Online Media Cultist

The UK has adopted a new policy in which registered sex offenders will be required to “provide their email addresses to police in a move to stop them using social networking Web sites.”

I totally get the intent here, which is of course to keep stalkers and pedophiles off of MySpace and other social networks, creating a safer online environment for kids. But will forcing e-mail registration with the government really prevent such people from striking again, beyond being a minor deterrent?

Does the UK government realize how easy it is to get a new, free e-mail address, or several thousand of them? That even though someone’s home computer IP can be tracked, they can go to a library or Internet café to carry on such activities?

The policy is backed up by “five years in prison if they fail to hand over the details or provide a false email.” However, if a registered sex offender is taking the risk to get on MySpace to lure youngsters into their nasty grasp, aren’t they already taking an enormous risk already? In essence an additional penalty for using a registered (or unregistered) e-mail address seems to be pretty small in comparison.

So it’s really more of a PR move to make it look like the government is doing something to police the interwebs. Understandable but not effective.

This brings up larger issues too about how you limit the rights of some citizens – sex offenders in this case – in a free society. But I would need a lot more coffee on this Friday morning to get into that one!

Update: The New York Times chimes in: “The proposal faces many hurdles, including the fact that anyone can instantly create a new e-mail address online and that Facebook, MySpace and most other popular social networking sites are based outside Britain.”

If we are to believe a new string of reports streaming in from all corners of the real world globeosphere, people are hopelessly and helplessly addicted to the Interwebs and must be legislated or bullwhipped back into proper and productive offline working submission.

From the United Kingdom today we learn that workers spend too much time “wilfing” online, which is short for “what was I looking for?”

I’m going to stop right there and be the first to proclaim the hope that wilfing does not become a part of the international web lexicon. Okay, onward.

In any event, according to yet another new study on this kind of thing, it was discovered that “two out of three British Internet users lose significant portions of their time to irrelevant web browsing,” with shopping sites in particular being a culprit. Again, I would argue here as I’ve done in the past that if workers want to goof off at work, they will. Whether it be Solitaire, Mindsweeper, gossiping on the phone, or chitchatting with Harvey and Chip about the back nine at the corporate country club, there are any number of ways for workers to be unproductive if they so choose.

Can the Interwebs be a distraction? Of course, but so can any number of things, including the delightful glint of the sun on dust that just settled atop yon teeming pile of accounts receivable slips.

Meanwhile, China is laying down the hammer on its teeming hordes of gaming kids by commanding that game companies “develop a system that cancels half a minor’s earned gaming credits if they remain online for more than three hours a day.” In the era of gold farming, MMOs, and WoW, this is a serious edict in a country where 123 million are online.

Of course, this kind of statute that is a hacker’s dream, so I suspect that those who want to stay online more than three hours a day will figure out a way to do so without getting docked.

Should online addiction cause people to get worked up to a state of worldwide hysteria? I’m thinking there are probably other things to worry about. But then again, I’m an online media cultist.