Published: 16 April 2007
The decision by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, to speak out against cyber-bullying last week - urging websites such as YouTube not to carry demeaning videos of pupils and teachers - goes to a hot issue of concern for all new media: that of internet-content regulation.
No sooner had he spoken than the issue arose again in another form. The online death threats and abuse directed against Kathy Sierra, a prominent Californian blogger and web developer, led Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, to call for more civilised blogging - perhaps encouraged by a form of voluntary code of conduct. The branding system proposed - designed to enable users quickly to assess the credibility of the site they are looking at - has echoes of the Press Complaints Commission chairman Sir Christopher Meyer's suggestion that there is a commercial advantage for newspapers and magazines in making clear that information on their sites is subject to professional standards, and so more reliable than that elsewhere. continue...
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