(...cont'd)

But a compromise is possible. Firstly, go back to a graded rating system so the kids can have a safe internet without harming its usefulness to adults. This would mean that like DVD's, books and movies, ultimately the families would be responsible for deciding what they and their kids can and can not see. This is fairly simple to do. It could be done adjusting a filter running on a PC depending on who is logged in, or by setting a dial on the ISP filter.

Dealing with the impossibility of manually rating all internet pages also isn't hard - just get a computer to rate them. The issue is computers aren't very good at this sort of thing. If you set the dials so computers filter most of the unclean pages they end up banning some good ones as well. This weakness means the government can't use computers in their proposed mandatory filter, but if we make the usage of computer ratings optional and just use it to filter the internet for kids this is no longer a serious problem.

So there is a solution. And the point I make over and over again, yet you seem to disagree with, is it is available now! Both PC based filters and the WebShield ISP clean feed solution do exactly what I described above. You said you would be happy with an opt in solution, so what is your problem with what is already available?

To put it another way, I am still utterly mystified by why you think the government imposed mandatory filter is good idea. Not only does it have censorship implications, but it is likely it will only catch 10% of the pages it is supposed to, and even if it did catch 100% the single rating system means it won't do the job you want. Worse, the governments proposal doesn't include anything that would work. It merely "encourages" ISP to offer a WebShield style clean feed, as a chargeable extra. For the life of me, I can't see a single redeeming feature in it.