THE INTERNET INDUSTRY takes a slap on the wrist this week as MPs insist companies must do more to protect young people from harmful content.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee report on harmful content on the internet and video games found that leaving companies to censor the material themselves resulted in an, “unsatisfactory piecemeal approach which lacks consistency and transparency.”

This report praised some companies, such as Microsoft (surprise, surprise) and Myspace. But others came out particularly badly – most noticeably Youtube which came in for a right spanking.

Youtube says it has “millions of users who act as regulators” as they can’t possibly look at all the material themselves.

Committee chairman, John Whittingdale disagrees with this approach saying they need to go beyond a pledge to take down material “flagged” up by users. Whittingdale was particularly concerned due to a specific case where a video seemed to show a gang rape and was viewed in excess of 600 times before it was removed.

Youtube fought back on this point saying, “we don’t want this sort of content on our site and our system is very efficient at removing it”.

The report committee suggest a self-regulatory body to create better online safeguards. This body could then police websites and crack-down on illegal file sharing and online piracy.

Parents were also blamed in this report, saying that they should take more responsibility to censor what their child watches, or indeed adds to the Internet. µ