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Self regulation has always been a thorny issue. On the one hand, any industry understands itself better than an outside, or governmental body, ever could. On the other, the industry itself has too much of a vested interest to necessarily make the difficult policing decisions that perhaps hamper, rather than promote, profit that often needs to be made. The telemedia industry has long suffered this. While it argues for self regulation, it essentially has a government imposed body foisted on it - that it has to pay for - and it subject to all manner of rules that sometimes hinder what it does for the greater good.
Now the great new opportunity that is mobile content and services is in the spotlight. With mobile content distribution still in its infancy, the UK government has tried to act early and make sure that the mobile world doesn't start off on the wrong foot and poison the nation's youth with unsuitable content. Back in 2003 the government offered an ultimatum to the mobile industry: regulate your adult content yourselves or we will do it for you.
With bottom lines a-quivering, the mobile companies in the UK - one of the most competitive business sectors in the world - took the largely unprecedented step of getting together to work out how they, as an industry, were going to deal with adult to mobile content.
Hence the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) Code of Practice was born. And what an interesting first few months of life it has had. For starters, the industry is very keen indeed for the government not to get involved; that could lead to very thorough - some might argue 'proper' - regulation of adult content to mobile and that would hurt bottom lines. Secondly, the mobile industry knows that, not doing anything could lead to all sorts of very bad publicity: any connection between mobile adult content and paedophilia, rape, exploitation or torture is not gonna be good for business, while being seen to be the responsible, caring industry that protects our kids can earn it serious brownie points, especially in The Daily Mail.
So the will is there, as is the need. But with so much riding on the development and roll out of mobile content to all age groups, not least the under 18s, getting this regulation right is key to not only keeping users safe, but also to balancing this philanthropic bent with hard-nosed capitalism: they need the money and the business.
In essence, the mobile industry is keen to be seen to be doing something to protect those under 18 from mobile adult content - and that means gambling, violence, smut and bad language, as well as pornography - and in taking responsibility for policing itself. The problem is that, while the protection of minors is straightforward enough, the industry also has to balance this against freedom of choice and against its all important bottom line.
As John Seddon, chairman of the NOC's Content Access Control Committee, told the packed conference room at World Telemedia back in April, when all the major UK MNOs and other interested parties gathered for an unprecedented open forum on the subject: "It is a moral maze. We need to look at what is the MNO's responsibility and what is the parents' responsibility with regard to protecting minors from adult content."
But are these rumblings of a nifty bit of side stepping? Back in Febraury, when the initiative behind the code was 'launched', it seemed that the mobile industry was determined to do the right thing and protect us from ourselves. Four months later, and with the harsh glare of the commercial spotlight on them, the operators could well be said to be using the 'it's ultimately the parents responsibility' to get them out of having to make any really tricky decisions on what is and isn't acceptable.
As Vodafone's Jeremy Flynn told World Telemedia, "If an adult buys a tool for a child, it is the parents' responsibility to protect that child from using that tool dangerously".
So, is there really a need for such a code of practice if it is largely up to the parents to prevent their children accessing adult services? Well, yes, but it is how it is implemented that is the key.
The current set up is for the main mobile operators to implement the code themselves and to set up an independent body that classifies mobile content as 18, as well as for the MNOs to put in place a system of opt-ins and opt-outs to make sure that the right people get the content. It is important to note that the code actually acts as a policing of access to the content, not control of the content itself. And as Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango.net told the conference "There will be good sites and bad content and some MNOs will restrict access to the bad ones, others may turn a blind eye to access of the bad ones. At the end of the day, it is really this that needs to be addressed".
ICSTIS is known to be very keen to take on the role of content approver and would no doubt relish the opportunity to also make sure that the code is implemented across all operators evenly and that they all abide by it. In practice, however, this is unlikely to come to pass, since there would be too much opposition from within the industry.
But perhaps the biggest headache is that the MNOs are attempting the nigh impossible task of implementing a code that could constrain business across one of the most competitive markets in the world. There is a great deal riding on the success of mobile adult content, not least the revenues of the MNOs themselves, yet they are seeking to work together on something that could hamstring their businesses. As Angus Cormie from O2 told the World Telemedia conference: "Getting this to work and getting it to work across all MNOs will take time. It will come, but we have to get it right from the very start so that all users get a consistent and good experience. But this is a competitive market, so anywhere we can implement the code and bring about competitive advantage we are quite right to do so".
While it was great to get the MNOs to all sit together publicly and discuss the code, it is clear that there is a long way to go. Vodafone is setting the pace and will no doubt end up with the de facto model for how this is implemented across the other carriers. And if the consistent line from all the carriers present at World Telemedia was that, at the end of the day, it is the parents responsibility to protect their children, one can't help but wonder then what is the point in having the code at all - will moral responsibility not simply lose out to hard-nosed commercialism in the long run anyway?
There are some very serious issues surrounding the Code of Practice; fundamental questions as to who is responsible, ultimately, for what under 18s see and do, as well as trying to balance that with making money, competitive pressure and, lest we not forget, technology based scams that can circumvent any form of policing.
With these in mind - and with no answer as yet forthcoming at this early stage - we turn our attention to how the code is, at present, seen as working. One thing that has to be made clear at this point is that the proposed code - for at this stage it isn't actually set in stone - deals with control of the access to the content, not a control of the content itself. Within the rules laid out in the content (see panel) the MNOs are looking to set up a body that will categorise content in to 18 and over and that suitable for under 18s. Eventually it may be even more granular in its approach, offering a system of certification more akin to that operated by the British Board of Film Censors for movies, but that is some way off. This body would then rate the content and the MNOs would be able to bar those under age from accessing it. That's the theory.
However, key to making such a theory work in practice lies in knowing who the users are, how old they are and whether or not they should get the content. As we have dealt with in this magazine a number of times before, age verification is a very problematic area - how on earth do you know who is using the phone and how old they are?
That said, the current debate within the industry centres not around this verification process, but whether it is better to let users opt-in or opt-out of having access to such services, based on the likelihood of whether they are old enough to access it or not. Most of the MNOs' post-paid customers are assumed to be over 18, as to get the phone in the first place they have to be credit checked. This doesn't, however, allow for users who are given the phone bought for them by their parents. More importantly, though, this offers no protection whatsoever for those with pre-paid mobiles.
As it was pointed out to the World Telemedia conference, without a UK wide registration of pre-paid phone owners - with name, age, address and so on - there is no way of knowing who is eligible for the content aside for trust - but the MNO can at least be seen to have tried to protect them, which is enough for them.
"When Vodafone goes live with the code sometime in June it is planning to run a hybrid opting method whereby the opt-in will apply to all the services we can verify," says Flynn for the company. "There are 400,000 Vodafone users who we know are over 18 as they have credit agreements with us. These people can opt-out.
Virgin Mobile is also looking to let anyone who is over 18 have adult content and is leaving it up to them to opt out of it. O2 is looking at opt-out, but has to be sure that the user is over 18. Most under 18s have pre-paid phones, often bought for them by an adult, so there is no way of knowing who owns which phone, which rather makes opt out untenable.
And there is one more fly in the ointment. As Ray Anderson from Bango.net, points out: "There will be good content and bad content and some MNOs will restrict access to the bad ones, others may turn a blind eye to access of the bad ones. They may not even know they are there. At the end of the day, it is really this that needs to be addressed".
That, and the fact that the code has one very obvious flaw: it only covers content on the MNO's own portals. It doesn't cover content delivered using Premium Rate SMS or MMS services. That is the responsibility of ICSTIS, not the operators. So, already, before we have done anything at all, the regulation of content has been fragmented, which can only serve to undermine all regulation, and that in itself would have made a nice cliff hanger of an ending to this article, but this story will run and run.
By the time this is published mobile regulation will have moved on apace. It certainly will be something World Telemedia magazine - and the conference - will revisit in the coming months and years and we can only guess at how it will end up. One thing is for sure, the world is watching how the UK deals with the regulation of adult to mobile content with great interest, as it is setting the pace and the standard for how everyone else is going to do it.
Information
w: www.noconline.org
w: www.icstis.org.uk
w: www.vodafone.com
w: www.o2.com |
