Red, Amber, Green - Not the Answer to Everything

As straight forward and useful as these colours are for directing traffic from one metropolis to the other they are not the best idea for everything. For example, most topical this week, they are not a good idea for telling people the legality of websites.

In the news this week, came the proposal from a group that want to stop people from downloading music without paying for it. They say that all search engine should introduce a traffic light system, yet another symbol by our search results, to show whether the site sells music legally or not. Now I'm not saying that this is a bad idea on principle, it's just that in practice it will deter such a minority of people it's not worth the small amount of space it takes. Most people have the intelligence to know that if they go to one site that is selling a special edition of the works of the late Amy Winehouse for £20 and another is giving it away for free, chances are it's not legal. Especially if the web address has "Pirate" in the title.

I guess I'm really making two points here; don't insult peoples intelligence and stop cluttering up web pages that have been designed to be as clean as possible with little symbols telling us what we already know.


That's it. Simple.