BPI decides to extend its moral guardianship to the internet

As if not managing to find a way to make money online wasn't occupying enough of the BPI's time, it's just announced a scheme which will fail to stop children seeing porny pop videos and hearing bad words in songs.

The risible "parental guidance" sticker - itself based on a weak idea by Tipper Gore - is moving online. New Media Age:

From today (Thursday), online content will have to display the parental advisory logo, for the first time since the scheme was introduced over 15 years ago.

According to the BPI, some digital music stores have already been showing the label against content but most audio and video streaming services, including Spotify and Napster, had not yet implemented a consistent parental guidance system.

Napster hasn't implemented a parental guidance system? That must be worrying news, should anyone under the age of thirty ever find out what Napster is.

The BPI hasn't stopped to think how its system - which, presumably, will only apply to music-related content put online by its members in the UK - could be considered a "consistent parental guidance system". Unless there are people whose sole online activity consists, consistently, of watching music videos made by EMI UK, Sony UK and the other two.

Still, it's good to know that the parents who have hitherto not noticed, say, Rihanna's video being full of S&M-lite imagery, will clearly be checking the little symbol at the start of the video now. "Goodness, now there's a warning at the front, I've suddenly spotted that this video being flung at my popkids is full of filth."