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October 30, 1997

FCC Suggests V-Chips for PCs

By JERI CLAUSING Bio
 WASHINGTON — Reflecting the narrowing gap between PCs and TVs, the United States government is considering requiring one more chip in your computer — the content-censoring V-chip being developed to filter out television programs rated for violence and sex.

Under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress stipulated that all televisions sold in the United States next year include the V-chip. The Federal Communications Commission, in its September proposal for carrying out the mandate, would extend the rule to computer monitors, a proposal raising eyebrows among civil libertarians.

“I think that the risk of this kind of approach is that instead of capitalizing on the user empowerment potential that the Internet has, the FCC risks dragging the Internet as an interactive and empowering medium back to the state of television, which offers users very little control,” Daniel Weizner, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said Wednesday.

The FCC, however, insists that the proposal has nothing to do with the Internet. In fact, one agency official said, the V-chip would not even work on Internet content or video streaming technology. The proposed rules, which have been posted for public comment, simply follow the language of the mandate passed by Congress to require V-chips in all television receiving apparatus. Because some computers can receive broadcast signals, they need to have the V-chip, the FCC officials said.

Weitzner said he did not doubt the FCC's intent; he just feared what the long-term implications could be.
The FCC wants to include any "apparatus designed to receive television signals" — and that may mean computers.

“I think it's not a reasonable assumption to presume that over the long term, video programming, broadly speaking, will remain segregated,” Weitzner said. “And I frankly think that is exactly the problem. I don't think that anyone would want that segregation to persist. What the commission risks doing is stifling the development of video on the Net, in part by imposing old rules.”

Weitzner said there were much more sophisticated filtering tools already available for the Internet.

“Today, without any government intervention, parents can control what kind of information their kids have access to in a much more thoughtful way and in a way that we think is more consistent with our First Amendment values,” he said.

Weitzner added: “This is a convergence issue. The question the FCC raises is do they want to drag PCs back into the sorry state that television is in, or do they want to make sure that as the Internet expands into video distribution users really have the control they have today over Internet content.”

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 calls on the television industry to set up a rating system for television broadcasts and requires that all television sets manufactured after February 1998 include “features designed to enable viewers to block display of all programs with a common rating.” This is commonly referred to as the “V-chip.”

In its proposal, the FCC states: “We recognize that most video programming today is viewed on television broadcast receivers. . . . In the future, this may not be the case — different receivers may be developed, sold and utilized depending on how the video programming is distributed. In addition, personal computer systems, which are not traditionally thought of as television receivers, are already being sold with the capability to view television and other video programming.


Related Article
Unsolved V-Chip Mysteries: How Soon? And How Much?
(January 26, 1997)

“Section 551(c) of the Telecommunications Act makes it clear that the program-blocking requirements were intended to apply to any ‘apparatus designed to receive television signals’ that has a picture screen of 13 inches or larger. Accordingly, we believe that the program blocking requirements we are proposing should apply to any television receiver meeting the screen size requirements. . . . These requirements would also apply to any computer that is sold with TV receiver capability and a monitor that has a viewable picture size of 13 inches or larger, as we currently do for closed captioning.”

The FCC estimates the chip will cost about $5.

Weitzner emphasized that the FCC proposal is just that — a proposal still open for public comment and review.

“It is really just getting its first airing now, so I don't want to jump all over it as an evil act,” he said. “The commission has overall been very careful to preserve the quality of the Internet. My hope is that the commission will realize that the problems the V-chip is trying to solve simply don't exist on the Internet.”

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Jeri Clausing at jeri@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.


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