and having no right of silence is... ?
Re:UK culture secretary Andy Burnham (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Noooo (Score:4, Insightful)
But why are terrorists, communists, witches and drurrrrgs a threat? Because we have to protect the _chilrunses_.
See, that's what it comes down to. People who've got children of their own somehow seem to lose all reason if someone (who? why should they be taken at face value?) tells them that their children may be at risk. Not everyone, of course, but the socially isolated housewives and other people who're afflicted with a limited perspective.
It's the thing that got Socrates killed, really: people who really shouldn't have opinions on something, having opinions on that something. Uninformed, easily manipulated opinions. And they feel like they're experts, at the top of the world. Yet the stoneworker shouldn't be making statements about computer engineering, and the merchant should really have humility rather than hubris about his understanding of society at large.
Re:Free speech (Score:2, Insightful)
>>There is also no right to remain silent either.
>Yes there is - the caution you receive when arrested in the UK is as follows:
>"You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court, anything you do say may be given in evidence."
Translation: nice right to silence you have there, hope using it doesn't get you into trouble.
Where the government intentionally enacts penalties and threats against someone exercising their right to silence, there is no right to silence.
Re:Was it unsuccessful? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Noooo (Score:1, Insightful)
I think that's actually a bit disingenuous. A lot of the time the reason for this process is to provide guidance to filmmakers in order to help them achieve the certificate they want. For obvious commercial reasons, studios want to get the lowest possible certification as the difference in audience for a 12 certificate and 18 certificate is millions of dollars. The BBFC may go back to a studio and say "Right now this is a 15. We can't grant it a 12 because of the following scenes/content." At which the point the studio will consider its options and make the cuts if they think it will be in the financial interests of the film.
No, it has an R18 certificate which is generally reserved for hardcore pornography. I believe I'm correct in saying in fact that the BBFC actually pushed for this reduction in censorship (previously hardcore porn showing penetration wasn't permitted) because they felt it was a ridiculous situation that anyone who chose to, could view it anyway simply by opening a web browser.