Those wacky Brits now with movie-style Web rating

I can’t count the number of time over the years that I have been on the Web where some bright politician or bureaucrat has this great suggestion about applying some sort of ratings system for websites on the Web. Well as a follow-up to the brilliant Digital Economy Bill it seems a British ISP thinks it would be a great idea to have movie style ratings for websites.

UK based Tibboh (now there’s a great name) is using a rating systems similar to the British Board of Film Classification on the grounds that they are trying to make the Web safer for our children (how often have we heard that line of crap before?). The idea being that people using Tibboh can rest easy as their children will be blocked from accessing websites that the ISP thinks is unsuitable for them using the BBFC style rating.

As Martin Bryant at The Next Web points out

While the idea may appeal to some parents, there are inconsistencies and some confusing decisions. IT Pro reports that the site deems Facebook as a ‘12? certificate, despite the fact that Facebook’s terms and conditions say that you actually have to be 13 to use the site. Meanwhile, WordPress.com is limited to people aged 15 and over. It’s truly insane to apply a domain-wide certificate on a blogging platform with wide-ranging content, much of which will be perfectly acceptable for people younger than 15 to read.

Me .. well I’ll just call the whole idea brain dead and moronic.