Posted September 26, 2005 at 06:14 PM by Mark Donovan
CTIA kicked off today with pre-events, which included the Mobile Entertainment Summit. It was well attended as usual with, I'm told, about 1,200 attendees.
My panel--"Mobile Multimedia and Publishing: Pushing the Envelope"--revolved around issues of adult content and content rating, age verification, and filtering. To some extent these issues are a bit of a tempest in the teapot in that I'm not hearing about any serious problems with, say kids accessing mobile pornography, but the area is one of great importance to the industry.
There are a few things to keep in mind here.
First, there are groups actively lobbying the federal goverment for action in this area and it's clear that they have the ear of some key agencies. A representative from the National Coaltion for the Protection of Children and Families was in attendance and we had a chance to speak before my panel. This is one of the groups that recently met with CTIA head Steve Largent to express their concerns about minors being exposed to adult content. The CTIA has been working on vountary content rating guidelines which will likely be a component of the overall solution to this problem but aren't going to completely solve the issues the industry faces.
What is the problem?
Well certainly nobody in the industry is advocating that porn be distributed to children. It goes far beyond that. Think of the continuum of content that could be available to mobile consumers--think video clips from the latest episode of HBO's Deadwood. That's the sort of content that isn't erotic but is clearly not appropriate for kids. And it's the sort of content that people in this industry would love to be selling, but right now don't have a way to do so without being exposed to all sorts of backlash.
And think for a minute beyond content.
M:Metrics data shows about 40% of mobile subscribers over the age of 13 are on family plans (and you can certainly bet that 100% of subscribers under 13 are). When we look at content consumption, the percentage of family plan subscribers is often higher (though it varies by content and activity).
Parental controls need to go beyond just barring access to naked pictures, it should include things like limiting the minutes allocated to your children, white listing and black listing phone numbers, and limiting the times when a child can make or receive a phone call from someone on the white list. These are the sorts of controls that a carrier (or MVNO) that wanted to establish themselves as a trusted family provider could implment. The reverse is also true--if I wanted to establish myself as the leading brand for horny lads over 18 I would have to ensure that such controls were in place. While I can't vouch in any deep way for the technology, the brief demo I say today suggests that companies with offerings like bcgi have a nice market in front of them.
Returning to the thing everybody is chattering about--mobile porn--several issues make this a complicated part of the US mobile market. I don't have all the answers but certainly have some questions:
1) How will carriers, using public spectrum and offering devices tightly and soley tied to their network, be able to claim a "safe harbor" exemption?
2) Since a key test for obscenity is "pervasiveness" (see CA v. Pacifica--the George Carlin 7 words ruling) how will mobile escape federal regulation?
3) The "Miller Test" established by SCOTUS in 1973 decided that "community standards" were a key to deciding obscenity. Does that mean that what a person has on their mobile phone (or pulls off the network) will be sometimes obscene and sometimes not depending on where they are at the moment?
These questions aren't even close to being settled, but you can bet they'll be raised with increasing frequency in the mobile industry.
