The Web 2.0 news of late has centered around education secretary Alan Johnson's lambasting of several major internet companies for failing to live up to their "social responsibility and moral obligation" to prevent the online bullying of teachers. Strong stuff, and raises that old chestnut of how much control the owners of sites like Bebo and YouTube should exercise over the content posted on them. There are already mechanisms to take down content which is deemed to be either illegal or just plain nasty, but there have been complaints in the past that this isn't always a speedy process.

It's kind of similar to the fuss about social networking sites taking greater steps to vet content being uploaded for malware. And if they have a social responsibility to prevent the bullying of teachers online, don't these sites also have a responsibility to protect their customers PC's from being infected? It's unlikely that some posturing by a member of HM's government is going to change things much though.