[Adder]

I've finnaly stoped being able to just sit back and think about this, so I've decided to use some forum space to air my views. Today's topic:

"Policing chat-rooms"

Recently talk of peodophils and porn have led some groups to lobby for the government to physicaly patrol, monitor and police chatrooms on the internet.
Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?

Lets look at the facts:

1. Most of this was hightened after a 12 year old girl was about to go out and meet a 40 year old peodophile.
(2. The girl's parents had been trying to cut here back to 4 hours a day on the internet. Am I the only one who thinks that, in this situation, communication in the house and overuse may have been the problem?)

3. People think it's a new thing for people in chatrooms to be lying about there age/sex/loction. DUH!!
By 2010, a certain gameing magazine estimates only 10% of women on-line gamers will be women!

4. The internet, and especialy forums and chatrooms, are (in my view) about sharing ideas and airing views. Monitoring and censoring, or prosecution, someone over there thoughts should, in my view, not take place.

41/2. PM's should never be viewed by anyone other than the sender and collector. It's the whole point of it being private. Possible moderators should be able to peek at them, but should be responsible about it.

5. In order to monitor every chat-room you would need to check them at least ever 2 hours and stay for 15 minutes. Now, Yahoo! alone has over 100 chat-rooms. Add in TeenChat, um...Oddchat, bjork.com/telegraph/chat . See the problem?

6. Which country has the right to censor/prosecute another?


Well, that's my current thoughts. Anyone else like to comment?