Andy Burnham, the United Kingdom's minister of culture, says the country is contemplating the use of a rating system for websites.
Like existing rating systems for films, American TV shows and video games, the online variant represents an attempt to prepare users for potentially provocative content and protect children from potentially harmful of offensive material.
The results may be far-reaching. Burnham says the government will work with the Obama administration to draft "international rules for English language Web sites."
"The more we seek international solutions to this stuff — the UK and the US working together — the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," stated Burnham.
Such a norm may also affect how material is presented online. Citing the example of how violent material cannot be broadcast on British television before 9PM, Burnham suggested similar controls be implemented for the worldwide web. Sites accessed by general audiences, such as Facebook and YouTube, may be forced to remove offensive or harmful material within a certain time period.
The ruling naturally raises questions about free speech on the internet, but Burnham insists such concerns are neither here nor there.
"It's not about banning or stopping people having that freedom of expression … it's simply about clearer signposting, more information, so people know where they're working," he said, even as he acknowledged the UK government is also exploring "cheap low-cost legal recourse" for online defamation cases — which could generate an editorial chill among bloggers and self-described online journalists.
"If you look back at the people who created the Internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach," Burnham said in an interview with The Telegraph. "I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now."
In the past, online giants like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have been criticized in the press for enabling the agendas of countries like China, Malaysia or Russia, where certain forms of online expression — particularly of a political nature — are severely punished. The implementation of a filter or rating system walks a fine line between interpretations of "protection" and outright human rights violation.
The broad accessibility of content on the web is expected to become a major issue in 2009. In October, the Australian government announced plans to implement a national online filter to block illegal and curb illicit material. The experiment has resulted in a long winter of discontent.
Says Geordie Guy of Electronic Frontiers Australia, ''Filtering technology is not capable of realizing that when we say breasts we're talking about breast cancer, or when we type in sex we may be looking for sexual education. The filter will accidentally block things it's not meant to block.''
Chortling at the protests of what he calls "'net libertarians,'' professor Clive Hamilton of Canberra's Charles Sturt University argued "a few extra clicks of a mouse'' could expose young eyes to photos or videos of extreme or violent sex.
"Opponents of ISP filters simply refuse to acknowledge or trivialize the extent of the social problem," he concluded emphatically.
