*Genius*
Prime VIP
Trying to keep the UK kids safe from online adult content, the British government, especially the Department for Education, has decided to carry out an independent review concerning the impact retailers and pop culture have on kids in many terms.Internet service providers are demanded to help parents censor adult and age restricted material located online.
The review, titled “Letting Children Be Children” was written by the CEO of Mothers Union, who described a few proposals over the issue. Although it doesn’t directly recommend imposing an obligatory ISP filter for adult material on the Internet, the proposal is that this kind of regulation should be introduced if, after 18 months, progress is considered to be “insufficient”.
In order to ensure a consistent level of protection throughout all media, the online industry is supposed to help the Internet subscribers make an active choice over what kind of content they wish to let their kids access. Therefore, the online industry should be more decisive to implement efficient parental controls, even with the help of the government regulation, if voluntary action doesn’t prove effective.
Meanwhile, services providing age-restricted material, whether by law or company policy, should verify age accurately, and provide parents with the tools to block under-age access. However, the review acknowledges that current filters are not effective for nowadays kids. At the same time, other solutions may go as far as to block such legitimate material as TalkTalk’s Home Safe service.
The UK Prime Minister is planning to start a debate over this problem and has even invited a number of businesses and regulators into his residence for October, where they’ll be asked to outline any recorded progress.
Ofcom UK’s Group Director of Content pointed out that protection of kids is one of their most important statutory duties. This is the main reason why the outfit welcomed the review of this area. The group acknowledged the critical importance of parents’ views about what kids watch on TV these days, and promised to focus on exploring parents’ opinion about Ofcom’s enforcement of broadcasting standards in order to protect children.
In the United Kingdom, many broadband providers, as well as mobile operators, are offering Parental Controls already. Besides, 3rd-party solutions are also available.
