I’ve written in the past about the impossible demands people have been making of social networking sites, forcing them to somehow make sure that sex offenders and paedophiles can’t contact children on them, and I’ve always said I wasn’t sure how anyone could ever expect to enforce something like that.

Well, it looks like Faceparty has found a way:

In the last 2 months, Faceparty has been deleting a lot of profiles from the website. This has been due either to new legal requirements, violations of our terms of service, the non purchase of your account by the new company who is running Faceparty.com, or any of the following reasons. Information on refunds is also on this page. Please read this page in its entirety.

Over 36 years old?

New government legislation means we need to check older users on the sex offenders list. This legislation is based upon checking email addresses against a government provided list. Faceparty has never insisted on validated email addresses and can therefore not participate in this new scheme. Having discussed the use of our website with the home office and the police, and further some pretty serious crimes caused by older users, we were left with no option but to terminate a huge amount of accounts, and without notice, immediately. We understand that only a minority of older users are sex offenders, but you must understand that we cannot tell which - we can only delete all to make the site safe and we apologise for that. However, we are following the law and you cannot think we are wrong for doing that.

Um. Well, I think some people would think they’re wrong for doing that. This part of Faceparty’s announcement is interesting, too:

Unfortunately some of the creators of accounts who were deleted, of an older age group, have been creating new accounts with a younger age (which means that government legislation classifies them as a sex offender by lying about their age on the Internet, even though most who have done this may have done so with good intent and purely to be a part of a site they love and without any intent to manipulate younger users)

Really? Is that actually the law? Anyone know?

I’m baffled. Read their whole justification here.

Apparently, it’s National Work From Home Day today. I know this because a press release about it dropped into my inbox about a week ago. And although I wasn’t planning to work from home today, I’ve ended up doing so anyway. I did intend to work from home yesterday, and managed to finish the article I was working on as well as having a leisurely breakfast and even washing the dishes yesterday, so I’m completely happy that it’s possible to work from home and actually get things done, it’s just that… well, I’m not convinced the rest of the country was aware that it’s National Work From Home Day today, and thus many of the supposed benefits of the idea probably won’t pan out.

According to the press release, “with fewer commuters, the roads are clearer and public transport less crowded than usual. Stress levels have fallen, pollution levels are down and CO2 emissions reduced. People are happier, have a better work-life balance, and ultimately will be healthier.” Which almost makes me wish I was at work today, since it seems a shame to miss out on lovely spacious public transport and lower pollution levels, but since I’m at home, I’ll just have to take their word for it.

All of those things can only be true, though, if the day was well-publicised enough, and I’m not entirely sure it was. Obviously, there are only some professions that can allow people to work from home anyway, so it’s not like city centres will be deserted today; and the press release that came about National Work From Home Day was under embargo until today, which seems a bit counter-intuitive since by the time people are at work, it’s a bit late for them to arrange not to go to work. They needed to know about it last week, ideally.

Pfft.

Lack of awareness aside, I do think working from home can be beneficial. My brain tends to be most awake and capable between about 8am and 1pm, but factoring travelling to work into the equation means I can’t do much during my first phase of productivity. Working from home means I can leap out of bed onto my computer and be working away before I’m even technically supposed to be in the office…

Which explains why I’m writing this blog post at, well, it’s gone 9am now, but it hadn’t when I started. And I’ve already sorted out my work e-mail inbox…

Did anyone else know they were supposed to work from home today?

The First Post is reporting that Stephen Fry has been having a bit of a rant about the BBC’s iPlayer. According to him, it’s too easy for people to download and keep programmes broadcast online, watching them on devices not supported by the BBC and for longer than the BBC intended them to be available. Here’s part of the quote:

“There is this marvellous idea the iPlayer is secure. It’s anything but secure. The BBC is throwing out really valuable content for free. It shows an incredible naivety about how the internet and digital devices work. … The BBC is making a lot of enemies giving away free programmes to an internet that everyone else is trying to monetise; at the moment, it’s relying on the fact you have to be slightly dorky to record from the iPlayer; but, believe me, that will change. It will soon be the work of a moment for my mother to get an iPlayer programme off her computer and on to her iPod, iPhone, or whatever device she chooses.”

Which is all probably true, except, here’s the thing: we’ve been able to record and keep programmes broadcast on the BBC to watch in our own sweet time for donkey’s. It’s called “owning a VHS player”. Digital video recorders (DVRs, or hard disc recorders) allow you to do the same thing; it’s hardly a problem specific to the iPlayer.

You could mentally insert a rant about TV licence fees here, too, if you were so inclined.