Mobile phone networks in the U.S. are developing a rating and filtering system to apply to content on their networks, according to a Reuters story by Antony Bruno.
The Federal Communications Commission oversees the distribution of wireless spectrum to U.S. operators, and wireless carriers do not want the [FCC’s] indecency campaign against radio, TV and cable broadcasters to come their way.
“The adult side of things has really kick-started it,” says Mark Desautels, [cellular industry association] VP of wireless Internet development. “As indecency becomes an increasing point of interest on the part of policymakers, we really need to be proactive about it.”
Avoiding government regulation by self-regulating is an old trick. In this case, though, it’s hard to see how the self-regulation will pacify the FCC. Here’s an example, from the article:
Wireless carriers and record companies view a rating and filtering system as an opportunity to offer a greater spectrum of content, including master ringtones or voicetones with explicit lyrics. Currently, wireless carriers offer only the most non-offensive content possible because they do not have a mechanism for limiting edgier content to adults.
Do they really think that the FCC will ignore complaints about explicit ringtones being heard in public, just because those tones happen to come from the phones of grownups? The FCC wants to stop kids from seeing or hearing adult content, period. Often they seem to be trying to keep adults away from adult content. Today’s FCC will never accept explicit ringtones, or visible-to-others adult images, being distributed in public.
Even more interesting is the mobile providers’ assertion that they control what happens on their networks. This may have been true historically, but we’re shifting now to a world where phones are really Internet-connected computers that are programmable by anyone. That means a phone can, in practice, access any data that its owner wants to get.
It’s true, of course, that mobile providers can wall their users off from the Internet, and can wall the phones that use their networks off from nonapproved programs. But doing so will make phones much less useful, by shutting out most of the world programmers and most of the world’s sources of information. Competition will force mobile providers to open their phone platforms to third-party programs and content.
The mobile providers would much prefer to keep their platforms closed. There is more money to be made by operating a closed platform than an open one, as long you can’t lose business to competitors who open their platforms. If you’re a mobile provider, you must feel the urge right now to make a deal with your competitors, in which you all agree to keep your platforms closed. But that would be an agreement not to compete, which is illegal.
It would be so much more convenient if some regulation came along that had the side-effect of keeping platforms closed. Perhaps a regulation that disallowed content that hadn’t been officially categorized by a mobile network provider. A regulation, coincidentally, just like the one the industry is starting to develop.
All of this is in vain, I think. The value to customers of open phone platforms is too large to ignore, and some platforms are open already. It’s hard to see how such a useful product feature can be stopped by voluntary means. And once platforms are open, people will get the content they want, like it or not.
