Internet sites could be given ‘cinema-style age ratings’

Did you know that Great Britain had a “Culture Secretary”? They do and his name is Andy Burnham.

In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, Culture Secretary Burnham says he believes that new standards of decency need to be applied to the web. He plans to negotiate with Barack Obama’s administration to draw up new international rules for English language websites.

Establishing film-style ratings to websites is one of the options being considered, he confirmed. When asked whether age ratings might be introduced, Mr Burnham replies: “Yes, that would be an option. This is an area that is really now coming into full focus.”

Now I know a lot of folks will scream about this type of government involvement, but I do agree something needs to be done to push what I’ll call “Mature” (“M”) content off of the mainstream internet. My solution would involve allowing “M” on dot xxx domains only. This provides these site owners with their free speech rights while preventing people from arriving at sites with mature content when performing innocent searches online.

Source: Daily Telegraph