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January 10, 2009

Caught in the BlogosphereComing Soon to a Web Site Near You

PG.jpg

By Nichole Mrasek

The British secretary of state for culture, media, and sports, Andy Burnham, recently suggested giving sites cinema-style ratings (PG, PG-13, R, etc.) to help prevent children from stumbling upon inappropriate material. In response to Burnham’s comment, the Digital Home’s Don Reisinger blogged about the absurdity of instituting such ratings.

Reisinger says, “But what about the comments? What about some of the hate-filled, vituperation readers place on different stories across the site? Sure, the article itself is fine for children, but calling others names, cursing, or using other generally unaccepted language probably isn’t rated PG, right?”

He goes on to explain that movies are "controlled" content and Web sites are populated with various sources of content. We know there are already programs out there designed to help police the sites children navigate, and introducing a new system seems an unnecessary hassle. Consider the significant amount of time it would require to decide on how a site’s rating is qualified.

Read more from Reisinger’s “Applying movie ratings to Web sites is a dumb idea” here.

Posted by staff at January 10, 2009 02:03 AM

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