Apathy Sketchpad

So I was reading a blog-post called Fuck Shit Arse Twat Paedophile Coprophile Custardcopulatory Cuntwad. As you do. It’s about a Guardian article (thanks to the Internet, what newspaper is in my house and what newspaper I read are almost totally independant variables) that says:

Web providers to be named and shamed over offensive content

Politicians are ready to introduce league tables naming and shaming the speed with which internet service providers take down offensive material. The culture minister, Barbara Follett, and her Tory shadow, Ed Vaizey, have backed the idea that web providers must be embarrassed into dealing with violent, sexually explicit web content.

Fuck right off. Essentially, your suggestion is that in order to protect children from porn, there must be no porn. That’s ridiculous. If we ban anything inappropriate for children, we’ll all be stuck watching The Lion King over and over and that will be considered relatively edgy.

We allow adult films and TV shows and computer games. It’s always been the parents’ role to decide what’s appropriate for their children and to filter it for them. The companies should do whatever they think best. The state has a role only when there is good evidence that actual harm will be caused if they don’t (although it gives parents a hand with film ratings, and that’s fine because the parent is free to then show the film to their kids anyway). I’m unaware of any evidence that pornography is harmful to anyone. ProtectKids.Com claims to have some, but ironically the whole site is hidden by a 403 error. I can’t find any. It may exist, but the people who try to stop it never seem to mention any, and it would seem to me that children will probably grow up best if you let them basically do what they want in most cases. When you read a sentence like “exposure to pornography shapes children’s sexual perspective by providing them information on sexual activity”, it’s easy to think that the writer might not be arguing rationally for the child’s best interests. Heaven forfend that anyone should base their perspective on something as dangerous as information.

The article does say “she also insisted there was not yet compellingly persuasive evidence of a link between watching violent video games and subsequent acts of violence”, but all that proves is that Follett hasn’t quite understood the point of videogames or pornography, or equally possibly that Patrick Wintour at the Guardian sometimes just pastes in sentences at random.

Follett said she wants to see the pre-screening of material on sites such as YouTube, as occurs at present on MySpace.

That sounds like a relatively small and feasible job and an idea which has been totally thought through. MySpace is the Censorship Capital of the Internet. It’s not a good model.

Follett said: “Many people have said that the internet is like the wild west in the gold rush and that sooner or later it will be regulated. What we need is for it to be regulated sooner rather than later.

It already is. What you’re asking for is censorship. That’s not the same at all. That said…

The proposal for a “take-down” league table is backed by Vaizey. He said: “The government is in a position to put out the information, and it is up to the internet service providers to react to it. If they are happy to be 55th in a league table of take-down times so be it.”

I’d be all in favour of this, though. I chose my webhosts in no small part because of their extremely liberal acceptable use policy which basically says ‘if it’s legal, we’ll host it’. It’d be handy to have a list of all the companies that could be relied upon to actually do their jobs instead of wussing out and pulling your content to avoid offending idiots.

If this happens, I will personally write a script to regularly download that league table, flip it on its head, and host the corrected version under the title ‘ISP Credibility Ranks’.