

Internet sites could be given 'cinema-style age ratings', UK Culture Secretary says - parenthesis
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/3965051/Internet-sites-could-be-given-cinema-style-age-ratings-Culture-Secretary-says.html

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vaksel
Did anyone else notice how Orwellian the UK has been getting lately? Not just
this story in particular, but the main theme of the stories coming out about
U.K.

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dazzawazza
IMHO the UK has already succeeded in taking the first major step to an
Orwellian state. The populous look to the UK government for protection from
_all_ evils. It fails to understand that sometimes bad things happen to
innocent people and it is prepared to give away it's freedoms so it can live
in a safe warm jail.

I'm no anarchist, I've voted in all elections I have been eligible to vote on.
The sad fact is that the last bastion of common sense in the UK is the
unelected upper chamber of landed aristocracy and rich business men. You don't
know how much it pains me to say that :(

To get back on topic. How exactly am I going to get a certificate for a
website, how much is it going to cost me? I run a website for heavy metal fans
(newmetalarmy.com) and I've already had complaints about the stylized zombie
in the logo so I guess I'll be an 18 site then! It's just another hurdle for
fringe genres. There is no money to be made in heavy metal, people do it for
the art form. But 'society' considers it harmful so it squashes it.

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gb
No kidding with your first point, I still can't get over this thing I saw back
in October:

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon has said the government is prepared to go
"quite a long way" with civil liberties to "stop terrorists killing people".

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7674775.stm>

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tome
Unfortunately internet sites change their content rather more frequently than
the content of a particular film changes. How are they going to keep up with
changes?

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Hexstream
They'll probably come up with the bright idea of requiring excessive paperwork
any time you update the site so that innovation slows down to a more
"manageable" rate.

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amirnathoo
Maybe the deal between the UK government and ISPs goes like this:

We don't intefere with you harvesting personal data to target advertising
without users' consent (e.g. Phorm). In exchange you help us censor the web.

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anamax
Shouldn't the culture secretary be doing something about, say, culture?

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mooism2
He is Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Web sites count as
media.

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anamax
All web sites are media?

For example, Ebay looks more like commerce. Does he have authority over off-
line auction houses?

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mooism2
He has a certain amount of authority over, for example, Bid TV, which sells
goods by Dutch auction. It must adhere to the same rules as other TV channels.

But over traditional auction houses? No.

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monicaroy
If you want an example of an online dutch auction, countspin.com comes pretty
close.

