(on call blog post by Evan M. Smith & Christen Penny)
Freedom of expression is a legal right as outlined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. However, an exception to that right deals with the distinction between an adult’s right to freely express him or herself vs. the need to protect minors from “indecent” material. Whose responsibility is it to protect minors from this “indecent” content? One suggestion is that it’s the parent’s responsibility to decide what his/her child has access to. One way for the parent to limit access is to install filtering technology that limits what users can view online. Another suggestion is that it’s the role of government to implement appropriate laws. In the case of television, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) oversees content and fines broadcasters who disseminate harmful content. For example, Janet Jackson’s 2004 “nipplegate,” which aired during a Superbowl half-time show (produced by MTV) to a prime-time audience. In regard to online content, the Child Online Protection Act (“COPA”) attempts to balance the regulation of content in a way that’s as least restrictive as possible to freedom of speech while at the same time limiting minor’s access to inappropriate content.
The MTV show “Skins” introduces another entity that regulates content — community organizations, such as the Parents Television Council, who police for (what they consider to be) indecent material and then exert power via media coverage. For example, several advertisers have pulled out of sponsorship deals for “Skins” in response to such criticism. Still, this doesn’t legally inhibit MTV from broadcasting the show (the content has not (yet) been declared indecent by the FCC).
Originally a British show, “Skins” has been tamed for American audiences. However, online streaming of content enables U.S. teens to watch the more risque, British, version of the show than what will be aired on TV. How would a parent limit his/her child’s access to the online show? One way to resolve this issue is for parents to install filters, especially since the laws of what’s harmful to minors differs from country to country. In addition, the use of filters affords parents the flexibility to parent in the way they best see fit. Parents will inevitably have differing views of what is appropriate for their children and the technological architecture of filtering, at the point of consumption, affords parents their needed flexibility.
Thanks for this post, Evan and Christen. For all the talk of filters and technology-based censorship, I’m wondering … what about good old parenting? Using filters might stop the kid from watching on the TV in the living room, but they probably won’t stop the kid from watching clips at MTV.com (or LiveLeak.com and so on) and they definitely won’t stop the kid from downloading the show from a BitTorrent site. I agree that the FCC and filtering have a role to play, but I believe that parents have the chief responsibility and technology won’t provide the answer in the long run. Maybe I’m naive – not having kids and all – but I’d like to believe that we have the ability to control our children’s viewing habits (to a reasonable extent) through proper supervision.
Paul, I agree with you wholeheartedly that at the root good parenting is the best solution. I view filtering as a parenting technique. A parenting technique for the savvy parents who realize they are not going to be around their kids to supervise all the time. They put in place a system of filtering (architected such that it can handle your examples) which allows their decision about what is appropriate and what is not for their children to stand, even when they leave the room.
In a world relying on filtering… Where a child can go to his/her friend’s house and view potentially indecent material on his friends unfiltered computer…is that a situation that gov’t censorship should attempt to fix?
or is deciding what friends your child has also a type of filtering?
The two solutions to protect minors from “indecent” content sit on two ends of the architecture. Good parenting provides custimized filtering at the receiver’s end. Parents have different views of what is good/bad for their own kids, and we should not limit their choice by applying a majority conception that indecent content is bad for children. Problems that could be potentially solved by technology should be remaining in the hands of technology, like spam filtering.