The recent MSN chatrooms closure has shown a clear line between those that understand the Internet and those that don't. Today the London Internet Exchange (LINX) has joined in to attack the move by blaming aggressive child safety pressure groups:

CHILD SAFETY PRESSURE ON ISPs CLOSES INTERNET SERVICES

Continual pressure for Internet service providers (ISPs) to be held accountable for children's online safety is responsible for the closure of MSN's chatroom service, said Malcolm Hutty, regulation officer of the London Internet Exchange, Europe's largest Internet exchange point.

NGO pressure groups have mounted a sophisticated political campaign to hold ISPs (and other providers of Internet communications services like MSN) responsible for everything bad that happens on the Internet. Now we see
that the ultimate result of continually demanding the impossible of ISPs is not that the Internet suddenly becomes perfectly safe, but that companies are simply forced to close their services down," said Mr Hutty.

MSN can't be faulted for this decision. Like all providers of Internet services they have been under huge pressure from the child protection lobby. But society will be poorer if Internet services are gradually removed.

The child protection lobby recognises the dangers of children having Internet access but sometimes seems to ignore the enormous benefits that the Internet brings to society as a whole, adults as well as children. They say that "open, free, unmoderated" chat services are too dangerous and call for all ISPs to drop them. Millions of chat room users would be very upset if this did happen.

Where exactly is this leading? If perfect safety is the only standard we can tolerate, will the next target be "open, free, unmoderated" web sites? Or will the next demands be to close down e-mail, because that has its own dangers too?

We support a considered, balance approach to internet safety, with the Intenet industry working closely with law enforcement to protect children while retaining freedom of access to the Internet. Knee-jerk calls on ISPs to drop whole sections of Internet services are not a helpful contribution.

As a company, MSN has to decide for itself what services it wants to offer. But as a society, we have to decide whether we believe in free communications between millions of individuals, or whether we want to return to the "one-to-many" world of highly regulated TV and radio broadcasting.

It's interesting that MSN should close down its free service at roughly the same time it introduces fee-based chat, 'unrelated' of course.

I myself was angered to see more than one MP welcoming the move on the TV yesterday and calling for 'everybody' to follow suit. It's a bit like taking cars off the road because sometimes somebody gets hit.

MSN's chatroom closure doesn't solve the problem; it'll only make it harder to deal with. Both children and parents need better education.