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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.'"
Why not just turn your children over to the government when they're born?
Parents today obviously have ZERO interest in spending time with their children and monitoring their activities and habits.
This is ridiculous.
Peace sells, but who's buying?
...that Janet Jackson can now show her nipple on tv and it will be OK since nobody will be able to see it?
Unplug the TV.
..carpeting the whole world because we refuse to wear shoes instead.
It is our obligation, as adults, not to prevent the reality from reaching the senses of minors, but to provide adequate explanations and guidance. Those technical censoring measures are the result of the intention to avoid adult responsibilities, to "sweep the problem under the rug", so to say.
...except commercials.
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
-b.
Does anyone not wonder what has happened to parental responsibility? I know what my kids watch on tv, movies they watch and what sites they visit on the internet, all without government intervention. This will just be another crutch for the negligent parents to use.
Speedy thing goes in; speedy thing comes out.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
something as complex as one of these here deep packet inspection thingys, and even that will fail against determined content providers. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/Deep-packe t-inspection-meets-net-neutrality.ars
Wherever there's a person going through puberty, there you will most likely find prurient material.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
So every form of content that exists will require a mandatory rating by some sort of standards body? Because, after all, that's how the V-chip works at the moment.
Yeah, good luck with that, folks.
Last night I went out to dinner with two close friends. As we watched, a mother semi-ignored her 4 or 5 year old girl as she cried and screamed and jumped up and down in a royal temper tantrum. It seems mom was too busy chatting with her friend to notice as the girl bellowed at the top of her lungs even as one of the waiters came over and offered the girl a balloon to silence the child. The mother occasionally glanced at the girl and said things like "It's okay." and "What's wrong?" then went right back to gossiping with her friend about what was going on at her job. This went on for 15-20 minutes until she finished her conversation and then all three left.
It's bad enough that some parents think that television is a babysitter. It's even worse that some feel the Internet is a more interactive babysitter. Now, it seems, your cell phone and ipod are capable of acting as babysitters.
Sadly, judging from my experience in the restaurant, technology might actually be a better babysitter than some parents...
This technology is all overkill anyway, and here's why:
To view content, you have to physically have access to a device that can display the content. As a parent, you should be able to remove that physical access for all 'locally controlled' devices; you can't prevent them from watching a friend's phone or whatever regardless of V-chips or whatever.
There is this thing called an 'off switch' and, failing that, circuit breakers.
You don't want them to have a phone, don't give them money to buy one. If they're old enough to get a job to afford their own, then they should already have the capacity to handle whatever content they can obtain anyway.
To me, these laws just take away responsibility and, with it, freedom from the general populace.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
This is the same Mary Pryor who is cosponsoring the Protecting Children from Indecent Programming Act.
More concerning is the new anti-TV violence rules. I really don't want to go back to the days of the A-Team where you could have machine guns as long as they never hit anyone.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
A federal mandate that parents actually provide parenting for their children. This opposed to the government providing it for them. Radical, huh?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Ah yes...one step closer to a society that takes no responsibility for anything their children do. I guess you could argue that using a technology such as a super V chip helps parents automatically filter content that they are concerned their kids will see. Unfortunately, as a computer tech, I see so many parents ask tech shops about spying software and filtering software so they don't have to actively monitor what their kids are doing. If a parent is worried with who their kid is chatting with online then they need to be involved and ask. Parents have built in monitoring called "looking". I know its a low-tech foreign concept but it works. If you are open and honest with your kids, actively talk to them about dangers, keep them using search engines that filter bad content by default (like google) and watching what they are doing and who they are talking to on the internet then things like this are not needed. But that would take too much responsibility I guess.
Even if this becomes law, I can't imagine that it would survive its first challenge in a federal court.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Sorry, but I disagree. It is our responsibility as adults to introduce children to reality as they are able to understand the explanations and guidance. A five-year-old is not likely to understand any possible explanation for a violent rape scene that he/she saw on TV. I'm really astounded that people think of the V-chip as censorship. Could somebody explain exactly how a screening tool that can be turned on or off by the owner is censorship? The V-chip is nothing more than a tool. It can be used for good and for bad. Good parents will carefully monitor what their children are watching (either to keep them away from inappropriate content or to explain questionable content). Bad parents will rely solely on the V-chip (a huge mistake) to allow them to shirk their responsibility. I have two children. I use the parental lock-down features on my cable box, but I also monitor what they are watching. The parental lock-down is nice because it cuts down on inappropriate content that may show up while I'm running through channels in the presence of my children. It also makes sure my eight-year-old isn't going to change channels to something that's not suitable for him (or his little sister) while I'm in the bathroom. But I'm also fully aware that it is not a substitute for responsible parenting. Some channels don't include rating informations for all shows (The Science Fiction channel and HDNet are two notable offenders), and the most questionable content comes from the commercials rather than the programming itself. Therefore, I make sure I'm there to explain behavior that is and is not appropriate. I like the V-chip as a tool, and nothing more. These laws aren't about mandating that people _use_ the V-chip. They are about making sure that it's available for those who _want_ to use it.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
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.
--
make install -not war
Have you ever considered turning off the TV...sitting down with your children...and hitting them?
- Bender
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I am also waiting for the Intellecual Property lawyers to figure out tht people can remember movies and songs. This is a clear copyright violation and so we should all be required to have our memories erased.
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
Could somebody explain exactly how a screening tool that can be turned on or off by the owner is censorship? ... These laws aren't about mandating that people _use_ the V-chip.
True, but it is mandating (I think) that every adult has to pay for it, presumably in everything from computers to phones, which is still an issue. What's wrong with overseeing the development to make it available as an option to those who want it?
There's also the question of how they intend to implement a rating system for the Internet.
Back in the 50s, the TV was for the most part clean. Kids could watch most of what was on TV with very little considered to be 'unacceptable for a child to watch'.
Today it seems like kids are very limited in terms of what would be 'acceptable'. Now maybe I'm just crazy or too tired to think straight, but WHY are we watching/listening to this 'crap' on TV? If it's so bad for our kids, is it really that good for us adults? Sure, there's definite limits. Can't exactly show the evening news on Iraq on Nickelodeon, but it seems like TV is just getting more and more into the realm of 'not really worth anything'. Maybe Mr. Roger's had it right when
With using the 'N' word in music and the crap-tastic "reality shows", if it's not good for my kids, is it really good for adults? Is your point conveyed that much better adding the F-bomb to your sentence?
Sometimes I swear we're really all a bunch of teenagers rebelling against our parents and listening to the F-bomb and N-word just to rebel(are we trying to prove we're really adults?). Why don't we grow up and realize that crap isn't really doing us any good, and just quit allowing that junk on TV/Radio? Maybe I should enable this new Super V-Chip just to block out the garbage I shouldn't be watching anyway?
Disclaimer: I'm in my late 20's, so maybe my concept of what was on TV in the 50's is totally hosed.
You know, so I could screen out shows that would insult my intelligence?
Just think of the possibilities:
Yeah, that's it! A chip for everyone! The world will finally be safe from itself ;-)
Come to think of it, I could just turn off the tv or change the channel... Hmmm...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
If you think so then YOU be in charge of vacuuming it.
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.
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The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
For television content, I suspect the cost is negligible. However, I would have no problem if it were just an available option that we have to pay a little extra for if we want it.
I wonder this myself, which is why I didn't really mention it. Probably the best way is to have one of the companies that provides URL filtering start providing a rating system for web sites that people can subscribe to if they want it. This one definitely needs to be an opt-in, though. I would imagine that maintaining a rating system for the internet wouldn't have a trivial cost associated with it, even with a large subscriber base.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
They said that the original V-Chip would put control of TV content in the hands of parents and take government out of the censorship business.
THEY LIED.
Censors always lie.
If you think it'll be any different this time -- if you think that if you give them what they want, they'll go away happy -- then you're either hopelessly naive or just plain nuts.
Those people cannot afford children. Even with all the free tax credits and rebates subsidized by the child-less people of the USA, these people can't hack it. They made bad decisions and over-estimated their earning potential...and we're all going to get to bail them out of their stupid choices. Wonderful.
Blar.
I don't see why the under-performers in our society need to get the biggest (relative) incentives to breed! Perhaps we should be giving at least the same incentives to child-bearing couples of every socio-economic class instead of cutting most of them off at the middle-middle-class mark.
Blar.
I want to save money on a feature I'll never use. I want to buy a TV without this Super-V-Chip in it.
I can't? Oh joy. Perhaps the parents should pay MORE for a TV with MORE FEATURES instead of the government forcing everyone to pay for it.
Blar.
... 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.