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A Solution to The Problem Of Children On A Web Full Of Porn.
16 years ago
Some time back I wrote a piece on my LiveJournal about The Effects Of Proposed Age Certification Legislation On The Internet (Read it at http://hiddenpaw.livejournal.com/855634.html ) in which I raised two problems with the idea. They were that site certification would cost a lot and hence effectively make it impossible for anyone other than large corporations and rich organizations to talk to under 16s/18s* and also it would increase the rift between the generations by making it less likely for adults and children to be in communication on community sites such as LJ, DA, FA, Face Book or such like. It's all very well to complain when the wrong action is taken to deal with a problem but the problem still remains. Sometimes Inaction is better than the wrong action and I believe it so in this case but I think I have come up with a better solution.
The problem is that the government has been looking at the wrong people to solve the problem The ISPs can't be expected to rate all the web in a fair meaningful way for free without leaving all the web that they have not got round to inaccessible (And pages on the web up date by the minuet in some cases). The people who can rate make sure a site is rated appropriately is the sites creator or management.
It would be very simple to create a system by which sites could rate themselves. I believe most sites on the Internet would be quite happy to do this. Most porn sites want to be seen as reputable businesses and not corrupters of children. Most would say loudly that they sell to adults and do not want children looking any more than anyone else does. Sites like LJ, FA and DA (Especially DA) would find their lives much simpler if they could just put a meta tag in a page saying
<meta Rating="18"> and be sure that children's browsers would not show these pages.
The system would be very simple. As shown above a new meta tag for rating would be officially introduced. Browsers would be programmed to search for such tabs in downloaded pages and if the parent has turned on the child lock (Which would need a password to turn off) then it would only show paged with rating PG or U (Parents choice). It would be a simple solution. The UK government said they would be willing to work with the US government. If they were also willing to work with the EU government I am quite sure that the body in charge of formulating the official standard for HTML would not be at all hard to convince and could have their side of things done and dusted in under a month. It am also quite sure that once the official standard for the HTML had been agreed Microsoft, apple, the makers of Firefox and all the other makers of browsers would have updates out within three months for parents to use. even ISPs could run a blocking service if parents felt that their children were likely to hack the home PC's browser to easily.
The beauty of this is that it can work page by page Sites such as LJ and DA could have safe pages open to the young allowing their users to mark a single piece as adult whilst allowing younger viewers to still see the rest of their work.
I commend this idea to the house...erm world
*Which ever age group they decide upon
The problem is that the government has been looking at the wrong people to solve the problem The ISPs can't be expected to rate all the web in a fair meaningful way for free without leaving all the web that they have not got round to inaccessible (And pages on the web up date by the minuet in some cases). The people who can rate make sure a site is rated appropriately is the sites creator or management.
It would be very simple to create a system by which sites could rate themselves. I believe most sites on the Internet would be quite happy to do this. Most porn sites want to be seen as reputable businesses and not corrupters of children. Most would say loudly that they sell to adults and do not want children looking any more than anyone else does. Sites like LJ, FA and DA (Especially DA) would find their lives much simpler if they could just put a meta tag in a page saying
<meta Rating="18"> and be sure that children's browsers would not show these pages.
The system would be very simple. As shown above a new meta tag for rating would be officially introduced. Browsers would be programmed to search for such tabs in downloaded pages and if the parent has turned on the child lock (Which would need a password to turn off) then it would only show paged with rating PG or U (Parents choice). It would be a simple solution. The UK government said they would be willing to work with the US government. If they were also willing to work with the EU government I am quite sure that the body in charge of formulating the official standard for HTML would not be at all hard to convince and could have their side of things done and dusted in under a month. It am also quite sure that once the official standard for the HTML had been agreed Microsoft, apple, the makers of Firefox and all the other makers of browsers would have updates out within three months for parents to use. even ISPs could run a blocking service if parents felt that their children were likely to hack the home PC's browser to easily.
The beauty of this is that it can work page by page Sites such as LJ and DA could have safe pages open to the young allowing their users to mark a single piece as adult whilst allowing younger viewers to still see the rest of their work.
I commend this idea to the house...erm world
*Which ever age group they decide upon
