FCC: All Your Ratings Are Belong To U.S.
It is no secret that the United States government likes to have its own control system in place for certain industries. For television it is the Federal Trade Commission, who keeps a tight rein on television, despite the occasional wardrobe malfunction or swear word that slips through the censors, and doles out fines to those who they think have gone to far.
But according to a Bloomberg report, the FCC wants to regulate other things including video games. FCC regulators are considering a single ratings system for television, video games, and wireless telephones - all under the guise of keeping questionable material out of the hands of children and helping parents.
According to the Bloomberg account, the FCC will begin an inquiry into such a system after an agency report is delivered Aug. 31 to Congress on the subject of media blocking and rating techniques. This report is the result of an inquiry by congress on whether children are harmed by inappropriate content, such as sex, violence and obscenity and whether or not the existing FCC system for TV would be a good fit for other content.
West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller seems to be at the center of this movement; the Democratic Senator who chairs the Commerce Committee, said at a hearing in late July of this year that his constituents are “horrified” by some programming. The report is the result of a law passed in 2007 mandating such a report to be researched and compiled.
Meanwhile mobile phone providers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, and software makers like Microsoft have come out strongly against such an idea. The ESA, which created the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the system which currently rates game by content, says that the FCC has no jurisdiction over games.
No doubt this will be a matter of contention for regulators and lawmakers, who see the connected world in which we now live in as highly regulate-able. But as the Internet has remained mostly regulation free, how will the government justify such regulations on content on private services? Will it attempt to regulate Microsoft’s Xbox Live service? Mobile phone networks? Social networks? Opponents see it as a slippery slope for a multitude of content platforms.
We’ll follow this story as it continues to develop.
Source: Bloomberg via Game | Life
