UK mobile operators act against smut

ALL SIX of the UK's network operators - including Virgin and 3 - announced their support for an industry-wide code of conduct yesterday. Holes in this initiative are already beginning to show, however.

On paper, it appears to tackle the contentious issue of preventing smut, porn and gambling services being delivered over the mobile Internet to youngsters. Curiously since Vodafone announced its intention to do something about this last April (2003), the age limit has been raised from 16 to 18. So from now on any mobile content of an 'adult' nature will be labelled as '18' by an independent body - a bit like how movies are judged by a board of censors. The joint statement doesn't actually say who will pay for all of this policing, though. They also have to negotiate with UK enforcement agencies on this issue and hope to have something concrete by April. Encouragingly, the operators do say they intend to monitor 'chat rooms', so that youngsters don't give out details which paedophiles could capitalise on.

The major catch is that the code covers material displayed on the operators' own portals whereas stuff which you actually pay for through premium rate SMS (text) messages will still come under the remit of the ICTIS, the official body for all premium rate telecoms services.

Another hole - pointed out by The Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet Safety (CHIS) - is what happens about all the mobile phones already in childrens' possession? The Sunday Times, back in August, 2003, quoted a survey by youthMobile, suggesting that 11 per cent of 5 year olds own mobiles and that ownership among 10 to-14 year olds had then reached 33 per cent.

Another major flaw concerns validating subscribers' real age. Naturally this is easy if a parent takes out a contract for the handset in question. But the majority of parents give their offspring pre-paid handsets so they re forced to spend within a specific budget. It will be interesting to see how policing the true age of requests to see '18' content actually works.

Despite the fact that the announcement says the code will be on everybody's site, it's really hard to find. So here's one link. µ

UPDATE
Vodafone has a dodgy link. Start here, choose 'The Company', then choose 'Code of Practice'.