Erasing Paedo-files

‘WHICH came first – the home computer or the paedophile? It’s the big philosophical question of our era.

Nine-year-old Kylie from Braintree goes shopping for a raincoat

Back in days of yore, your average run-off-the-mill pervert could be readily identified by his Macintosh raincoat, bag of sweets and blue Ford Anglia, with door ajar.

Now he calls himself Sarah, aged 13 from Staines. He’s got a hunched back from leaning into his monitor and a claw from gripping the mouse too tightly.

He is also, more likely than not, working in the police force or the entertainment industry.

In the Internet chatroom there is anonymity. But it’s about to end, as the Independent leads with the news that Microsoft, the big player in the computer game, is closing down its UK-based chatrooms.

It will also restrict access to chatrooms around the world, only allowing identifiable adults living in the same country to use them.

So our domestic depraved cannot talk to the little ‘uns in Vietnam and Thailand from the comfort of their own home.

Instead they will have to save up the money they would have spent on their phone bill and computer software and buy a plane ticket to Bangkok.

It seems Rachel O’Connell, director of the cyberspace research unit at the University of Central Lancashire, has a point when she tells the Guardian that the removal of chatrooms will ‘create a ripple effect and a far more complex set of problems’.

Like how to get the stain out of that raincoat that’s been hanging in the closet since 1995…’

Posted: 24th, September 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink