Too much porn...
I doubt if anyone who knows me would call me prudish. I've seen plenty of the seedier side of some countries, and I even managed to share a house with eight Danes for a while. My pet hate is Nanny in all her forms: Net Nanny; the Nanny State, Nanny spell-check (I won't use it!) and all that BUT...
I made a slight typo when accessing a site I often use, and without warning I found myself in a fairly hard core porn site. I'm not even going to get into the argument here about censorship vs freedom of information - but I really don't think that should happen.
There are sites out there which some people enjoy but others find offensive. A different typo could land you in a weird racist site, for example. (And I believe there are many to be found belonging to white supremacists based in the US.) So what's my choice - run the risk of getting junk like that or get myself a Nanny, so I can't even see any naughty words? I don't think so.
If we've got to have this stuff on the web, then let's get it separated from the mainstream sites - let them have the domains .porn, .racist, or whatever so those of us who aren't interested don't have it thrust upon them. I don't have the energy to start a campaign, building this website takes up all my time. I've said my piece.
And don't even think of writing in to ask for the URL...
Reader's response
A reader has written in with a similar experience:
"On the subject of too much porn, I entirely agree. I fell into the same trap in front of a colleague recently. I wanted to demonstrate a site which I enjoy and typed ***.com instead of ***.co.uk. Fortunately the colleague was understanding and didn't report me to HQ for breaching our code of practice on use of the Internet! He also told me about a similar one: ***.org as opposed to ***.com."
The Ed - you'd hardly believe how easy it is to make a mistake like this. There was a bit in Private Eye about how The Scotsman newspaper ran a story about the royal family's Internet plans. Unfortunately, they referred to a domain which had nothing to do with Her Majesty, nor even to Freddie Mercury. The site they suggested (allegedly - as I didn't check it out) was "The most HARDCORE SEX experience on the Net!" Let's hope this observation doesn't bring in a whole batch of pervy surfers.
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