Is society's ghoulish curiosity creating a market for
explicit entertainment on the internet, asks Simon
Moores.
I’m at Westminster, visiting conservative MP Tim
Loughton, the shadow children's minister, who, like his
equivalents, is deeply concerned over extreme websites and
paedophile activity on the internet.
He is equally concerned with what measures might reasonably be
taken to protect a vulnerable society from the frequently predatory
and unrestrained influence of what I call, "Pandora’s Cat".
The tragic fate of American Nick Berg has illustrated an
uncomfortable problem of the times that has had very little or no
coverage - murder as a form of vicarious entertainment.
The first fundamentalist website to broadcast a video of his
final moments suffered the equivalent of a denial-of-service attack
and was, eventually, shut down by the Malaysian government,
reportedly because the volume of incoming requests was so high that
the network came under strain.
Within hours, copies of the video were made available on the
better-known atrocity sites in the US, with greater bandwidth and
mirroring capabilities and playing the "freedom of information"
card. These too came under strain and, in some cases, ground to a
complete halt.
As a matter of principle, I refuse to watch the video. When I
was with Sky News a few years ago, I made the mistake of watching
similar and unedited footage from Chechen rebels, and the images of
horror I witnessed have haunted me ever since.
However, the evidence of this past week, and the volume of
Google searches against an earlier editorial on my own website,
suggests very strongly that curiosity is driving people to search
for this video and others involving hostage decapitation.
Whether it’s in the workplace, the home or, indeed, schools, a
public "execution" has become a mass spectator sport that dwarfs
the once large crowds that once used to gather at Tyburn 200 years
ago.
As an employer, what are your liabilities if a sensitive person
stumbles across this video on one of your servers? Or worse still,
perhaps, if your children see such a thing, and rest assured,
thousands, if not hundreds of thousands across the planet will have
done from the relative safety of their homes.
A recent technology breakthrough by Hewlett Packard conjures up
an old Isaac Asimov story, and spells a future where cameras are
pervasive. Using electrostatic fields to create and focus lenses
from oil, we could see a world where every lamp-post has a digital
video camera and every electronic device certainly will.
This month, the government here and in Washington finally
discovered that the media or, at least, media images, are no longer
within any sensible degree of control in a connected world.
It could be photographs of Iraqi prisoners or even Maxine Carr,
but the principle of Pandora’s Cat offers us a future where society
and its moral, or even political values has no Mary
Whitehouse-style protection from digital content which can be
almost instantaneously available to anyone who wants it, across a
web without a conscience.
If this is where we have started, four years into the 21st
century, where will it end? Is total freedom of content a benefit
to society or will it encourage commercial spin-offs that may yet
reproduce the entertainment once seen in the coliseum? When people
finally become tired of football, what comes next?
Setting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of leading industry analyst Dr Simon Moores of
Zentelligence.
Acting globally, Zentelligence (Research) advises
governments, suppliers, business and the media on the evolution,
application and delivery of leading-edge technologies and
specialises in the areas of
eGovernmentandinformation security.
For further information on Zentelligence and its research,
presentation and analyst services visitwww.zentelligence.com