As a copywriter, one of the first jobs I had was to write a series of scripts and headlines for Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. So I was rather sad to learn of Mel's death at the weekend. Funnily enough, I was also reminded of the comedy twosome yesterday, as the coalition government launched their clampdown on internet pornography.
A sketch in the long-running 'Alas Smith And Jones' show featured a character called 'The Incredible Bulls****ng Man'. Played by Griff, this fellow unleashed an ever expanding stream of brags to anyone who would listen. "When my old man died, the whole city came to his funeral", "Punch me as hard as you like, I can take it" and so on. It was a great bit of writing (better than anything I came up with) and genuinely hilarious. The hollow boasts emanating from politicians on Monday, less so.
At this point, I should emphasise I am no apologist for dealers in images of child abuse. Anyone and everyone involved in this revolting activity is morally bankrupt and a serious criminal. I wouldn't hesitate to support any effective campaign to bring them to book and terminate their heinous hobby. Unfortunately, nothing the government has said resembles such a plan. Quite the opposite.
The headline proposal is to force search engines (and Google in particular) to return blank results when an individual goes looking for images of child abuse and simulated rape. Initially this seems fair enough. After all, surely Bing, Google and Yahoo shouldn't be making life easy for the deranged and depraved? However, within a few minutes of ministers - and indeed, the Prime Minister - launching this initiative, it was clear they had no idea that search engines and internet service providers were completely different entities. Before long we could hear very serious sounding blokes insisting that 'ISPs like Google' must take more responsibility or face legislation. Presumably whoever is to draft this law has working knowledge of the internet, but who knows?
Obviously the flaws in this strategy go deeper still. The level of naivety which leads powerful people to imagine fans of paedophilic pictures find all their material using search engines, beggars belief. When confronted with references to the 'dark web', 'onion servers' and 'proxy connections' the best the politicians could muster was a dismissive "We still have more work to do." Yes that old chestnut. In fact, they were actually confessing they didn't have a clue what the were talking about.
There's a modern concept known as 'mission drift'. First coined during the invasion of Iraq, it describes a situation where priorities unintentionally change. And, as the day wore on, the government fell rapidly into mission drift and the confusion became even more pronounced. Suddenly Mr.Cameron and his lieutenants were banging on about perfectly legal adult websites and the need to control them. Clearly, there's a world of difference between a site displaying sexual relationships between consenting adults and pictures of criminal harm against children, but somehow the two had become conflated. Now we were being told that every UK household would have to 'opt-in' if it wished to consume legal pornography. How? Well, nobody was actually sure.
The PM himself stated quite clearly on Radio 2, that the broadband account holder would be required to telephone their provider and arrange for pornographic content to be 'unblocked'. Within the hour, a spokesperson on another station was explaining the householder would apply for restrictions to be lifted online. Bafflingly, later in the evening, Cameron agreed with this last method. In the meantime, an internet security expert trumped them both, declaring both systems to be unworkable. Any internet filters must be applied to a local machine - a service which is already available. Finally the government settled on a far more modest scheme which would see all new computers set to 'family friendly' mode by default. This is across a single day, remember.
If we assume the government wishes to tackle both the trade in illegal pictures AND adult entertainment sites (and that's quite an assumption), it is useful to examine exactly what they're up against. On the criminal side there exists a sophisticated peer-to-peer network, cloaked and virtually untraceable. A million miles from Google image search. In the legitimate, consenting, adult sector is a mighty, billion dollar industry accessed by millions of regular people every day. Naturally, the politicians claim they merely wish to prevent under-18s from consuming this content, which is a perfectly acceptable goal. However, a friend who works closely with web services estimates it will take most teenagers about half-an-hour to find a route through any of the firewalls suggested thus far.
This is a debacle. Badly briefed ministers, trawling studios to pitch a pathetically ill-considered policy based on technology of which they evidently have little or no understanding. I am not seeking to score party political points (I was equally dismayed when Tony Blair proudly announced he didn't know how to use a computer). But I would seek to shine a harsh light on ludicrously inept attempts to police digital media and the astonishingly incompetent PR effort which accompany them. These are serious issues which nations and societies need to resolve. Success will take intelligence, expertise and a calm, measured approach. Monday's performance indicates we can expect none of this from our dunderheaded leaders.
Mel, wherever you are now, you can rest assured the Bulls****ng Men are still with us.
Magnus Shaw is a writer, blogger and consultant
