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FCC to Develop 'Super V Chip' To Screen All Content
An anonymous reader writes "The Senate Commerce Committee has stepped in and approved a legislation asking the Federal Communications Commission to 'oversee the development of a super V-chip that could screen content on everything from cell phones to the Internet.' Since the content viewed by children is no longer restricted to TV or radio Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., the sponsor of the Child Safe Viewing Act, feels that the new law is necessary. 'The bill requires the FCC to review, within one year of enactment, technology that can help parents manage the vast volume of video and other content on television or the Internet. Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, TV makers are required to embed the V-chip within televisions to allow parents to block content according to a rating system.'"
I don't, I have a preteen kid. Among my friends almost nobody uses the V-chip. Infact half of them dont even know their TV has the V-Chip. And those who know find it a pain to set up thresholds and remember the password. The only person I know who knows how to use the V-Chip is my brother's 10 year old son. He is a remarkably curious boy who reads all the manuals and figures out things mainly to annoy the adults. He would set the V-chip threshold very low (or high, I dont know the parlance) and make his mom scream, in a strange mixture of admiration and admonition, "You make the TV play Law-and-Order now or I am going to ground you for a week!" and the boy would laugh and giggle.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And the kids' daycare.
I never understood the opposition to the V-Chip. Why shouldn't the multimedia client (TV) come with a network screening app? In HW, so it's harder to crack, especially by literal "script kiddies".
The alternative is that the government and providers screen content at the server, without consumer choice.
The only problem is that today's FCC, coming at the tail end of the Republican covert government, will probably install spyware on their "Super" V-Chip. So instead of all your TV signals of all they offer coming down your wire or over the air, for you to privately select from, their "Super" V-Chip will send a log to the NSA. Crossreferenced to all your personal data, including email, phone, surveillance video, and all the electronic/digital transactions that profile your life.
Eventually the NSA will convince us to implant an RFID V-Chip "so we can easily tune our TVs wherever we go".
But if we get a private V-Chip now, before they do it, then we can satisfy the demand for convenience before that convenience is exploited to mask total privacy invasion. If the V-Chip specs and HW/firmware/SW are open, then we can get both safety and convenience. That's known as "freedom": the (traditional) American Way.
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make install -not war
You know, the real tragedy here is that we've had movable type printing presses for some 600-800 years, and still no one has come up with a rating system for books! How am I supposed to know what books are appropriate for my children or school district without some sort of letter grade system!? I am supposed to actually read all these books? Why, there must be 10's of thousands of them out there.
Obligatory User Friendly Strip
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
... we can get the V-chip filtering technology extended to tag different theologies. I mean, I don't want my kids watching some of those broadcasters that are spreading the wrong word of God. I can trust their judgment when it comes to viewing violence or sexual content. But when it comes to preaching false creeds, how am I to know if they might be led astray by some blasphemer? I'd like a classification system that allows me to select not only the major theologies, but denominations of each.
Have gnu, will travel.