“The National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families (NCPCF), a group that has been active in media decency issues, and the National Law Center for Children and Families are set to meet Thursday with FCC and CTIA officials to talk about emerging wireless service that might allow inappropriate content to reach children.”
Jack Samad, NCPCF senior vice president, said it is commendable the CTIA is developing a wireless rating system but implied that parents were too stupid to know how to use such a system, so “more stringent capabilities might be necessary for emerging wireless services”. Suggestions include “mandatory filters imposed by wireless carriers on services and devices or other capabilities that allow parents to easily set up firewalls against such content”.
Another group, Morality in Media, apparently recently filed comments at the FCC arguing that “wireless phones should remain banned from commercial aircraft because of indecency concerns”. I haven’t read the comments, but I can’t see the connection…
There should be an easy way for parents to protect their children from inappropriate content (not just pornography, but also hate sites, violent images and so on) and I agree that it’s not unreasonable to rule that mobile operators should be mandated to offer a filter — but not that the filter is mandatory for all people, which is what the wording in the article suggested. (It could just have been bad wording in the article, since it goes on to say that parents would then be able to set up ‘firewalls’).
One problem is that groups like this tend to see things in black and white…for example a poll on the site about child pornography offers two responses — “Yes, I think the government needs to regulate and prosecute illegal child porn on the Internet. ( 86 %)” and “No, I think the media is exaggerating the problem. ( 14 %)”. There’s no option which says “I think the media is exaggerating the problem and the government needs to regulate and prosecute the illegal child porn which is on the net”. You can either believe everything the media publishes or you can be in favor of child pornography…that’s a very dodgy way to present the problem.
Related stories:
–Your Children And The Mobile Net
–Protecting Children from Adult Content on Wireless Devices: FCC
–American Family Association Discusses Wireless Porn Protections With FCC Staff
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