U.K. seeks to rein in Internet

Culture secretary mulls film-style ratings

The U.K. government is looking to impose tough restrictions on websites in the coming year .

Blighty’s culture secretary Andy Burnham said he intended to tighten controls on English-language websites and that he would negotiate with incoming U.S. president Barack Obama’s team to present a united front against indecency, violence, libel and copyright theft on the Web.

“The change of administration (in the U.S.) is a big moment. We have got a real opportunity to make common cause,” Burnham told U.K. newspaper the Daily Telegraph on Saturday. “The more we seek international solutions to this stuff -- the U.K. and the U.S. working together -- the more that an international norm will set an industry norm.” ...

He said the freedoms hitherto enjoyed on the Internet may have to be constrained.

“If you look back at the people who created the Internet, they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now,” he said.

Keep kids safe, but as to the rest of your plans: Restrict this, buddy. No government or company owns the Internet. You may not regulate what is not yours.  If you or anyone else tries to constrain Internet freedom, you will be ignored or bypassed:

The third generation of peer-to-peer networks are those that have anonymity features built in. Examples of anonymous networks are ANts P2P, RShare, Freenet, I2P, GNUnet and Entropy.

...  in countries where very fast fiber-to-the-home Internet access is commonplace, such as Japan, a number of anonymous file-sharing clients have already reached high popularity.... Additionally all transfers are encrypted, so that even the network administrators cannot see what was sent to whom. Example software includes WASTE, JetiANts, Tor and I2P. These clients differ greatly in their goals and implementation. WASTE is designed only for small groups and may therefore be considered Darknet; ANts and I2P are public Peer-to-Peer systems, with anonymization provided exclusively by routing reach. -wiki