I do agree with everything else though. The onus is on the parents to do their job as a parent. If the goal is to protect children then improve the tools available to parents. They already have tons but the work is never done.
For kids, we had services like Prodigy and Compuserve that distilled the internet into approved content suitable for minors. We can - and probably should - go back to that, rather than throwing youth onto the regular internet and letting them fend for themselves online.
There are no records indicating the relevant early engineers said this or felt this way.
I imagine someone did down the road but then we're into "Some guy had an opinion about the internet" territory.
My child cannot walk into a gas station and buy beer or cigarettes, cannot buy liquor, cannot buy a machine gun, cannot walk into an adult book store or a strip club, cannot operate a motor vehicle.
If you, an adult, aid and abbet my child in any of these activities you’re likely going straight to jail.
You do not magically get a pass because “the internet.” We live in the real world, with laws, with rules, with social expectations. It’s time for the free pass to end.
If you want a true apples-to-apples comparison using your list - you've already purchased beer, cigarettes, liquor, a machine gun, adult books, and a motor vehicle and brought them all home. At that point, it is your responsibility as a parent to ensure your children do not use any of them. Why should internet access be any different?
What you're really asking for is an adult other than you to be present in your house to ensure your children don't use things that you don't want them to. That's called a nanny. Unfortunately, the way in which you want this to work is for every house hooked up to the internet to be required to have a nanny.
No thank you.
No way is internet access "fundamentally broader and harder to limit" than alcohol access.
That world doesn't exist, though (at least not in my part of the US). I don't need the internet to do any of those things.
It's not a pass, it's just a reflection of the real world, which is not as rigid with rules and expectations as you are making it out to be. In any case, I'd rather the Internet remain as free, as in speech, as possible. If the cost of that is little Billy sees a nipple on a computer screen while daddy isn't watching, I think we'll be OK with the consequences. The consequences of the alternative is likely worse, and the article goes into this.
Not to speak of the risks of a fully deanonymized web, once naiive black-listing doesnt cut it anymore...
And btw, your kid could possibly buy all items you named online today, black markets are a consequence of unmet demand. So what now? Talk about parental oversight or AV for amazon and TOR?
The UK has a long long history of over reach with all of theses initiatives.
The UK governments is desperate to keep a increasingly fragile society from boiling over and their natural inclination is to censor, it's what they have always done.
I will say the UK has a history of really stupid laws like this though so it's not exactly surprising that it would happen. But it's more surprising how it's spread and succeeding in so many places.
ARPANET and the related early nets were intended for sharing research and sharing scarce computing resources for research purposes.
Everything else was an accident of the telecoms wanting to get their respective beaks wet.
Requiring age verification online would be like requiring my ID every time I wanted to drink a beer I already bought. I already had to give my ID when buying internet service, and again when I got the credit card I use to pay for it, and again for the bank account I use to pay the credit card, and the job that puts money into my bank account, and to buy the car that gets me to and from these places.
If you’ve allowed a minor online without so much as a web filter in place, you’ve already lost the battle. Punishing strangers for your failure to police your own network devices and children is a complete abdication of your responsibilities as a parent.
I'm not accustomed to providing ID to get internet service. Some providers run a credit check, but many don't. And if they don't check credit, they don't need your ID. At least in the US, there's an army of prepaid cell providers that don't offer credit and don't check ids.
Prepaid credit cards are a thing. Bring some cash to a grocery store, and for a small fee, you can get an internet capable payment method. Or my local credit union offers debit cards for 'teen checking' accounts, but there's no age restriction; they check ID, and I'm pretty sure they require an adult sponsor.