Cute and clean websites won't stem flow of unhealthy e-mail

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Published: 12:00am, 23 Feb 2004

The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (Tela) on Saturday announced the winners of its Ten Healthy Websites Contest. But according to Tela, the winners were picked for 'providing healthy and interesting internet content to young people'.

The winning 10 local websites were: Hong Kong Education City (www.hkedcity.net); Disney (disney.com); TVB.Com (tvb.com); Green Power (www.greenpower.org.hk); Hong Kong Public Libraries (www.hkpl.gov.hk); Small Campus (smallcampus.net); ETV (etv.emb.gov.hk); Hyper Earth Rescue Team (www.hyper.com.hk); Dickdickstory (www.dickdickstory.gov.hk); and Garfield.com.

So, of Hong Kong's top-10 'safe' websites, five belong to the government and two are about as local as Vogon poetry. Apart from the occasional four-letter word on TVB.com's web forums, the winning sites are generally inoffensive. Well, the page for Wong Jing's Sex and the Beauties could offend somebody.

In my book, a healthy website is one that loads quickly in any browser and does not come with Flash or pop-up ads. Some of these - such as the horribly cute Dickdickstory - manage to break all three rules at once.

Deputy Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology (Communications and Technology), Betty Fung Ching Suk-yee, announced the winners while delivering the usual platitudes about freedom of information, moral standards and the fragile state of our children's minds.

'We hope that these activities will help educate young people on how to filter information on the internet and strengthen their immunity against unhealthy materials. We also hope to provide assistance to the parents so as to minimise access of unhealthy internet materials by their children,' Mrs Fung said.

How does one immunise oneself against objectionable content? Most of us are sent it every day via e-mail. You no longer need to look. Apparently, 'the contest is aimed at encouraging young people to better utilise the internet by visiting websites with healthy content; and to encourage webmasters to create more healthy and interesting websites'.