New British government committee may police the Internet

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

In what goes to prove that the British really do have a sense of humour, it has been recommended that a government committee be set up to protect Internet users from nasty people online such as abusive bloggers.   Hey you…..f**king read this OK?   I’m putting a lot of damn work into this post!!  :-)

The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has just brought out their report on harmful content on the Internet and video games (start reading it and I guarantee you’ll fall asleep).   One of the recommendations being put forward is that a government watchdog be set up to monitor and “police” the net against all the baddies roaming about cyberspace.

This “watchdog” would operate an online ‘code of practice’ and – here’s Joke Of The Month – order bloggers and social networking sites to take down offensive messages or photographs.   As Shane Richmond says here, “good luck with that!”.   You might get a responsible site such as Facebook complying with such an order, but try giving such an order to a blogger.   He’ll laugh, flip the cyber-finger and put the written order on Reddit or Digg.

The House of Commons seems to think the Internet is out of control.   It was only a few days ago that I wrote about the man who won 22,000 pounds at the High Court from a man who made a fake Facebook profile about him.   Plus you have all the usual problems such as illegal downloading.  So yes, in some ways we have problems on the net.  But do we need politicians trying to solve those problems by controlling our lives online 24/7?   I don’t think so.   That just adds to the problems.   It doesn’t solve them.

Do YOU think the Internet is getting out of control?