It’s For The Chiiillldddreeeennnn! (Part 657)

Yesterday the news broke of the attempts by the government to propose regulation of social networking sites (blogs, Facebook, etc) – covered by Tim Worstall, the Devil, Longrider, LFAT and Iain Dale, among many others.

Now they’ve set their sights on YouTube and are using the MSM to whip up a moral panic to assist their efforts:

The video-sharing website YouTube is failing to do enough to protect children from the ‘dark side’ of the internet, MPs warn today.

They criticise it for not effectively screening videos for sexual and violent content, which in one case led to film of an apparent gang rape not being taken down until it had been seen by hundreds of users.

And the all-party Commons culture committee said it was ‘unimpressed’ that YouTube made no attempt to vet clips posted by users.

Anyone unfamiliar with the Internet and YouTube will be horrified by the above – though not perhaps if they were able to grasp that ‘hundreds of users’ can see YouTube content in seconds and that it would be impossible to vet everything posted to YouTube due to the sheer volume of material.

The MPs said they were shocked to find material containing child abuse could take up to 24 hours to remove.

Hmm, I wonder what the respose rate is for invalid information to be removed from government websites? I bet you could measure it in weeks, if not months…

Committee chairman John Whittingdale called for the industry to block websites which promote suicide, in the same way that it does for child pornography sites.

A totally futile call, given that most of that material is overseas anyway and outside of UK regulation, or would simply shift to forums, Facebook entries and webchat...

Urgent action was needed following the deaths in Bridgend, South Wales, which he said may have been affected by suicide websites.

Eh..? I haven’t seen any proof yet that these contributed to the rash of suicides!? What, is it ‘moral panic’ week this week? This sounds like the ‘Child’s Play/Bulger Killers’ affair all over again…

The MPs said websites should make it easier to report offensive videos, such as by having a screen link to law enforcement authorities.

As if the police don’t have enough to do already…

The industry should also be encouraged to age classify sites and even impose watersheds like TV, so offensive material could not be viewed before a certain time.

Jesus wept….! I’d laugh hysterically, if it wasn’t so pathetic as to make me cry. This, from people who must already know in their hearts that the existing TV watersheds don’t have the slightest effect anyway...

And all you harmless roleplayers out there, they’ve got plans for you too:

Mr Whittingdale, a Conservative, expressed concern over the virtual world websites. He said there were cases of two adults entering these imaginary worlds, one as an adult and one as a child, and then having virtual sex.

I’m a little out of the loop, is ‘virtual sex’ even a bloody CRIME..?!? Oh, wait, no, it isn’t. But it might lead to one, apparently:

Mr Whittingdale said the committee had heard from police experts that such people were likely to go on to commit real child sex offences.

Ahh, police ‘experts’. Who no doubt can see some cushy overtime heading their way….

Most (if not all) of these ‘proposals’ are just pie-in-the-sky reactive, authoritarian nonsense. Which is to be expected from the rag-tag bunch of useless, technologically-challenged reprobates that passes for our political ‘masters’ these days.

But as we can see from the example of the cretinous Whittingdale, the opposition isn’t likely to be much better, is it?