[ga] UK Culture Secretary Wants Website Ratings, Censorship

["Jeffrey A. Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

  What the heck is a "Culture Secretary"?  Sounds like something
in a petri dish or something...  And that ugly word again, Censorship.
>:(
My heavens what ever happened to Democracy in the UK?

  So now I suppose the UK will be censoring .US domain names
that don't meet some unknown standard?  I am sure that some .US
registrants will have a problem with this!  I am all for
'family-friendly'
notion and 'kids safe' on the Net.  But one persons idea of that and
anothers may, and often does, differ greatly...

  Depending on how this plays out, it's fairly clear at a minimum,
that many/most .INFO domain names are toast, that many .EDU
domain names are toast, that many more .COM domain names
will eventually be toast, as well as many .EU domain names will
also be toast.  That going to hurt ICANN's registrars and Registries
in terms of revenue, and ICANN in particular in terms of fees it
currently collects.  For all you 'Sporting gentlemen', say good-bye
to Playboy.com, and some of Sports illustrated content such as
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2008_swimsuit/ will also
be toast in the perhaps near future.  Sorry fellas, it's gotta go!
I can't believe such would pass as 'family-friendly'...  And ladies,
you also might be loosing that online shopping opportunity for
that significant other on victorias secret,
http://www.victoriassecret.com/
as I am sure that some of the content on that sight will never pass
muster as 'family-friendly' and/or 'kids safe'.  Than of course there's
myspace.com and Facebook.com, of which much of the content
on those sites by subscribers will disappear as well.  I am fairly sure
that the financial impact of just those two Domain Names will be
significant.

See:
UK culture secretary Andy Burnham calls for
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/3965051/Internet-sites-could-be-given-cinema-style-age-ratings-Culture-Secretary-says.html
a website rating system similar to the one used for movies in an
interview with the Daily Telegraph. He also calls for censorship of 
the internet, saying, 'There is content that should just not be 
available to be viewed.' Other proposals he mentions in his wide-ranging 
calls for internet regulation are 'family-friendly' services from ISPs, 
and requiring takedown notices to be enforced within a specific time for
sites that host content. Mr. Burnham wants to extend his proposals
across the pond and seeks meetings with the Obama administration.

Regards,

Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 284k members/stakeholders strong!)
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