(Cross-posted from here)
Teachers in Britain are demanding greater control over Internet after a video of a student breaking a classroom window was posted on a video sharing site.
The shaky 15-second footage shows a clearly identifiable boy grinning as he strides up to throw the missile. Head teacher Gordon Cunningham said it had been the Year 9 pupil’s last day at Easthampstead Park School in Berkshire before he and his family emigrated. “It’s horrendous,” he said. The police would be informed. The clip, featured on a popular video-sharing website, also shows a boy and a girl dressed in school uniform who appear to have been encouraging the attack, while other voices can also be heard.
While the conduct of the student is indeed despicable and he deserves to be chastised, trying to police the Internet is futile. This will only drive the movement underground where even community measures like flagging offensive content are unavailable.[link]
It’s not as if windows were not broken before the advent of Youtube!
Iran is attempting a more desperate gambit to control the Internet.
In a blow to the country’s estimated 5 million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobits per second (kbps) and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran’s telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. It will also impede efforts by political opposition groups to organise by uploading information on to the net.[link]
This is beyond stupid. Broadband connections are not only used to view ‘decadent Western sites’ as the cultural police seems to believe. By denying access to high speed connections, the Iranian government is taking the country backward.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, Youtube is in for further trouble.
( Reuters link via Labnol)
Filed under: Public Policy, World Wide Web
Iran, I can understand, but I am surprised at Brits! Normally those guys are more sensible than that. In fact, they should be happy, they have clinching evidence to punish the student – thanks to the video sharing website.
But then they also banned Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall.
Banning access to information has never suppressed anyone. While there may be a small element of bravado by capturing and posting it on YouTube, this would have happened anyway. I suggest the teachers focus instead of what they and the parents need to do in these situations.
R
:-Dand threw them into a classroom at his high school, injuring dozens of students in that process.
That Brit thing is relatively milder as compared to what a 18-year-old student in Japan did. He learnt how to make explosives/bombs from a website
since childhood and adolescence are such an impressionable age groups, the web-sites catering to many a type of adult, should implement robust filter mechanisms, not just one click mechanism that gathers “Ok” from the clicker that he/she is above a 18yrs barrier. Youtube should also fall in this universe.
Government agencies should maintain specific task forces that keep track of sites that carry illegal, provocative and harmful information….these measures should not be seen as constraints/limiters of one’s freedom, but more as proactive measures that avoid untoward incidents.
umm, that sex bit in shallow water on a beach…tempting!Mallika Sherawat should considr this option to bully money from sites of such kind, instead of demanding 50laks from the organisers, who design frenzy performances that involve pulling one’s pants down and ripping one’s flimsy clothes apart…