DSi Gets Strict Parental Controls - Is It Right?
Nintendo are telling us what to do again!
Nintendo are back to their old tricks of trying to get us to do what they want us to do…firstly they wanted us to get fit, then they wanted us to play musical instruments on a Wiimote and now they want us to stop looking at naked people through their DSi’s Wi-Fi…
Alright - so it’s not as bad as it sounds…what we’re actually talking about here is strict parental control enforced with thanks from the Nintendo party. It would seem that the guys over at Nintendo have uncovered a staggering 35 million websites that they have deemed are not to be viewed by portable gamers.
The move shows off the ferocity of the DSi’s parental control capabilities which uses a cloud-based filtering system using information supplied by the security company Astaro.
The strict control is in place to stop the access of what has been deemed as ‘inappropriate’ material and is in place to control the innocence of millions of child gamers around the world who thought they could now have an easy way of logging on to their favourite illicit sites without their parents knowing about it.
It’s all about the cloud!
According to Gert Hansen, Astaro’s chief security architect, the cloud is the key to keeping the service up-to-date and useable. “The scalability of the service which is being offered is crucial. By hosting the service in the cloud, we can provide a full security service to Nintendo DSi users,” said Hansen.
Parents around the world who were probably a little nervous having their children running around with the Internet in their pockets will obviously welcome the news. Although most of their children probably have an iPhone too so if they don’t get their thrills one way they have another way into the web.
However, Hansen can’t give enough praise to the new direction the DSi has taken, saying, “Astaro’s service provides a powerful level of support to our users and is a valuable part of the new features within the Nintendo DSi.”
This will last for all of three minutes…
Still, how long does Nintendo and Astaro think it will take for kids to crack the parental controls - after all we’re living in a world where 8 year olds create apps and most of them jailbreak each others iPhones for fun.
But we have to start thinking whether censorship like this is really a good direction to go towards. It’s not like the Government is calling the shots here - we’re leaving the big decisions to the likes of Nintendo and Astaro, and after everything who are they really and why do they have the rights to tell me what I can look at…maybe I should just turn parental controls off…I am 23 after all!
Censorship or Control?
Do you think that Nintendo are taking things a bit too far blocking 35 million sites or do you think we’re stopping the next generation of chavs? Let us know what you think about the move…
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