Online Safety Needs Innovation, Not Mandates, Industry Says

The FCC recently issued a notice of inquiry about parental-control technologies. Ed Palmieri, the director of Sprint’s office of privacy, said he’s hopeful about the proceeding, because the FCC is doing fact finding, not regulating. He said he hopes the commission will continue to allow each provider the flexibility to offer the parental controls that it has found work best for its customers. Brent Olson, assistant vice president of regulatory policy at AT&T, said Internet companies have conflicting goals. They take part in industry and advocacy groups, like FOSI, and are all interested in online safety, he said, but they're also competitive in seeking the best parental control tools. Mandating a single technology would squelch innovation, he said.

Audience member Frank Gallagher of Cable in the Classroom wondered whether the FCC is setting up online parental controls to be seen as a failure, the way the V-chip has been. He wondered how realistic it is to expect that parents will use the tools. Olson said the V-chip is an example of a mandated solution that didn’t work well: Parents didn’t know where it was or how to work it, and there was no incentive for companies to innovate because the technology was required. AT&T customers, however, use and love controls on the company’s Web portal that allow them to set time of day restrictions or texting limits, he said. The portal is easy to use, he said, and helps AT&T give parents the level of control over their children online that they have offline. Leslie Dunlap, the senior director of government relations for Yahoo, agreed that simplifying controls is crucial. In some cases, as in mobile search, the parental control is the default, she said. But, she added, Yahoo believes educating children should be the main way to increase safety.

Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., said that her interest in online safety grew out of her experiences as a parent. Children don’t grasp Internet risks, she said, and parents often have difficulty staying on top of issues. She said she has a program of going to schools to talk about Internet safety along with local law-enforcement officers, who can talk about the community’s problems. “I can’t tell you how many parents responded,” she said. Bean’s SAFER NET bill was folded into the broadband mapping bill signed into law last year. It authorizes $5 million for a national education campaign about online safety and tells the FTC to create a national clearinghouse for best practices.

Bean speaks for a lot of parents who feel that something should be done but also feel helpless, Olson said. Congress needs to allow time for the effects of laws it has passed to be seen and for best practices to be sorted out, he said. There isn’t much coordination among agencies charged with different tasks, he said. “There are a lot of agencies tagged as ‘you're it,'” he said. The U.K. is building a “large bureaucratic structure” around the conclusions of a task force report about online safety, and though that may not be the way to go, high-level attention to the problem is needed, he said.

Dunlap said she hopes Congress pays attention to the results of reports it will be receiving. It may find that the issue isn’t a lack of tools but the need to get them in the hands of parents, she said. Congress also needs to concentrate on funding, she said, pointing to the Adam Walsh Act, which she said has never been fully funded.