The Bailey Review - moves towards protecting UK childhood

In June this year, the UK Department for Education published 'Letting Children be Children - Report of an Independent Review of the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood' (aka "The Bailey Review" as it was led by Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of Mothers’ Union).  Today, two of its recommendations  appear to have made some kind of progress.


ISPs blocking adult content

 Today we hear that four leading web providers are to offer customers the option to block adult content at the point of subscription. BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin will offer the protection for smartphones, laptops and PCs, offering packages which enable certain websites to be filtered out. 

The filtering systems allow parents to choose to block any, all or no websites in broad categories of websites. Critics of filters say they often block access to innocent sites, those that could prove useful and never shield people from all inappropriate destinations.

Contrary to The Daily Mail's reporting, these services will be opt in, rather than opt out - that is to say, you'll have to say you DON'T want adult content, rather than that you do.   ISPs are keen to shrug of the notion of censorship: "The major service providers are accepting that their customers expect them to play their part in helping to ensure children are able to use the internet in a safe way," said Sebastien Lahtinen from Think Broadband. "It's worth noting that those determined to get around a filter will find a way of doing so, often quite trivially," said Mr Lahtinen. "As such, enforced filters are unlikely to deliver significant consumer benefit, whereas helping parents to protect their children helps their customers."
 
The Guardian is running an excellent analysis of the proposed filters.  Talk Talk say that they haven't changed their 'Home Safe' service at all:

"This is offering parents, as part of installation, a choice around whether to use controls or not. It will be an upfront decision they have to make. It's certainly not blocking porn and people having to opt in. The internet service still comes as it does, it's about giving parents a choice about using controls. We will ask every customer would you like parental controls?

"This is called 'active choice' rather than an opt-in or opt-out. We are the only ISP that offers network level protection. We offer a service called Home Safe which works on the internet connection rather than setting up controls for each device in a home. This covers every device in the home.

"We do already prompt Home Safe to customers it's part of the set-up we will be making that a more prominent feature. But it is already available to all customers."

Talk Talk's spokesperson added that people who want the filtering system on their internet provider would be asked to choose from categories such as suicide and self harm, weapons and violence, gambling and drugs and pornography. She insisted that the system would not block access to anti-drugs advice website, such as the government run Ask Frank service. It wouldn't block a BBC or Guardian article on web porn, but it would block pornographic sites. She couldn't say definitively that safer sex charities or information about contraception would be banned - parents' views on whether their older children need access to such information would differ - but added that parents could identify individual sites they wanted to blocked as well.  The Guardian asked what use a site-by-site block was pointing out that the internet is quite a big place, to which she acknowledged the limitations:

We're very upfront that this isn't a silver bullet that will solve internet safety. There isn't any technology that will absolutely protect your children. This is a useful tool that parents can choose to use coupled with education programmes as well

Charles Arthur, the Guardian's technology editor, said:

At first glance - especially a glance at the Daily Mail's front page headline - this looks radical [..] But the reality is much more subtle. If you're already on a contract with an ISP, nothing will change. Let's say that again: nothing will change. Only if you change ISP or move to a new contract will you be confronted with a decision - and even then, it will be a fork in the internet road, where you can either choose to have "parental controls" on your system, or choose not to have them. There is no obligation or presumption either way.

Children as 'Brand Ambassadors'

The Bailey review also urged an end to the practice of using under-16s as ‘brand ambassadors’ in social media, a recommendation specifically endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron in his praise of the report.  The Advertising Association (AA) has persuaded several companies not to use people under the age of 16 ‘to actively promote brands’. The AA’s progress was presented to Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this week, and today we learn that Weetabix has dropped its sponsorship of the seven-year-old twin boys which caused a few ruffled feathers when it was announced.

Parentport - reporting mechanism

The Prime Minister will also launch Parentport - a website to help parents complain about inappropriate content.Telecoms watchdog Ofcom said the launch of Parentport would make it easier for parents to complain about material they had seen across the media, communications and in retail.
It said the website had a "have your say" section where parents could give informal feedback and comments and also offered advice on keeping children safe online.

Rag Bailey is due to meet David Cameron at a Downing Street summit to discuss the changes.