Ryan Singel
Security

Senate Committee Votes to Expand TV Ratings Technology To Internet

A powerful Senate committee wants government regulators to find cutting edge technologies that can censor audio and video that flows over the internet, through cable, or into an iPhone to help make sure the nation’s small children never see a naked breast or hear Howard Stern without parental permission. The idea is to turbo charge […]

A powerful Senate committee wants government regulators to find cutting edge technologies that can censor audio and video that flows over the internet, through cable, or into an iPhone to help make sure the nation's small children never see a naked breast or hear Howard Stern without parental permission. The idea is to turbo charge the V-Chip, a government mandate that requires television makers to include a chip that parents can use to filter shows. Broadcasters, movie makers and cable operators voluntarily mark their content so parents can choose one of five level of filters.

The Senate Commerce Committee voted Thursday to send the Child Safe Viewing Act, authored by Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor (D), to the whole Senate for consideration. The bill orders that:

The Federal Communications Commission shall consider advanced blocking technologies that--

  1. may be appropriate across a wide variety of distribution platforms, including wired, wireless, and Internet platforms;
  2. may be appropriate across a wide variety of devices capable of transmitting or receiving video or audio programming, including television sets, DVD players, VCRs, cable set top boxes, satellite receivers, and wireless devices;
  3. can filter language based upon information in closed captioning;
  4. operate independently of ratings pre-assigned by the creator of such video or audio programming; and
  5. may be effective in enhancing the ability of a parent to protect his or her child from indecent or objectionable programming, as determined by such parent.

It's not clear how any filtering technology could work with the explosion of video-sharing sites like YouTube, the amount of content that isn't created by American companies. While Congress has ways to strong arm Hollywood and broadcasters into "voluntarily" rating their shows, videobloggers and creators of Mentos-bombs are likely to simply ignore the request. Attempts to require mandates and labels on websites have already been struck down by the Supreme Court.