Examination of Witnesses (Questions 611
- 619)
TUESDAY 7 NOVEMBER 2006
BBFC
Q611 Chairman: Can I welcome David
Cooke, the Director, and Peter Johnson, the Head of Policy, from
the British Board of Film Classification. Good morning. In your
evidence you have identified a number of ways in which loopholes
in the existing laws are being exploited but obviously the pace
of change is very fast and we are hearing about different ways
of distribution. Do you actually think that we are going to need
to go back and look at the whole way in which we regulate content
to take account of these changes or are you still concerned that
we should address these existing loopholes?
Mr Cooke: We think that most of
the existing loopholes are pretty marginal. In a way they are
things that are enabled by the internet and things that film classifiers
all around the world are probably facing. They certainly do not
seem to have had a damaging effect on the DVD market in recent
years, which has been booming. Our fundamental concern is about
what might happen in the future, starting right now when things
could be very different and we would face not so much a loophole
but possibly a bypassing of the Video Recordings Act in quite
a major way. Let me just try and explain this. Last year 17,000
titles were classified by the BBFC and 13,000 of those were DVDs,
so that is very much the bulk of our business at the moment. In
principle, all of those titles could at some point in the future
migrate to distribution by download rather than in physical format.
Lawyers disagree about what precisely the impact of the Video
Recordings Act is in that situation, but I think that the general
view is that the Video Recordings Act probably would not bite.
That has not been tested in the courts yet. That could produce
a situation in which our current, we believe, quite well respected
and trusted system of age ratings and consumer advice would cease
to apply and we know from our workload at the moment that there
would be some very abusive material included in that content,
and we have given some examples of some of that in our evidence.
Self-regulation would obviously apply in that context but the
question is really do we believe that that would be adequate or
would we be in the kind of situation that we faced in the early
1980s with the concerns on video nasties. We think that there
are probably two broad approaches to tackling this problem. We
are certainly not pitching to trespass on anybody else's patch
or to rub up against other regulators and we are certainly not
pitching to try and regulate all downloads, which will constitute
a huge and variegated mass of material, but we do think it would
be possible to look quite carefully to seek to identify that part
of the download market which would be very similar to DVD retail
and DVD rental and to seek to bring that within the Video Recordings
Act. That would be one approach. We can well see that that would
be controversial and would be against the tenor of some of the
other discussions you have had in the Committee. Another approach
which could be considered, either in conjunction or separately,
would be to look at what kind of co-regulatory offerings were
possible in this new environment. We believe that our expertise
and the trust which BBFC ratings and consumer advice have and
the high recognition factor that our ratings have, are the kinds
of things that would enable us to play a part.
Q612 Alan Keen: There is obviously
going to be some need for self-regulation. What connections and
discussions are you having with other people that you cannot really
control yourselves?
Mr Cooke: We talk a lot and have
very close links with the self-regulatory organisations at the
moment. We were talking earlier this week to ATVOD, who bring
together a number of the current and future video on demand offerers,
and we have also talked a lot to Icstis who operate in the area
of mobile phone content. We talk a lot, too, to broadcasters such
as Sky, the BBC and Channel 4, and we also, as you know, cover
the top and difficult end of the video games market. We have very
close links with PEGI, which is the pan-European games system.
We have had exchange visits with these organisations. In some
cases we have provided training sessions for them because we have
particular areas of expertise like child protection or dealing
with pornography where they have been very interested to pick
up on it. There is a worry for us though to what extent are we
diluting our brand and passing on our expertise in a form that
will not get operated in quite the way that we would like to operate
it.
Q613 Alan Keen: What about websites
which are almost uncontrollable? What is being done and what more
can be done towards that and should you be involved?
Mr Cooke: Are you thinking of
things like user-generated content and so on?
Q614 Alan Keen: Yes.
Mr Cooke: We cannot honestly claim
that what we regulate at the moment—films, DVDs, video games—involves
very much user-generated content, so in a sense we cannot come
along and say we are the experts because this is part of our current
practice. What we do know, though, is some of the worrying material,
some of the abusive material, whether it is generated by users
or others, is the kind of area where we do have particular expertise.
We spend quite a lot of our time looking, for instance, at sex
works and trying to spot what is abusive in sex works because
sometimes it seems to us that no human intelligence has been applied
at all to what is being submitted to us, and we really need sometimes
to make very detailed cuts to that kind of material. We have developed
quite an expertise in the area of indecent images of children,
which again is a very important element of our general aim of
protecting children through the classification system. We have
developed expertise in the area of animal cruelty. We have developed
a lot of expertise in areas like what kind of techniques might
children imitate and which are the ages to be particularly worried
about issues like self harm or the portrayal of drugs and so on.
So we believe that we do provide a pool and a source of expertise
that we would be very happy to make available in dealing with
material on websites. Peter, is there anything you want to add
to that?
Mr Johnson: With websites everyone
has to recognise, and certainly we recognise that the days in
which you could control everything that people could access are
gone, unless you want to impose some sort of Chinese solution,
which I do not think anyone is in favour of. I think what can
be done and what the BBFC can offer is a way to enable content
providers and those who are seeking content to access that content
in a safe area and enable content providers to make their material
clearly labelled in a way that the British public understand so
that members of the British public who are seeking content for
themselves or children in their care will know that that content
will meet certain standards. I think with the standards that we
have established on film for over 90 years and on video for over
20 years, which are widely recognised and trusted in the UK, it
seems sensible that websites make use of those in order to label
their content in a way that the public can understand.
Q615 Alan Keen: Do you feel that
government and Ofcom take advantage of your expertise enough?
Are you surprised sometimes that you do not get more requests?
Mr Cooke: We have very good working
relationships both with government and with Ofcom. For instance,
we have been talking a lot to Ofcom recently about labelling and
also about media education, because that is another strand of
our activity. We do quite a lot of work with schools and colleges.
I think everybody is wrestling—and I am sure lots of other
people have said this to the Committee as well—with what
the implications of the new world are going to be and which are
going to be the kind of approaches which might be most fruitful.
We would be quite happy to consider alternative offerings to our
current system of regulation, which essentially involves seeing
everything all through in advance, and it is a very thorough and
careful system of regulation, but one that you could not describe
as light touch. It is one that has been used for films for a long
time, but we would be very happy to look at whether there were
other kinds of regulatory offerings that we might provide in this
new world. For instance, we classify films and DVDs on the basis
of guidelines which we update every three or four years to make
sure that they are in line with public opinion and the issues
that the public thinks are important. The last time we did that
it involved consulting 11,000 people so it was a very major exercise,
one of the biggest consultation exercises that a regulator has
done in this country. It may well be that individual players in
the new markets might not want to undertake anything like that
but might see some attraction in trying to derive some rules of
practice from the guidelines which have served us well in the
area of film and DVD.
Q616 Alan Keen: Finally can I say
that in an uneducated past, like many people, I thought you must
have an interesting job but having read your submission this morning
I think it is one of the last jobs in the world that I would like
to do. I would like to thank you for what you do.
Mr Cooke: It has its compensations
but it has its less pleasant side as well.
Q617 Mr Evans: 20 years ago you were
all powerful; now you have not got a leg to stand on really with
the new media. You say that you have got all this expertise but,
quite frankly, when you are looking at the internet broadcast
stuff that people can receive as good a quality as if it was on
the telly, and you say you have got a role there, are people not
in reality bypassing you?
Mr Cooke: It is obviously a danger
and that is why we are bringing these issues about the scope of
the legislation to you. We think that it is worth looking at whether
the Video Recordings Act, which is obviously 20-odd years old
now, is able to cope with the kind of situation we are in, but
I do not think it follows that there is nothing you can do, and
countries obviously all around the world are looking at this and
different approaches are being brought forward. One piece of work
which I am involved in in a personal capacity is that I am a member
of the PEGI advisory board. This is the pan-European games system
and it is doing work on whether it is possible to provide any
kind of regulatory service in the on-line area. That runs right
up against the difficulties that you have just mentioned of how
on earth do you regulate on-line games. PEGI is doing some work
to see whether it is possible to provide a kite-marking service
for portals that distribute on-line games allied to a modified
version of its questionnaire which is a self-regulatory questionnaire
for classifying games. Nobody pretends it is straightforward,
and I think the jury is still out on whether this is going to
fly or not. That is a very real example of an attempt to try and
provide an offering for parents and the public in this very new
and difficult area.
Q618 Mr Evans: Peter mentioned there
is the Chinese route but nobody wants to go down that. So then
you are left with the reality of the situation which is that you
exist and you can provide a safe haven for people who want to
use the internet so that the youngsters and the kids and those
who do not want to see video nasties and various other things
can feel safe in the knowledge that they are not going to be harmed
in that way, or their kids will not be harmed in that way, and
then there is the other side of it which is the free-for-all where
everything is available to everybody. In the past, you were able
to control all of that with film classification and the classifications
that you gave for games, but the reality is that basically 12-year-olds
can see things now on the internet that before you at least guarded
them against. Do you accept that that is roughly where you stand
now?
Mr Cooke: There is a difference.
It is possible now but not in a way that fundamentally affects
the regulatory protection that we provide. Yes, you can find things
on the internet, for example you can probably find uncut versions
of films that we have cut and you can probably find versions of
films that we have banned as well.
Q619 Mr Evans: Do you look on the
net to see if that is so?
Mr Cooke: Yes, we do.
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