All lovers of freedom of expression must be grateful to the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) for the hilarious way in which it goes about its work.
I do not personally approve of censorship, generally speaking. But if there must be censorship let us by all means have it done by the bunch of boneheads responsible for Friday's story in the South China Morning Post about the Internet blacklist.
It seems that some local Internet service providers - the people who for a small fee will connect your domestic computer to a local tendril of the World-Wide Web - are in the habit of offering a discount for students.
Some of them - or, I suspect, one of them - asked the authority if it had a list of sites which were 'unsuitable for children'. I am not sure whether the service providers can differentiate between their student subscribers and the rest. I wonder whether having 'blocked' the unsuitable sites from young beholders they would still be accessible to adults.
Still, whatever the position about this, it is a pity that Internet service providers should invite official intervention of this kind. Today's voluntary advice easily becomes tomorrow's compulsory index of forbidden topics. Technically literate computer buffs should find it very easy to compile a list of objectionable sites for themselves.
Having been invited to supply a blacklist, the licensing authority could have replied that this was none of its business. I do not believe there is anything in the authority's terms of reference which requires it to provide advice of this kind to private businesses at the taxpayer's expense.