FCC Parental Control Report Acknowledges Many Questions
The FCC report covering parental controls across a wide array of media and technologies released Monday acknowledged that many questions about how such filters can be better used remain unanswered. As expected (CD Aug 28 p4), the report to Congress under the Child Safe Viewing Act largely tees up questions for a coming commission notice of inquiry (NOI) on the subject. In some areas covered, including wireless devices, games and the Internet, the report reached no conclusions. In other areas, including consumer electronics, the V-chip and cable and satellite-TV filters, the study said data was lacking or called for more research.
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“Further study is required to determine the most effective way to educate parents about the V-chip and the TV Parental Guidelines in order to increase V-chip use and awareness,” the report said. “The Commission intends to explore these and other issues in a forthcoming NOI.” Likewise, more study is needed to assess what steps, if any, manufacturers could take to boost V-chip use, another section said: “It is unclear how effective any such efforts would be in increasing awareness and usage of the V-chip.” On other types of pay-TV parental controls, “the record is lacking data in a number of areas,” the report said.
On the Internet, “there is an unprecedented abundance of parental controls” according to some commenters, who contend there’s a “competitive marketplace” of such solutions. “While online parental controls continue to improve and are able to inform parents when children attempt to tamper with or alter the settings, children can still circumvent them by moving to an unfiltered device, moving to another location without filters” or taking other steps, the document said. “We recognize that filtering technology has its limitations.”
Since parental controls vary “greatly among media platforms, and even among different providers within the same platform,” the commission discussed 15 criteria that in the future can help compare the technologies. They include cost to consumers, level of awareness and usage, ease of use and ways to prevent children from overriding the controls. But there’s insufficient data in “five key areas” including level of consumer awareness, pace of adoption and ease of use, the report added. “To the extent that awareness and usage rates are low, as is the case with the V-chip, the record does not have sufficient data to fully understand the reasons underlying this phenomenon,” it said. “We intend to explore these and other issues in a forthcoming NOI.”
That notice will discuss issues where the report “fails to address key questions central to a full understanding of how parental control technologies can best be used to protect children in an evolving digital media marketplace,” the study said. Unanswered questions include the extent to which parents are aware of current filtering options and why awareness varies among media, the report said. “It appears that the adoption of control technologies may be greater for the Internet than for broadcasting and other traditional media sources: Why is this so?”
On the issue of content on wireless devices, the report said industry commenters “assert that, even in the absence of regulation, the industry has developed a wide range of blocking technologies and parental control features; therefore, government regulation is unnecessary at this time.” Wireless carriers also argue that a “competitive market has responded to consumer demands for parental controls and predict that more advanced filters and access controls are in development,” the report said. The report cited voluntary efforts by CTIA and participating wireless carriers.
However, some consumers voiced support for a government mandate that filtering technologies be embedded across all platforms of consumer devices that support video applications, including wireless devices, the report noted. Also, many of the tools made available by carriers can’t block or filter inappropriate user-generated content, such as “sexting,” the report said. Carrier comments so far also have provided few specifics on mechanisms used to filter inappropriate content the report said. The FCC plans to address remaining questions on wireless solutions in the upcoming NOI.
“CTIA’s voluntary … guidelines require participating carriers to provide consumers with parental control tools for wireless handsets that are designed to restrict access to content available via the public Internet or other public data networks,” the report said. The major carriers “currently provide consumers with the ability to block all Internet access on their devices and are either providing or researching solutions to provide controls with the ability to limit specific Internet content or sites on consumers’ devices.”
“We understand the commission’s desire to get more information,” said Brian Josef, CTIA director of regulatory affairs. “They've indicated they'd pursue a further notice of inquiry to further explore some of the issues, with regard to awareness and adoption. Beginning in 2004, we implemented content classifications consistent with best practices. … We decided not to wait for regulation and want to serve consumers best by providing the technologies and the tools that may help them in their in their wireless experiences.”
The commission will start the NOI “in the days ahead,” said Chairman Julius Genachowski. Monday’s report “exposes the need for further study of this essential issue,” he added. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who sponsored the Act that required the report, said it’s a “beneficial catalogue of the most up-to-date tools available” but “also reveals basic roadblocks and major limitations.”