Well that's the thing... most of the infrastructure is already in place in any government that has a motor vehicle licensing system, and most governments could do with another source of income.

I wasn't suggesting that ISP's directly enforce complience, just indirectly via not providing services to account holders that cannot produce such a license.

Forged certificates are a problem, of course, but then so are forged driving licences/gun licences/etc. The same logic applies.

I'm sure the computer licence could be made generic to every operating system... the theory is still applicable.

Getting buy-in from foreign countries is of course the sticking point. No country wishes to admit that their population contains idiots. Perhaps heavy emphasis on the yearly losses due to computer-related crimes/screwups/etc...

As for the ROI, I think this has a much higher ROI potential than prime-time ads with no associated product. A local ten second radio ad here costs roughly the equivalent of about US$500... that's a potential customer base of 50000, at a guess. Now extend that to prime time television airtime on a large American television network... you're looking at tends of thousands of dollars per second, (possibly even more, this is just semi-educated guesswork) and you havn't even factored in the cost of making the adverts. And you've maybe reached some of the people in part of America.

I have to say, you do have a valid point in terms of governmental competency. A noticalble chink of the users you are trying to reach would probably be involved in running the system
I wouldn't use Big Brother as a valid worry, though, specially in the states... with the acts that have been slipped through after the twin towers tradegy, I think that this would barely be noticed...

But yeah, I don't think this is practical, any more than the TV ads. My only serious suggestion is limit who produces offspring, try and stop humanity as a whole apparently breeding for lack of intellect.

:P