The Internet is and has been for sometime now, a source for all information. Anything you want to learn or look at can be found on the Internet with generally no restrictions. Now the British legislature is trying to have some sort of sensory system put upon the Web. One idea is to have ratings on websites similar to movies and television. Another is to have Internet service providers offer packages where the only sites available are those that are “deemed suitable for children”. The British government doesn’t just want these restrictions in Britain either, “the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites”
I can see that some parents don’t want their children seeing “offensive” material online, but I don’t think that making this content unavailable to these children is the answer. My view on censorship is that it should be as minimal as possible. I don’t see how shielding children from this content somehow makes them better people, if anything it only makes them naïve about the world around them. I know that this move to put ratings on websites will really not affect me in any significant way, but it is the idea of censoring internet in any way that bugs me. I can’t help but thinking that it is just a first step to actually censoring content that is put up on the World Wide Web.
http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Websites+could+ratings+system/1123827/story.html
No comments:
Post a Comment