The FCC’s report to Congress on the state of media-screening technologies, due by the end of this month, comes to two broad conclusions, but does not suggest any action items beyond opening an inquiry prompted by its survey of the current content-control landscape for a variety of media. That inquiry includes a request for better data, something that should come as no surprise for followers of the current commission. The FCC’s two conclusions: 1) There is no universal ratings system in place, and 2) better educating parents on how to use the existing systems would likely help drive adoption. That’s according to sources familiar with the report, which will be delivered to Congress by the end of the month, according to a Media Bureau spokesperson. The deadline is Aug. 29.
I agree parents need to be better educated about controls, but the idea of universal ratings is problematic, at least for websites. The reality is you have several dozen private companies each creating their own rating system. Unlike video games or movies where some sort of industry body rates sites, no one is in charge of rating websites, because there are simply too many of them. If you count social networking sites, there are hundreds of millions of individual “publishers” of websites. Various Internet rating schemes such as PICS, ICRA, and RSACi have been tried and have never achieved the critical mass necessary. For the foreseeable future, parents will have rely on proprietary rating systems from parental control vendors.
Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety, Policy
