Web ratings proposal triggers Twitter attack

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(NECN: Ted McEnroe) - A plan floated by British Minister of Culture Andy Burnham to create a cinema-style ratings system for the World Wide Web has not exactly won over many fans in the British Internet community. The plan was reported in an interview with the Telegraph of London on Friday. Burnham said he wants to engage the Obama administration in coming up with a ratings system for English-language sites, noting that "leaving your child for two hours completely unregulated on the internet is something you cannot do." But while his intentions might be noble - the obstacles to any plan seem huge. First, there is the challenge of even agreeing on standards. Then there is the challenge of applying them. As the British blog <a href="http://www.politicalpenguin.org.uk/2008/12/an-open-letter-to-andy-burnham-mp/">Political Penguin</a> noted, Google announced in July it had indexed one trillion pages of content. At its current pace for rating films, the British film board would need more than 7 million years to catch up. And that content is constantly changing. <a href="http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/12/28/uk-government-wants-to-regulate-the-inter-tubes/">Mike Butcher from Techcrunch UK</a> notes that as one major difference between rating films, which don't change once complete, and websites. Meanwhile, savvy adult site entrpreneurs could simply bury their content in innocuous looking sites. There are legal issues with regulating content that lives on servers in other countries, and the costs of implementing a system are almost inconceivable, particularly during a worldwide economic downtown. So, concluding that Burnham doesn't get it - <a href="http://twitter.com/andyburnham">Butcher has taken over the Twitter name andyburnham</a>, and is having some fun with it until the Minister catches on. (Actually, the fact that no one in the Ministry ever grabbed Burnham's name in the first place to protect him shows Butcher might be right.) So, if you surf to <a href="http://twitter.com/andyburnham">twitter.com/andyburnham</a>, there should be some interesting things going on there - for at least a short time. Meanwhile, if you need to feel better about the 11-and-5-and-still-going-home New England Patriots, surf over to the <a href="http://www.freep.com">Detroit Free Press</a> coverage of the 0-and-16 Detroit Lions. Bad football breeds good writing.

Tags: twitter, need, minister, british, films, web, butcher, plan, /a, detroit, challenge, internet, sites, ratings, content, surf, rating, burnham, href="http://twitter.com/andyburnham"

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