Emboldened by failure, they press on...

The government, it seems, are considering attaching a cinema-like classification to web sites. ( I am assuming that this is true, and not a hoax!)

Just about every important piece of regulation they have set up has failed in important respects, from (fox) hunting, to financial, to child care, to name but three, but undeterred they turn to a much harder nut to crack. You have to admire their (over) confidence.

The internet is difficult, even if all other countries were willing to join the scheme, as the classification would have be done in the country of location. If just one or two remained outside, and it is hard to see what sweeteners or sanctions could make them join, then "adult" or other socially unaccepted sites could quickly be routed there.

Even if all countries join, we could still have pirate, sea born sites which use convenient land connections. This would take us back to the days of pirate radio, with ships moored a few miles off our coasts and giving a two-fingered gesture to our intrepid government.

If our courageous government decided to "go it alone" then they would have to to monitor possibly millions of sites over thousands of internet service providers over 24 hours each day. This could be done by word-recognition software, but constant switching or names or locations would mean that there could be no let up at all.

All this seems to be attacking the problem from the wrong end. The police seem to have been relatively successful with child-pornography sites, to judge by convictions involving international cooperation.

Leaving these, and perhaps terrorist sites, which are not the concern of most of us, would not a more effective method be to support parents who monitor the history of sites visited by their children, perhaps by password-protected records and by publishing sites which should be of concern to parents, again preventing access by children?

This would not be perfect, but it would be a lot less expensive and invasive. Parents are, or should be, concerned about their children's internet activity. They should be enlisted as unpaid helpers in the battle.