Congratulations, spiked, on the debate.

All lead contributors have come at the issue with a broad perspective but understandably anchored in their field of expertise or concern - child protection from abuse, kids as consumers etc. Will Gardner hit the nail on the head, when referring to the triple issues around cost (commercialisation) content and contact. Where premium rate telephony-charged payment is involved we have always sought to prevent kids accessing inappropriate content or getting into chat environments where dangerous contact is possible. 

Our “anchor” is the payment mechanism and our simple starting point has been that you do not take money from children to talk to strangers. This is not just because we are well meaning, paternalistic or busybodies. In part it is because kids cannot sign up for phone service contracts but can (as a parent, I know) spend hours and small fortunes on a phone. It was this as much as the risk of contact that drove the decision years ago to bar kids from live chat services. We did liberalise this rule at the margins - for those over 16 rather than 18 to use commercial text chat services and we knew we would have had to look again if ISPs/networks offered commercial IM chat. 

In looking at the risks when issues of cost, content and contact come together we have always felt it right to have regard to another basic proposition: the fact that kids can have fantastic technical competence with PCs, mobiles etc (to the point of wholly intuitive use) but that this does not also make them mature in life.  Another commentator has noted how cyberspace IS the real world. He is right. And while kids might think themselves utterly streetwise and possessed of profound insights, they are not. 

Until recently, efforts to prevent kids spending what they should not, seeing and hearing and reading what they should not, and meeting those they should not, has been an exercise in deterrence, not prevention. The identity and age of a caller, texter or web-addressee may not be possible to ascertain. Putting all customers of a simple chat service through identity checks that we might see at an airport is neither practical nor proportionate to the service -and harm- we fear. 

In this regard, the actions by mobile carriers to introduce age verification for commercial, visual adult content and to extend this as an optional service for non-premium web content, was a step change in responsibility. The same might be said of the new approach of identifying and preventing UK access to child pornography at the ISP level. These are two examples of where technology is there as an aid to protection and public empowerment -just as much as it is to revenue generation.

A capability to identify, and then “Return to Sender” or “Refer to Copper”, content that is abusive, racist, or deeply offensive in nature, does not seem to me an unreasonable entitlement. Newspapers and broadcasters are not obliged to publish rubbish just because we mail it in. Why then should site hosts- for user generated content.

The vast majority of kids have no wish to post or see rubbish. They want to network - socially! We should have no fears over addressing the minority whose conduct, if unaddressed, will put the kibosh on harmless content and contacts. 

George Kidd, UK, ICSTIS