LONDON – Sky Broadband will soon begin blocking adult content by default for customers who have not yet opted-out of using the company’s “Broadband Shield” content filter.
“From January, we’ll be emailing our customers who haven’t chosen to activate or disable Sky Broadband Shield explaining its benefits and giving them the opportunity to make a decision one way or the other,” Lyssa McGowan, Sky’s brand director for communication products, stated in a blog post published Tuesday. “Customers can activate Sky Broadband Shield, adjust or decline it at any time. Or they can simply wait for us to turn it on.”
Sky’s “shield” already is available for voluntary use by consumers, not many of whom have chosen to use it, as it turns out. According to Ofcom, only 13 percent of new users in the UK chose to turn on the content filtering software offered by the four largest ISPs providing service in the region.
The debate over the nature, efficacy and purpose of internet content filters is nothing new. Supporters of (now enjoined) measures like the Child Online Protection Act have cited the lack of voluntary filter use by consumers as a point in favor of government-mandated regulations, for example.
Other critics complain of both over and under-inclusiveness, noting adult content filters are notorious for blocking websites that offer information about women’s health concerns, sex education and other decidedly non-pornographic fare.
Given the filter’s use is voluntary and turning off the software is easily and quickly accomplished, it’s hard to object to Sky’s filter. Those who want to use it can do so; those who don’t can click it off once and never concern themselves with it again.
The trickier question is, what’s the point of forcing consumers to make the choice, as opposed to just leaving the filter there as an option?
The further one looks into the data about how parents currently go about “protecting their children” online, the easier it is to conclude that for all the media fanfare surrounding the issue, it’s simply not a very high priority for a lot of parents.
In another Ofcom report, the regulatory authority looks at “strategies of parental protection for children online.” One particularly revealing section of the report is entitled “Why parents choose not to apply parental control tools.”
“Overall, parental controls were viewed as a supplement to, rather than replacement for, hands-on parenting,” the report states. “Supervision and other forms of parental mediation were felt still to be needed to manage all of the day-to-day issues their children faced, including risks emanating from children’s internet usage.”
The measured tone and reasonable conclusion of this paragraph could not be more different from the sort of shrill, half-literate complaining about the perils and perversions of “The Internets” with which this subject is sometimes associated. It’s also common sense: No online content filter can prevent a child from doing all the other stupid, risky, parent-alarming stuff kids do on a daily basis.
The report also notes the “potential value of parental controls does not appear to be front-of-mind on a daily basis for some parents” adding that parents’ concerns were instead more focused on “their children’s day-to-day internet use (e.g. children spending too much time online) rather than around the risks.”
In other words, a lot of parents are pragmatists. Whatever an online content filter might accomplish, it’s not a cure-all, nor is the internet their biggest worry where bad influences on their kids are concerned. (That mantle is still held by other kids, especially older brothers….)
Of course, possibly the most senseless thing about forcing the entire internet-using UK consumer base to make a choice about content filtering is the most obvious one: Since when is everybody in the UK a parent of minor children?
As one reader (screen name “Grocky Groc”) of the Independent’s website put it in the comments section of a recent article: “Not every household in the country has children in it that need protecting at every minute of the day.”
