Ryan MacMillan

It’s a bad week for the interwebs, kids, first there was the terrible, awful, butt-achingly bad idea that was Cuil (see below for proof, facts, evidence etc etc) and now the assorted tools, reactionaries and soulless party hacks who make up the Culture, Media and Sport committee in the UK Parliament have decided that the internet needs regulating because it is Darth Vader or something.

Apparently they think that all this user generated content (so hip they are!) from the youspaces and facetubes and so on isn’t been properly overseen, and that industry practices for protecting content-generating users is an “unsatisfactory piecemeal approach which lacks consistency and transparency.” And that sites like youtube “must take more responsibility for protecting young people from the “dark side” of digital content.

Well, as they say, fear leads to hate hate leads to fear fear leads to something else which leads to the dark side and that can’t be good at all.

Much like honorable Members’ proposal:

“The report recommends a “proactive review of content” as standard practice for sites hosting user-generated content. The idea would be to introduce technological tools to “quarantine” material which “potentially violates terms and conditions of use until … reviewed by staff”.”

Oh, good grief, Charlie Brown, are these people on drugs? Mentally disabled, perchance? Involved in some sort of elaborate practical joke predicated on the hysterical notion that our democratically elected representatives think it is even remotely possible to review all the world’s user generated content?

I need a martini. Charles Arthur dissects this nonsense in more detail here.