The UK Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, announced recently that the country would move towards a greater degree of control in on-line browsing, especially for children. According to the newly-proposed rules, web pages will have to be rated according to a nationally-devised system that will warn visitors as to the content of the site and the danger it poses to underage children. The Secretary proposed a rating system similar to those employed by various sites in determining the quality of a video or picture.

”The Internet is becoming a more and more pervasive entity in all our lives and yet the content standards on-line are not as clear as we've all been used in traditional media. I think we do need to have a debate now about clearer signposting and labeling on-line because it can be quite a confusing world, particularly for parents who are trying to ensure their children are only accessing appropriate stuff,” the official told the BBC.

“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 added. At the same time, Burnham said that he was not advocating a curb in Internet freedom, but merely a more careful control of the content that small children can unwillingly come across while surfing the Web. He quoted official statistics, which said that 3 in 4 British children were disturbed by images or videos they found while browsing the Internet.

“It's one thing to have a political commitment, but it's much harder to actually enforce it. We want these ideas to have teeth. And these mechanisms on their own aren't enough. They've got to be combined with greater parental awareness. Most parents have no clue what their children are up to on-line. What I think is missing from these proposals is that it's not just about what sites children might see, it's about who they might meet on-line,” said Diana Sutton, the head of policy and public affairs at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).