FCC Official Says No New Rules in FCC Online Child Safety Report
An upcoming FCC report about online child safety doesn’t include new rules, a commission attorney said at a Family Online Safety Institute lunch Wednesday. That the FCC might regulate in the area was a concern expressed in many comments at the agency, said Robert Cannon, senior counsel in the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis. Meanwhile, officials from CTIA and Verizon said industry can address online safety issues without government intervention.
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The FCC will tackle safety issues this August in a report required by Congress in the 2007 Child Safe Viewing Act. The commission has reviewed nearly 10,000 comments and is “in the midst of writing” the report, Cannon said. The agency is not using the proceeding to write rules, but rather plans to discuss the status of child safety on the many platforms and technologies for video, he said.
While Cannon declined to elaborate on the pending report, he noted that regulating online content has in the past proven sticky due to its international nature. Unlike TV, most Web content isn’t U.S.-based. The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Child Online Protection Act said online protection tools “won’t work because most of the content you're trying to stop is out of the jurisdiction of this law,” he noted. In addition, Cannon seemed to agree parental control features are widely available and often free, adding that they are often packed into operating systems and Web browsers.
It’s unclear how the next FCC will treat online safety issues, said Eric Breisach, a telecom attorney with Womble Carlyle. The indecency issue was a passion for former Chairman Kevin Martin, but that may not be the case for presumptive incoming Chairman Julius Genachowski, he said. Regardless, the FCC is unlikely to take a serious look at the issue in the next six months, since its focus will be on developing a national broadband plan, he said.
The marketplace on its own spurs innovative online safety technologies, Price said. Public concern about child safety online has made parental controls and related technologies an important competitive differentiator for many companies, he said. Writing policy in this area can be a dicey affair, regardless, because mandating any kind of content blocking tends to raise First Amendment issues, he said.
The wireless industry has long been implementing parental controls without any government mandate, noted Matthew Gerst, counsel for CTIA. Many carriers offer parental controls, and more apps can be downloaded from third parties, he said. Wireless has also sponsored education initiatives for middle-school aged children and their parents, he said.
It’s fine for the government to gather information about online safety, but going much beyond that can be “troublesome,” said Verizon Vice President David Young. Verizon offers parental controls for its TV, wireless and Internet services, he said. Many of them are free, but the company charges extra for more sophisticated wireless apps like Chaperone, which allows parents to track children’s physical location, he said. The phone company also engages in online safety education for parents and teachers, he said.