V-chips, CC, and Motorcycle Helmets

[Alan Olsen]

At 08:13 PM 2/11/96 -0800, Bill Frantz wrote:
>The Dranged Mutand is far from deranged when he writes:
>
>At 12:09 PM 2/11/96 -0500, Deranged Mutant wrote:
>...
>
>>And besides... why rate program just on violence?  Why not "quality" from 
>>a variety of orgs?  Other content ratings, from various organizations.  
>
>...
>
>One thing the V-Chip gives us is the argument:  Now that parents have the
>ability to control what their children watch, the government should turn
>responsibility over to them and butt out.

Parents had that ability before.  Cable boxes have a "perental control key"
on the side that enables them to lock out "offensive" channels.  It works
quite well and is fairly hard for the kidlets to defeat.  (I used it to
lockout the religious stations and home shopping channels.)

The "V-Chip" debate is a mirror of the one that occured when the cable
channels were starting to become popular.  There was a big hue and cry about
kids getting to the "naughty" channels without parent concent.  Seems most
people do not even learn how the lockouts work.  (And are too lazy to learn.)

You have to remember that most of the people arguing for TV filters are
looking for a way to make the "offensive" stuff go away for good.  (Either
from some sort of rating system or a heavy handed FCC regulation or two.)
And don't believe that the V-Chip will let you choose the rating service.
It will be one centrally produced rating from some faceless and nameless
entity.  I am willing to bet that we will see some pretty absurd examples of
ratings (mild things getting heavy ratings above and beyond the call of
sanity) in the future.

The v-chip will be less than useful as a real filter tool for those of us
who have a different worldview than the censors.

Remember: "Future events like these will happen to you in the future!"
---
Alan Olsen -- alano at teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction
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