Tom Beardshaw

UK Culture minister, Andy Burnham launched an idea into the debate on the protection of children on the web during the Christmas holidays by suggesting that film style age ratings be applied to websites.

As a father of three young children, Mr Burnham was reflecting the genuine concerns that parents have about the exposure of young people to harmful material on the web. Sadly, his idea for classifying websites is unworkable, would be useless at protecting children and could potentially waste a huge amount of our money.

Stef Lewandowski has already set out some of the practical impossibilities of the scheme. The number of web pages is technically infinite (many web pages are generated on the fly and don't even exist until requested from a user). Web pages are not final published items - they change and evolve, so anyone checking a site on a Monday will fail to see what's been uploaded on a Tuesday.

Obviously, manual checking of web content is practically impossible, but automated filtering is also hugely problematic - as the Australian government is currently discovering. Filter out the word 'sex' and bingo, no more content offering good education and advice on sex for young people.

Mr Burnham even suggested that he saw great opportunities with the incoming Obama US administration for co-operation on controlling content on the English speaking web. I'd suggest he take another look at President-elect Obama's views on support for net neutrality and revisit that assumption.

And then there's the thorny question of WHO, exactly, would be in charge of classifying or filtering the web. Like many others, I'm concerned that anyone should set themselves up as an arbiter of culture in this way - the very notion seems ripe for abuse.

For example, Facebook (well known for policing content on their site) is currently taking down photos of breastfeeding - it's fair enough for a company to do what they want on their own website, if annoying when they so obviously get things wrong, but if it's a government agency, which cultural values drive the decision making and how can they be accountable?

Old media solutions won't work on the web

There's another reason why this notion of classification of websites is useless. It builds on an old media model from an age where access to media was limited and depended on an identifiable gate-keeper who could be held to account for their control of access to children.

Film classification works because you have to buy a cinema ticket or DVD from a real human being who can be trained to refuse access to anyone underage. In an age with limited access to media through movie theatres or shops, classification works because it can be enforced.

There is no such control of access on the web - click or don't click - ultimately it's the user is the one who decides whether to access a website, and there is no intermediary available for preventing someone aged 15 from clicking on a site with a 16 rating.

Indeed, I'd suggest that putting a 16 rating on a website would pretty much guarantee it would become a big hit for the under 16s! Ban something and you make it way, way more interesting.

The big question I have is this: How does a big sign on a website saying 'adults only' protect a child from accessing it if the only thing the child has to do is click a button saying 'enter'?

The UK government, if it runs with this idea, could waste a huge amount of taxpayers money and years of the opportunity cost of not pursuing more effective policies, and still leave children as unprotected as ever.

It strikes me as a naive hope for an easy solution to an incredibly complex problem, and yet again demonstrates the profound levels of ignorance about the internet that so often pops up within government.

The Byron Report

Mr Burnham attempts to build on the excellent work of Dr Tanya Byron's review for the DCSF in which she carefully examined child safety online. In a thoughtful review, Dr Byron called for a wide ranging set of initiatives to help protect children online, but classifying websites wasn't one of them.

She did talk about strengthening the classification of computer games, but with real world intermediaries to control access (the shops and people who sell games), the use of classification is a viable option.

But sadly, classifying websites would be an enormous and expensive undertaking that would ultimately have no impact on the protection of children from harmful material.

Far more useful would be to look at Dr Byron's actual suggestions, which included:

• reducing the availability of harmful material on the most popular areas of the internet. This means working with (and resourcing) popular sites like YouTube to ensure they have the capacity to remove damaging content quickly and effectively. She acknowledged that it was impossible to 'police the long tail'


• helping parents to understand the web and how to protect their children online. There is an accelerating generational digital divide and as parents are the key gatekeepers to childrens' online access, it is with them that we should focus our efforts


• building childrens' resiliance to the online environment and its content

Dads, mums and carers are the key

It's on this second point that the most potential exists. Parents can and do gate-keep their childrens' access to the web, but there is a huge amount of work to do to help them do this.

Here are some basic tips for protecting your kids online:

• Never allow your children to access the web in a private space. If you have a desktop, put it in a communal room like the living room, where anyone can wander past and see what they're up to. If you're using a laptop, try positioning your wifi router so that there's no signal in their bedroom, and therefore no private access to the internet


• Set up separate accounts for all family members on your computer. Make yourself the only administrator and password protect your account. You can configure parental controls in both Windows and Max OS


• Try installing Netnanny or another parental control software on your computer


• Try using Glubble - an internet browser which pre-approves websites for children under 12 - and make this the only browser available on your children's computer accounts

The FBI has some good pointers on indications that suggest your child may be at risk in it's Parents' Guide to Safety Online .

Ultimate, the internets will not be controlled by the governments - it's core architecture means that attempts to control internet content by apply the same thinking as was applied in the old media age can never really work.

In the old media age, content was created and distributed by a small number manageable and regulate-able actors and access was controlled by gate-keepers who could be made accountable to a law based on classification and control.

In the new media age, content can be created and distributed by anyone, anywhere at any time. Billions of items are uploaded every day and it cannot possibly be policed, nor, arguably, should we want it to be.

The real solutions are to invest in the skills, knowledge and understanding of children and especially parents. It's a messier, more organic solution and certainly no low-hanging-fruit for a government minister looking for an easy win, but in the long term, it's the only way.

UPDATE: Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson MP has opened a debate on the issue on his blog. So far, every one of the 160+ comments is against the idea. Let's see if Andy Burnham listens.

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