A blog about Policy

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)