Instead of restricting everything on the ‘net to the lowest common denominator, how about kicking parents and holding them (at least) partially accountable for when something happens (such as in the case of the 15 year old)?

Parents should be made to be more accountable, so that they are more inclined to monitor their kids activities. I’m sure they wouldn’t let them walk into an adult shop unattended, so why do they let them surf the ‘net that way?

I wish we could return the internet as it was in the mid to late 90s before Joe Public got their hands on it.

I was curious back in the days when we has BBC’s at school, but there was an IBM terminal connected to the town hall (that’s what we were told!) and I always wondered what it was there for, indeed the one question I would’ve liked answered is why was it in a room of 30 or so unruly kids, who could have accessed it? Granted our knowledge of real world computing was rather limited, but as you say, curiosity kept us going. I never found out why it was there and to the best of my knowledge no one actually touched it. So much for curiosity! I also agree with what you say about risk perception and although children are repeatedly told not to give out phone numbers or addresses, it still goes on. As I type the young girl reported missing in the media has now turned up in France, having given details to a 49 year old man. This is worrying, as most text based web/chat sites have to be taken at face value.

Herbert X Smith
99 Bogland Gardens
Sometown
Wherever
AK47 9ZZ

The above “address” is fictional, but if it is all that people have to go on – should they lean to it being truthful (which it isn’t) or not?

As for your comment about McCarthyism, I’m afraid that’s already here; news sites such as the BBC frequently carry content about people having false allegations or rumours, lies and innuendo having a severely detrimental effect on their lives, the problem being that people readily believe these falsehoods, one of these being a fairly well known news item of six children being killed in Stornoway in 1968, used when GMT is discussed. This did not happen, it was discussed on Radio 2 earlier this month; even MP’s have used it in the House of Commons. With something like that, how can situations be resolved?

One last point, what is currently available in “new media”, may not be available in 30 years time….

“However, I read in the Manchester Evening News that children of school age are actively fidning more ways of looking at things they shouldn’t,”

Curiosity is in the nature of learning so no surprise there, and to be honest in most cases as a parent it does not overly concern me (though some aspects do).

Unfortunatly curiosity goes hand in hand with another issue that does concern me greatly, which is that young people have poor perception of risk and future harm.

Whilst risk perception for most humans is short term (a year at the most for 99%), future harm is just starting to be considerd by a small fraction of the population.

Be it at the personal level by Identity Theft or at the organisational level by Electronic Discovery.

However very few people take this logicaly forward and consider that social sites in their various forms will come back to haunt them at a later stage in their life.

Not just on a personal level where perhaps an adolescent antic recorded on a social site might adversly effects a persons employability.

It is entirly possible that we will have a new form of McCarthyism, Inquisition or witch trials spring up where just having had contact with certain individuals or entities will be sufficient to compleaty ruin a persons life.

Therefor perhaps with regards the Internet the “academics” who “it should go back in control” with, are not the technologists for “who it was originally designed for,” but historians.

Instead he may well be fully aware that his proposals are likely to fail. The important thing is he: (1) justifies his existence by suggesting change; (2) appeals to ignorant parents who want to shift responsibility for parenting to others (a little unfair, but still); and (3) when his proposals fail he can blame ISPs and civil liberties campaigners.

Now, if some topic comes up in the political sphere about which I still haven’t made up my mind, all I have to do is find out what Andy Burnham thinks, and be quite certain that the exact opposite is the right answer. That’s a real time-saver.

I’m not sure if The Right Hon Burnham is an imbacile (see original definition of reaching twice for a heated coin) a nave or has no respect for those that provide his living.

I’m also now of an age where politicians look increasingly like children both physically and in the things they say.

Which is maybe why I try to think of ways to replace the “Monkey in a suit” (representational) democracy with something closer to true demcocracy (ie vote on issues not for personalities to decide for you over whom you have no control).

And like

@ Dave Walker

I hit the same problem,

“I can’t even prove the fact that I’m an adult to the computer sat right here on my lap, never mind some service out on the net.”

The simple fact is that you cannot prove who you are in a reliable way to another person who is unknown to you which is why NatID cards are doomed and ID theft will always happen.

The only way we have currently of IDing ourselves scientificaly is via analysis of our DNA and it’s acossiated parts.

And DNA testing is so fraught with issues that it is unlikley to be a reliable method of establishing age or ID in a time period suitable for use in an online world.

Which leaves us with an “elephant in the room” of such monumental proportions that politicians can only talk by waving their arms and blurbing out sound bites that have aged more than they have.

What on earth is he thinking of with “that it should be easier to sue for defamation online”? I know first hand of one large, US based, online media operation that abandoned plans to relocate to the UK because of our already bloody stupid libel laws.

If they have not talked but somehow arrived at the same idea independently, what is it that is making them decide that now is the right time to filter/categorise the Internet ? Are we likely to see ministers from other countries proposing similar ideas ?