Well, bless them for trying.

Now, I'm usually first in line for the "information wants to be free" and big on the anti-censorship thing. But I've also got The Boy (age 12) who has a problem with Runescape in much the same way that Charles Bukowski had problems with women and beer. Only with less poetry, since it involves absconding with the laptop in the wee hours of the night and lots of spyware scanning and stuff.

I've actually heard of virtual sweatshops in China, where computer gamers are paid to level up characters, build things and acquire goods in multi-player online spaces, which they then hand over to their bosses, who are the kinds of Westerners (and Easterners, too, I suppose) who don't mind giving people cash to play the boring parts of games.

That's the world we're in.

So, China isn't sure about this:

The Chinese government encourages Internet use for education and business but has expressed concern about the effects of heavy use in children. A small number of clinics have opened in China to help Internet users cut back on the Web.

The Chinese parliament is looking at several measures to "encourage research and development to technologies to prevent minors from becoming Internet addicts," the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

The paper reported that measures to create software to fight online gaming addiction could prove helpful to society.

The measures would also ban children from entering Internet cafйs, the paper reported.

High time somebody started recognizing that all this connectivity is like crack.