Internet security - Protecting children must be our focus

IT MAY be a tad unfair to describe Justice Minister Brian Lenihan as a modern day King Canute, trying to stem the tide of harmful content on the internet.

Though Canute overestimated his power and failed in his attempts to literally hold back the tide, it is to be hoped that Mr Lenihan — also a member of a ruling dynasty — is more successful in his objectives.

The internet is the great empowering invention of our age but it comes with a price. That price is that access is unlimited and that content is also unconfined.

Everything from Granny Brown’s recipe for her brown soda loaf to some things that make the most vigorous suggestions of the Karma Sutra look like Enid Blyton’s Five Have Plenty of Fun.

Mr Lenihan says that firms which fail to sign up to a voluntary code on the exclusion of harmful content will face state regulation. He also threatens to impose a mandatory levy to fund regulatory measures to keep the internet above board.

All of this is fine and dandy but two truths remain. One is that the internet is an all pervasive but inanimate tool. The other is that people will behave like they have been taught to behave.

Though the internet is constantly growing, changing and becoming ever-more powerful, it is incumbent on everyone who has the interest of a child or young person at heart to keep a weather eye open and to learn how to use the technology involved. There is nothing wrong with being intrusive and insistent if the objectives are as clear cut as Mr Lenihan’s — the wellbeing of all young people who use the internet.