Internet sites could be given cinema-style age ratings as part of a Government crackdown on offensive and harmful online activity to be launched in the New Year, the Culture Secretary says.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Andy Burnham says he 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.
Mr Burnham said: “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.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Your ISP is already logging all your web activity, this is going to result in a big growth of anti-censorship, pro-privacy VPN services such as offered by companies such as these:
http://www.securenetics.com/
http://strongvpn.com/
http://www.torrentfreedom.com/
And clearly a service like this for activists is needed...
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Andy Burnham says he 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.
Mr Burnham said: “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.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Your ISP is already logging all your web activity, this is going to result in a big growth of anti-censorship, pro-privacy VPN services such as offered by companies such as these:
http://www.securenetics.com/ http://strongvpn.com/ http://www.torrentfreedom.com/ And clearly a service like this for activists is needed...
Homepage:
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
Libel?
27.12.2008 14:48
Innocent Dave
correct link to article
27.12.2008 16:26
logged
THAT will get nowhere
27.12.2008 16:30
Our traditions about both "free speech" and "libel*" are so different from yours that any such negotiations have zero chance of getting anywhere. No American adminstration of any political stripe would go along with your concepts. People here wouldn't stand for it.
* The divergergence on this began shortly BEFORE the Revolution. I can't remember which Massachusets Adams was the lawyer in the famous case who successfully presented the novel (for the time) defense that "truth" was a defense and that it was for the prosecuting side to prove "wilfull falsehood or in reckless disregard of truth" and not for the defending side to prove true.
MDN
e-mail:
stepbyspefarm mtdata.com
Editorial Guidelines?
27.12.2008 19:32
Err
this may be better for activisits
28.12.2008 09:35
burntout
The wider pubic interest is not being served
29.12.2008 04:11
The wider public interest is in determining what harm is caused by being coerced into no access to speech. The harm to a corrupt politician or a mendacious managing director is surely something that can be tolerated. The harm caused by a media so cowed and tamed by repressive legislation is not.
There are libel laws for those wanton enough to publish libel on the internet. There are pornography laws for those who publish obscene material. There is, in fact, no need for new legislation. There might well be a need for free, universal, access to legal advice and representation for individuals who are being systematically harmed by the management and manipulation of the media.
The wider public interest of reducing harm to people is best served by allowing anything to be published on the net. Redwatch and Stormfront - vicious though they are - do nothing but advertise who would do harm and to whom and why. To push that from public visibility does not reduce the harm but simply satisfies the authoritarian urges of simplistic solutions.
disgusted of ealing