Many years ago, when I was still a teenager and still a millionaire, the Evening Standard dubbed me "Britain's Unlikely Porn Baron". Soon after, the late John Diamond, in his final Jewish Chronicle column, even compared me to someone who would sell arms to Saddam Hussein.
All the fuss was caused by the decision of my company, CyberBritain.com, to separate the results from our own search engine into two distinct websites: one which was safe for family surfing and one that was for adults only. The separation did make it easier for parents to protect their children, but it also meant that it was easier for people to find porn, as the adult search engine only contained erotic websites.
The sites were a popular success but were controversial. I had my hardest ever interview defending my position on the BBC's HardTalk. Tim Sebastian seemed more used to interviewing heads of state rather than a brace-wearing 18-year-old.
My argument then, as it is now, is that adults should have the ability to access pornography, so long as they can prove that they are adults and the purveyors of the smut can prove that those photographed agreed to the shots and were not harmed in any way. I also believed that by separating the internet into two spheres, family-safe and adults only, children would be protected the horrors of accidentally stumbling across a pornographic picture.
In the end, the problem that I found with running a porn search engine was that I did not feel comfortable selling porn or selling advertising space to those that did. Particularly so, given that at the time most pornography was technically illegal in Britain due to the then archaic classification system for videos and other material. Faced with no mainstream advertisers but lots of users eager to see porn, I sold the domain for a small amount to a company who did not have the same reservations.
Today, most search engines have adopted our pioneering approach and have made their main sites family friendly and have forced users to turn "safe searching" off to be able to find some of the more explicit websites on the net. However, this is not enough and there are still plenty of websites that you can find that display violent images where there is no guarantee of the participants' safety.
The Government says that it is going to ban the possession of these images, and some freedom of speech campaigners have condemned this. However, while I applaud the Government's position, I think that their strategy on the internet is, as ever, completely flawed.
They were able to use similar legislation to great effect when they tracked down paedophiles during Operation Ore. However, the intelligence that led to the arrests came from the credit card records from one company that sold illegal images of children. It was not a broader operation targeting the users of other sites or paedophiles who acquired images through swapping them on Peer to Peer (P2P) networks.
The problem, therefore, is how exactly the police will locate the users of these websites. Few, if any, of the websites that contain violent pornography will be based within Britain.The British police and courts will have no authority over the websites or be able to request the details of their customers.
The Government fails to understand that the internet is global and you cannot just make a law here in Britain and act as if our internet space will become a walled garden where only approved sites will get through. Even though this is possible, it is impractical and it will hamper the development of e-commerce.
Now, I know from experience that members of staff in the Home Office read this column. So take note, this is how you put into action your worthy plan:
First, create an internet regulator. The Labour party promised this in their 2001 manifesto and have yet to act. This regulator would need to have the power to tap into the communications between an user's PC and the website that they are viewing. I believe that MI5 probably can do this anyway
Then, the regulator would take charge of all the issues relating to consumer protection, intellectual property issues like piracy and domain names, terrorism and pornography.
Having created a regulator, the Government could then support the UN's efforts at creating a global regulatory system that would enable international agreements on what is acceptable and what is not, and mean that both paedophiles, terrorists and pirates would have no hiding place on the net.
Most importantly, the Government needs to get its head around what the internet is and what it is not, then they might be able put their policies into action.
