Ireland to control the Internet?
I see the Irish gubmint are going to censor the Interwebs?
Law safeguarding children online to be unveiled.
This is an obvious step as Irish parents are incapable of controlling what their offspring are up to on their phones and tablets. Where parents fail, the state must intervene, as cheeeldren must be protected at all costs.
Mr Bruton intends to empower an online safety commissioner with authority to order internet companies to remove content.
Now this will be interesting for several reasons.
First of all, Mr Bruton seems to think that the Interweb is somehow an Irish thing. What I want to know is what he intends to do if a few American kids are discussing something unsavoury [i.e. what the Irish gubmint considers unsuitable]. Is he going to demand that those kids are stopped, or does he think that somehow their conversations can be blocked from crossing the Atlantic?
In other words, is Ireland going to police the entire Web or is there going to be an Irish version of the Chinese firewall?
Now this leads to another point. I would imagine that Irish pre-teens know considerably more about the Web that Mr Bruton. If there is some kind of firewall, kids will get around it. It’s easy enough. After some court case or other, they blocked a series of sites that were file sharing or streaming videos. This is easy to do [and just as easy to circumvent – took me two minutes] as it involves domains. So is the gubmint going to block “facebook.com” and all the rest of the so called social media sites?
Mr Bruton will give examples of the sort of “harmful content” which social media companies will be required to remove. These include
Serious cyberbullying, including content which is seriously threatening, seriously intimidating, seriously harassing or seriously humiliating;
Material which promotes self-harm or suicide;
Material designed to encourage prolonged nutritional deprivation that would have the effect of exposing a person to risk of death or endangering health.
Now people are going to think that this is a good thing. No one likes bullying, self harm or suicide so the sheeple will give it a hearty round of applause. However, these are just “examples” so what else is to be blocked [assuming they do miraculously block anything]? And once they somehow manage to block their list, what is to stop them adding whatever they consider “unsuitable”?
As I said – this should be interesting….
It’s a bit mind boggling what these different entities “think” they can do with the Internet these days. The mucking about that the EU is currently attempting for example is bad enough but now Ireland as well? I know there’s certain members of congress over here in US land that are also hollering about the same thing. Censoring the Internet and for the same reasons–save the children. And since the Internet is the closest thing to a pure anarchy that exists on this planet, the various governments can only accomplish this censoring by putting a stranglehold on IPs, web host companies, etc, plus all the social sites and the like. If they attempt to control the website owners themselves well…it baint gonna happen.
Kind of makes me glad I’m the age that I am. I probably won’t live long enough to deal with the fallout of all this nanny-ism. My (step) grand-kids can deal with it instead and I know they’ve been raised the right way. Not one of them is allowed to have a “smart” phone. And even better? They don’t want one.
“Serious cyberbullying, including content which is seriously threatening, seriously intimidating, seriously harassing or seriously humiliating”
I read that and my first though was “define ‘serious'”. “I know it when I see it” isn’t quite good enough, is it?
A little too Big Brother for me
There is an obvious answer to all this cyber-bullying etc; no Interweb access for the under 18’s.
No smartphones for the under 18’s either, just dumb phones. No student accessible Internet connected computers in schools.
Of course no-one has any idea how to enforce such a restriction. The Djinni is out of that particular bottle and last seen doing low level aerobatics.