Don't Call it Censorship or I'll Sue

The Secretary for Cultchah and area of outstanding natural fatuity, Andy "Randy" Burnham, whose last major contribution to the cultural well-being of the nation was the suggestion that public libraries should "be social places for people to meet and discuss, perhaps with coffee shops or internet cafes", perhaps sharing sites "with a swimming pool or GP’s surgery", has now decided to bring the full majesty of his intellect to the problem of inappropriate internet content. Since he has children, and is too busy to look after them, he is naturally worried that someone might leave them for two hours unregulated on the internet, because this "is not something you can do". Randy intends to impose age-range restrictions on websites, to compel removal of "offensive material" (offensive to whom?), and to make Britain's libel laws even more sensible so that it's "cheaper for people to sue publishers if they have been defamed online". The internet is "a very, very complex and quite dangerous world" because it "has been empowering and democratising in many ways"; yet worse, the people who created the internet "talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach", which is hardly the sort of challenge New New Labour can be expected to resist.