Did anyone else notice how Orwellian the UK has been getting lately? Not just this story in particular, but the main theme of the stories coming out about U.K.

IMHO the UK has already succeeded in taking the first major step to an Orwellian state. The populous look to the UK government for protection from _all_ evils. It fails to understand that sometimes bad things happen to innocent people and it is prepared to give away it's freedoms so it can live in a safe warm jail.

I'm no anarchist, I've voted in all elections I have been eligible to vote on. The sad fact is that the last bastion of common sense in the UK is the unelected upper chamber of landed aristocracy and rich business men. You don't know how much it pains me to say that :(

To get back on topic. How exactly am I going to get a certificate for a website, how much is it going to cost me? I run a website for heavy metal fans (newmetalarmy.com) and I've already had complaints about the stylized zombie in the logo so I guess I'll be an 18 site then! It's just another hurdle for fringe genres. There is no money to be made in heavy metal, people do it for the art form. But 'society' considers it harmful so it squashes it.

No kidding with your first point, I still can't get over this thing I saw back in October:

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon has said the government is prepared to go "quite a long way" with civil liberties to "stop terrorists killing people".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7674775.stm

UK government is getting ready to horrible economic times ahead when they will need all possible means to avert organized riots etc.

Unfortunately internet sites change their content rather more frequently than the content of a particular film changes. How are they going to keep up with changes?

They'll probably come up with the bright idea of requiring excessive paperwork any time you update the site so that innovation slows down to a more "manageable" rate.

Maybe the deal between the UK government and ISPs goes like this:

We don't intefere with you harvesting personal data to target advertising without users' consent (e.g. Phorm). In exchange you help us censor the web.

Shouldn't the culture secretary be doing something about, say, culture?

He is Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Web sites count as media.

All web sites are media?

For example, Ebay looks more like commerce. Does he have authority over off-line auction houses?

He has a certain amount of authority over, for example, Bid TV, which sells goods by Dutch auction. It must adhere to the same rules as other TV channels.

But over traditional auction houses? No.

If you want an example of an online dutch auction, countspin.com comes pretty close.