The Guardian on net censorship

Last month, I posted an article about internet censorship in the UK, following on from an interview in the Telegraph with Culture Secretary Andy Burnham in which he said he was seeking to work with the US set common internet standards with the incoming Obama administration, which may include such things as cinema-style ratings for websites and child-safe services from ISPs.

The Guardian has an ineresting editorial on the subject today, dismissing the idea on the cinema-style ratings and arguing out that ISP-based content filtering would be unworkable. Instead, the paper advocates a common sense approach based on parental responsibility...

There are ways that parents can protect children without impeding on the liberty of others, such as restricting access to one computer in the living room or using services such as OpenDNS.com providing filters covering dozens of unseemly subjects for nothing. The problem is that many parents are not motivated or feel it is beyond them. The government should save the money that might be lavished on an ineffectual Big Brother solution and spend it instead on a concerted campaign to make parents aware of what they can do for themselves.

Read the editorial in full here.