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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 353-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT
HARMFUL CONTENT ON THE INTERNET AND IN VIDEO GAMES
Tuesday 4 March 2008 MS JULIET KRAMER, MR STEVEN BARTHOLOMEW, MS TRISH CHURCH and MR HAMISH MACLEOD Evidence heard in Public Questions 90 - 163
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday 4 March 2008 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Philip Davies Mr Nigel Evans Mr Mike Hall Alan Keen Rosemary McKenna Mr Adrian Sanders ________________ Memoranda submitted by T-Mobile, O2, Orange UK and Mobile Broadband Group
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Ms Juliet Kramer, Head of Content Regulation, T-Mobile, Mr Steven Bartholomew, Head of Public Affairs, O2, Ms Trish Church, Mobile and Broadband Services Safety Manager, Orange UK and Mr Hamish MacLeod, Chair, Mobile Broadband Group, gave evidence. Q90 Chairman: Good morning. This is the second session of the Committee's inquiry into harmful content and we are focusing particularly this morning on mobile platforms. I would like to welcome Juliet Kramer, the Head of Content Regulation at T-Mobile, Steven Bartholomew from 02, Trish Church from Orange UK and Hamish MacLeod, the Chairman of the Mobile Broadband Group. Hamish, can I start with you? You suggested in your submission to us that you felt that, actually, you already had in place most of the necessary building blocks for self-regulation. Can you tell us whether you think that there are any gaps that need to be addressed or is it just a question of utilising what is already in place? Mr MacLeod: It is mostly about utilising what we already have in place. When I talked about the building blocks, I was not talking just about mobile, I was talking about the wider UK set-up altogether. However, there is perhaps a lack of understanding as to what all the building blocks are. There is probably a lack of coordination between the building blocks and that could be improved a lot, but there is a lack of understanding and a lack of agreement amongst all the parties about how we actually go about addressing problems that pop up pretty quickly and pretty suddenly in an efficient and well-understood process. Q91 Chairman: Is the view shared across the operators that actually we already have in place a lot of what is required? Mr Bartholomew: I think it is. From O2's perspective, without wishing to sound complacent, we are very proud of the code of practice we put in place four years ago. We have always tried to predict and pre-empt problems that come along with new media technology. It is not always possible, but our approach has always been to try to predict and pre-empt and the code of practice is a very good example of that. What we are especially proud of is the fact that it was a world-first here in the UK, so the UK is leading the way. It has been transplanted from the UK into other European Member States and now many aspects of it have been adopted by the European Commission to form the basis of their framework on safer mobiles in the European Union. We are very pleased with the way in which things are working at the moment. There is more that can be done and we are happy to continue to work with all the interested parties. Q92 Chairman: It seems to me that there are two distinct areas of concern. There is access to particular websites which contain content which is potentially harmful. At the extreme end you have that which is covered by the Internet Watch Foundation where there is general agreement that these sites should be blocked, but a lot of public concern is growing about different types of websites, some helping people by advising them how to commit suicide, others encouraging them to stop eating, others making available extreme pornography or violence. Are you content with the ability to block those? At the moment it appears that it is only the very extreme end of it that is blocked, whereas the public concern relates to a much wider area? Mr MacLeod: May I just step back a little bit? When the European Commission, two or three years ago, suggested that we should set up regulatory frameworks to regulate pretty much anything that goes on the Internet, as part of their review of the television without frontiers directive, we in the UK were extremely vocal about rejecting the notion that we should have one regulate-everything-type body. What we have created in the UK is a series of taskforces that address very specific topics: within the Home Office we have a number of policy groups, one looking at child sexual abuse, another looking at violent crime reduction; in the Department of Health, we have got them looking at anorexia and those sorts of things. I think that is absolutely the right approach that the relevant experts are brought under one roof to discuss the problems that come up which are very, very tricky. You are absolutely right that there are lots and lots of grey areas and what should come out of those discussions and policy development talking is some really quite firm guidance, even to the point where there is clear legislation as to what is deemed to be genuinely harmful and should not be made available and that which falls the other side of that bracket, so that commercial companies are not put in the position that they are having to make these editorial decisions. There needs to be wider debate in Parliament and elsewhere about these very specific problems. Q93 Chairman: Just looking at the other area, we are going to come on to specific examples in due course, but the other area where there is a lot of concern is basically user-generated. It is the sites which provide a platform and then the users can use those sites for what are potentially harmful purposes: Second Life has been cited in the news very recently; there is YouTube; and obviously the social networking sites. As operators do you feel any responsibility to try to control how those are used? Mr MacLeod: We are a voice. We are not in a position to control or to mandate what they do, but, like everybody in this discussion, basically we have taken a collaborative self-regulatory-partnership approach to regulating things on the Internet and we are a voice and we can influence that. We would like to see a little bit more transparency around the editorial policies that they use to make decisions about whether to remove content or not, and we would like to see a little bit more transparency around the timescales in which they undertake to remove content. Ms Kramer: We do offer some interactive services within our own portal so the uploading and downloading is all done by mobile customers. In those situations we do fully moderate both comments and pictures, which we are able to do within our portal. Q94 Chairman: Does "fully moderate" mean a person is actually looking at every piece of content that is uploaded? Ms Kramer: Yes. Mr Bartholomew: Our approach on content regulation obviously begins with illegal content and you are familiar with the work that is done around clean feed. We then have the harmful categories of content and we are aware of the public debate there. O2 and some of the other companies represented here today operate their own chat rooms or user-generated services. Our acceptable use policy states that we will not tolerate the kind of harmful content that people are concerned about in those spaces. If we see it, we will take it down or we will not allow it to be posted in the first place. Q95 Chairman: Are you monitoring the chat rooms? Mr Bartholomew: Yes. Q96 Chairman: Somebody is watching everything. Mr Bartholomew: Yes, our chat rooms fall into two categories. They are either put behind age-verification controls, so you have to be over the age of 18 to get access to the chat rooms, or the bulk of them, which are not behind age-verification controls, are moderated. The comments are posted and then, after the event, somebody goes through and reads those comments. If we see things we are unhappy with, we take them down or, in incidences where we believe there has been an attempt perhaps to groom an under-18-year-old by a paedophile, we will take that evidence and give it to COP, effectively the police. We are both a pipe and a publisher. In our own services, we will take action. Of course we just form a very small part of the Internet. We give our customers the opportunity to put filters in place to control the rest of the Internet, if they wish to do that. That gives them a real degree of control and reassurance. At the same time though, we do recognise that we are not an arbiter as to what our customers can actually see. Provided the content is legal, we accept that they have the right to go where they like on the Internet to access that content. If people believe content is causing harm to the public, ultimately we believe it is a role for Parliament to define that content as illegal and then we can work with the appropriate agencies to take action against that content. Q97 Mr Evans: Specifically on the suicide sites, do people contact you and say their youngsters were looking at this site and they are aware that those sites are there? Do you get these contacts? Ms Kramer: Within our moderated chat rooms or blogs, if the moderator sees that someone might be doing some self-harm or suicide, it would flag up as a warning and, as a response, they would actually send them information, help information, saying contact the Samaritans or whatever the appropriate link would be and the text would not be posted up; that would all happen between the moderator and the customer. Q98 Mr Evans: I think I am right in saying that somebody actually did commit suicide on the web did they not, with a webcam? Mr Bartholomew: Yes, that is correct. Q99 Mr Evans: And that was following a chat room site where basically people were egging him on to do it? Mr Bartholomew: Yes, that is correct. Mr MacLeod: May I just be absolutely clear? With the mobile we do have this clear distinction between publisher and pipe and the publisher is where we have our own portal services which are in a mobile-only environment. There are a few third-party partners that are content providers and within that sphere of influence we do have a reasonable amount of control. Outside that, there is the wider Internet where we really are just an access pipe. When we talk about moderation and controlling and all that sort of thing, that is happening within our own portal. Q100 Mr Evans: That is why I wanted to take it a little bit wider than the content that you are responsible for. Clearly you do act as a wall, as you might say: if people put graffiti on your wall, you are saying "What responsibility is it of ours?". Is that what you are saying? Mr MacLeod: Yes and in that situation of course there is a responsibility. Where we are just providing the pipe to the outside Internet, then our position to influence what goes on is very, very much reduced of course. Q101 Mr Evans: You say "much reduced". If you are acting as a pipe and people say these sites are there assisting people to commit suicide and we know parents are incredibly worried about the access to information like that for young people - and it has hit the news widely recently in certain parts of the UK - tell us what power you have to be able to stop those sites, even though you are the provider of the pipe? Do you have any power whatsoever or none? Mr MacLeod: We are like you; we have as much influence as anybody in this situation, which is not a lot when you are dealing with these very grey areas. That is why, coming back to what was said earlier, when the Department of Health is discussing their suicide strategy and all that sort of thing with its stakeholder group, it is very, very important that they come up with proper legislation as to what is acceptable behaviour and what is truly harmful and what is not. Q102 Mr Evans: Hold on. What you are saying is that while we are in limbo-land, until you get clear direction from the Government on any particular issue, you do not believe there is any personal responsibility on behalf of any of the carriers; that when they are carrying information about committing suicide, they have no responsibilities whatsoever, it is up to Government to adjudicate. Mr Bartholomew: There are two ways we can protect our customers. One way is taking down or blocking access to that category of content; that is one option that is open to us. The other way in which we can protect our customers is to provide them with filters that screen out that content. We have parental controls for our Internet browser. If they are activated, the child will not be able to get to suicide sites, so they are protected. We do not, however, go out and take down those sites, if they are out there in the Internet. We do not see that as our role. Q103 Mr Evans: Are you able to block them? Mr Bartholomew: With our filters. Q104 Mr Evans: No, could you block anybody accessing them? Mr Bartholomew: Theoretically. Q105 Mr Evans: But you have made a decision that you are not going to do that. A lot of parents out there will be a little bit shocked to think that you would allow the information to get through irrespective of filters; a lot of kids know how to get round filters, they know about the filters and the parents do not. They will be a bit shocked that you have the ability to stop that information that would assist people, particularly young people, to commit suicide, but you are not prepared to do that. Mr Bartholomew: The decision we are taking is to not allow that kind of content in chat rooms or services that we host; we do not allow any kind of suicide-related material in the services we operate. We then give our customers the ability to block access to that kind of material. If the filters are activated, they simply cannot get to those sites. The way our filter works is with what we call a "white list". It is a list of URLs that we believe are suitable for children and young people. If that list is put in place, they will not be able to get to the suicide sites. We have taken action. What we would say is that, if content is legal but unpalatable, it is the role of Parliament ultimately to change the definition and then that gives us the legal certainty and the framework to take action against that kind of content. In the meantime, we give protection to customers through very effective filters. Q106 Mr Evans: Are you saying then that you are afraid of legal action, if you blocked a site coming in and it was not against the law here? Do you not have a right, like we see outside pubs, to refuse admission? Mr Bartholomew: Yes, and we exercise that right. Q107 Mr Evans: Do you have the right to refuse anybody using your pipe to broadcast information like suicide help? Mr Bartholomew: Yes. We exercise that right day in, day out, in the very small piece of the Internet that we own. In our services, our chat rooms, we say "You cannot say that, we are taking it down" or "We are going to remove your right to be a member of our chat room because we are unhappy with your behaviour". We exercise that right vigorously. We also respect the right of citizens to go where they like elsewhere on the Internet, in the spaces we do not own, to access material that is legal but that many people may be unhappy with. That is the kind of balance we have to take for freedom of expression versus censorship or protecting customers. We have to tread a very delicate fine line and we believe that exercising the right on our own services, giving customers the filters, is the best way to approach the problem. Q108 Philip Davies: Could you just explain a bit more about what you include or do not include in these filters? The filter obviously stops people getting access to certain sites, so what have you decided is inappropriate. One of the things I struggle to understand is exactly what constitutes harmful content. What is harmful to one person may not be harmful to others, so I find harmful content a difficult thing to define, but obviously you have through your filters. How have you determined what is harmful and what is not through these filters? Mr MacLeod: The basic framework we put in place is we have appointed an independent mobile classification body to create a framework that decides what is inappropriate for minors and what the inverse is. That applies to the commercial content, so that is what we provide in our portals and the content we apply with our immediate partners. That framework has to be followed by the mobile operators and their partners. For the filtering side of life, which is access to the wider Internet, we have used that guideline as the basic framework to make that decision. Q109 Philip Davies: But these things must be dependent on age, for example. What would be inappropriate for somebody at five may be completely different to what is inappropriate for somebody at 15. How does it work in terms of people's different ages and what is inappropriate for different people? Mr MacLeod: The answer is that when we set this up four years ago, we took a very firm decision that clear public policy concern was around the 18+ divide. Really the only practical age at which you can verify people's age at a distance, when they are not present, is that 18, so that is why we have chosen that cut-off point. In the three or four years that we have been operating it, judging by all the feedback and the level of complaints that we have received, which is very, very low, we think that policy has been effective and is meeting the needs of our customers. Q110 Mr Hall: The industry says that the way forward is self-regulation and the industry prides itself on self-regulation, but we have heard this morning that you actually want government intervention as well because you want the government to state what is illegal and then you will police it. Is that right? Mr MacLeod: The way we have characterised this really is about partnerships. If you take the model of the Home Office taskforce, this has not been pure self-regulation; self-regulation has been an element of the solution. Within the Home Office taskforce, you have various groups of stakeholders: you have the NGOs; you have the Government represented; and you have industry essentially. Through the three or four years that the taskforce has been really doing things, each partner has brought things to the table. The industry has bought self-regulatory mechanisms, the Government have made changes to the law, they introduced the offence of grooming within the Child Sexual Offences Act, which has been extremely important, and we have sat within the taskforce, agreed the appropriate messages that children should be learning and then through the educational channels have been delivering those messages in accordance with what the taskforce agreed. I was very pleased when one of my children came back from school yesterday and said "We had Internet lessons yesterday and this is what they taught us" and he hammered out the three or four key messages that we had sat three or four years ago and decided within the taskforce. So self-regulation is an element of the solution, but there is a little bit more to it than that. Q111 Mr Hall: You have given the example that the Government have actually said that grooming on the Internet now is illegal. What else did they say is illegal? What else? You are asking them to define what is illegal, so what else should come into that category? Mr MacLeod: We have alluded to one of them already. Another area is around the glorification of violence and the Home Office has just published its strategy on tackling violence and violent crime and such like. Within that strategy there is an element which is to do with publishing on the Internet and we will be thoroughly engaged in that discussion as they go round implementing their strategy. What comes out of it will, I suspect, be a mixture of responses. Q112 Mr Hall: The Mobile Operators' Code for content is held up as a very good example of self-regulation. There is some concern that not all mobile operators promote this particular code of conduct. What can be done to improve that? Mr Bartholomew: There are five main operators in the UK and all five of those have signed up to the code. Q113 Mr Hall: It is not a question of them being signed up; it is a question of them actually promoting the code. Ms Kramer: The way the code works, we put in place access controls which are on by default for all our customers. When you buy a phone, you are protected, which is probably the most important part of the code. In terms of promoting the code, customers probably need more information when they are trying to lift that control or maybe when they call customer services, rather than right at the beginning when they are going to a shop to buy their phone. Is it not really about the solutions that we have in place rather than the code itself? Q114 Mr Hall: O2 and Orange are both mobile operators and Internet Service Providers. Do you take more care to protect people from harmful content through the mobile than you do on accessing it through the computers at home? Ms Church: It is true to say we do take more care on the mobile. We implemented the code four years ago and we actually install the parental controls by default on our pay-as-you-go mobiles. It can be applied to pay-monthly mobiles but people who are taking out a contract and buying pay-monthly mobiles actually have to go through a credit check to be able to sign up for the contract and therefore those people are already known to be over 18. However, on the fixed Internet, we actually offer a free parental control solution to every accessed customer. We promote this both at the point of sign-up and in follow-up welcome emails and the parent is therefore empowered to protect their children by downloading this product and installing it on their machine. Q115 Mr Hall: Mr Evans did make the point that young people probably understand how these things work far better than their parents. Is there anything else that the industry could be doing to improve the kind of protection that a lot of us would like to see? Ms Church: We believe it is important to educate the parents so that they know what the risks are that their children potentially face on the Internet and we have various measures in place to attempt to educate those parents. We are working in partnership with the DCSF cyber-bullying taskforce and the Home Office taskforce to help promote those messages. In addition Orange have various education programmes. We have actually produced a DVD that we have got into 46% of schools on text-bullying, but we are working on more. There is one coming on social networking and we are training up ambassadors who are Orange staff who are going to go into schools and actually deliver those safe-and-responsible-use messages so that we get to the children as well as the parents. We are working on doing that in parents' evenings as well as in the daytime with the children. Q116 Mr Hall: Is there is a different role for the mobile service providers and the Internet service providers? Are there things that those two should be doing differently to improve? Mr MacLeod: There is a distinction here. With a mobile device, for one thing there is not the product on the market where you can download a filter actually onto the device and control everything from there, so that is why we do it at network level. Furthermore, it is a personal device, it is really only going to be used by one person whereas with a PC in the home, you have the filters available, but also the computer is likely to be used by more than one person so you have to be able to tailor it to individual uses within the home. You ask what more can be done. A major new initiative which is about to be announced is that the BSI have been developing, in conjunction with the Home Office and Ofcom, a standard, a public Kitemark standard for the filtering products because there are lots of them on the market and customers and consumers are very uncertain as to which ones are effective and which ones are not. Once this Kitemark is available and the filtering companies can go after getting Kitemark approval, there will be a lot more clarity and understanding within the consumer base as to which the good ones to be buying and the ones to be implementing are. Q117 Rosemary McKenna: Some people suggest that the best way to protect children is to have the computer in a public space within the family, in the living room where everyone else is. If there are good filters, would that be necessary? Ms Church: There is no substitute for parental supervision. That child needs to be empowered to go round their friend's house and use their PC which might not be as well positioned in a public place. That child needs to be able to cope with the risks of the real world. There is no substitute for a parent sitting down, discussing what is safe and responsible use and ensuring complete understanding of what the risks are on the Internet. Mr Bartholomew: May I echo that? We have a responsibility and we take that seriously and technology is part of the solution. However, if we are not careful, there is a danger of giving a misleading message to parents, giving them a false sense of security that we can solve all the problems alone and there is not a role for the parent; and that is not the case. Yes, we need to provide the technology, yes, we as industry need to help educate and inform the public, but parents play a crucial role and we must make sure they are able to do that but also that they know they need to do that. Q118 Rosemary McKenna: But more and more the Internet is available through portable hand-held equipment and parents cannot police that the way they can a computer within the home. That is a big argument for education rather than filtering. Mr Bartholomew: Parents can control their children's use of mobile devices in a similar way to which they control the home computer. They can ensure that access controls are in place on the mobile device. Should they wish, they can also look at their history of the URLs that the child has been accessing. There are parallels there and they can use the technology: technology is a very important part of the solution but it is not the entire solution. Ms Kramer: The majority of our customers still have access control in place; very few lift it and that will apply for all content no matter where you access it from, whether you access it from the Internet or on our portal. Q119 Rosemary McKenna: What about the development of cyber-bullying and happy-slapping through the mobile phones. What are the companies doing to try to prevent that? Mr Bartholomew: Firstly, on cyber-bullying or text-message bullying, almost all the operators have dedicated nuisance call bureaus; we have a nuisance call bureau based in our customer service centre in Leeds. They can help customers who are having problems with either malicious calls or text-message bullying with a variety of options open to them. They include changing the number, which solves the problem for some people but it is not appropriate for everyone; it can be a bit of an inconvenience. They can trace who has been sending the malicious messages and send a warning to those individuals. Ultimately, they can assist the police in taking action against those individuals and we can cut them off if we find it is an O2 customer who has been sending malicious messages either to other O2 customers or customers on other networks. People in our nuisance call bureau also go out into schools, in the same way that people in Orange do as well, to try to educate children about what is acceptable behaviour using new media technology and what to do if they are unfortunate enough to be the recipient of a malicious message. Q120 Rosemary McKenna: Do you think schools are doing enough? Mr MacLeod: They are starting to. The evidence I saw with my own eyes yesterday tells me that they are doing dedicated lessons for Internet-type issues. The right messages are getting through. Perhaps they could do more, perhaps that might be a possibility, but I get the impression that there is definitely progress in that area. Ms Kramer: When children go to school at the age of four/five they will have IS lessons; if, hand-in-hand with that, they could give them advice about how to use the Internet responsibly rather than waiting a couple of years. Q121 Rosemary McKenna: That is right and there comes a stage where children have to be exposed to risk of some kind; overprotection is not going to be a good thing. They have to learn how to do that and it is a balance between whether it is school and home or the providers who actually do that. Someone suggested last week that maybe we should provide equipment without cameras. Do you think that would work, that parents should be able to buy a mobile phone without a camera? Mr MacLeod: You can. They are on the market. They are not very popular any longer. Q122 Mr Sanders: It is very difficult to buy one; very difficult indeed. Ms Church: Children would not be happy with a phone which was not the same as the one all their friends have. Mr MacLeod: We should also take some of the positives from the use of cameras. I heard the Director-General of the BBC the other day saying that when there is a breaking news story people want to see this first-hand eye-witness stuff. They do not want to see the film coming in from his cameraman which has been sent down two hours after the event. Q123 Chairman: Would you like, therefore, to comment on the story which is leading Sky News this morning which is the woman who was gang-raped and those who carried out the crime filmed it, presumably on a mobile telephone, and uploaded it to YouTube where it was then seen by 600 people before YouTube removed it. Mr MacLeod: There is absolutely no question about it, that that was absolutely sickening and contemptible. The only way we are going to prevent this is if we pre-screen everything that gets published on the Internet. Clearly that is not really going to be a very practical answer. YouTube, I believe, has something like 10 hours of video going up every minute. Two things have to happen: obviously the provider has to remove the content absolutely instantaneously and, secondly, the people who perpetrated this have to feel the full force of the law. Q124 Chairman: This is probably more a question for YouTube than you, but is there any way in which it is possible to identify the number from which content of that kind was uploaded? Mr MacLeod: You are right; it is probably more a question for YouTube. Q125 Chairman: But is there anything you do in terms of working with the police in this area? Ms Church: We do work with the police. Under the RIPA Act, if the police came to us and made a request for data that we hold, then we would of course release it. Q126 Mr Sanders: Would it be technically possible within a telephone that has a camera for some code to identify that telephone that was used to film that content? Mr MacLeod: It depends how it is done. Mr Bartholomew: It depends how the individual uploaded the video or the photo. If they sent the content over the mobile-phone network perhaps to a short code, to a number, they sent a media message in the same way you send a text message, it should be possible to trace it back to the handset. If, however, they just used the mobile phone as a cheap video camera, they took the image and then they connected the phone to a computer using the USB cable or transferred the images in infra-red, if they came nowhere near the mobile network, then there would not be that trace and you would not be able to link the handset. I would imagine you would not be able to link the handset back to the user. Ms Church: That would fall to the ISP then to step in. Q127 Chairman: But for sheer convenience, the likelihood is that they will use the mobile network to upload, will they not? Mr Bartholomew: It is the reverse; most people upload content to YouTube via their PCs, often because it is quicker and easier and it is cheaper as well. If you have a fixed broadband tariff and you pay £20 a month, there will be no additional extra charge for doing that, whereas if you did it over a mobile network, you would pay to do so. Q128 Chairman: I take that point entirely, but if they did decide to use the mobile network to upload content, are you able to keep a record of that? Is there some data that remains which you can identify? Ms Church: The service provider would have those records, if they built their service in a way to save them? Q129 Chairman: Your company, if it were your customer. Ms Church: It would be YouTube who would save the record of what had been uploaded. Q130 Chairman: But you do not have any kind of record? Mr Bartholomew: It depends again how the customer has used their device. If they sent a message or made a phone call, we have records of that activity. We are required in law to retain that data and we provide the information to the police and to other agencies under the framework of the RIPA Act. We all have dedicated police liaison units; ours operates 24/7 and that kind of request happens day in, day out. Q131 Chairman: I am still not absolutely clear about this. If I use my mobile phone to film an event and I upload that video content to YouTube using the mobile network, do you have data relating to that upload that you store? Ms Kramer: We would not necessarily have the picture, but we could tell if they passed the phone number, we could say "Yes, at that time something happened" and we would have a call record but not necessarily the content itself. Q132 Chairman: So the most you could do is say "You used your phone to upload something to YouTube at that particular time"? Ms Kramer: Yes. Mr Bartholomew: If they used the network rather than their PC. Chairman: I understand that; absolutely. Q133 Alan Keen: You said there were five main providers. Who are the other providers and what type of providers are they and what is going to happen with the developing technology? You would love it to stay at five main providers, but if competitors get in what can happen with the increasing and improving technology? Mr Bartholomew: There are five network mobile operators in the UK, who operate networks, who build the infrastructure and then a number of us have wholesale relationships with other companies who operate what are called "virtual mobile operators"; they do not build the networks themselves, they just use our networks, but they market their services via the high street to the consumer. They are the two categories. I guess what we are starting to see, however, is that there are other forms of handheld mobile devices which have the ability to access and browse the Internet, particularly using wi-fi, and that is a whole new challenge for the consumer, the wi-fi connectivity in a new generation of handheld devices like the iPod touch or the Sony PSP or even the Nokia N95 or the iPhone. Q134 Alan Keen: I am sorry to interrupt because I am fascinated by what you are saying, but before we get onto this, the people who are virtual providers, how does that work? Do they have to adhere to your IMCB rules? Do you have complete control of that? Mr MacLeod: Virgin Mobile, who is the largest virtual operator, is a signatory to the code and then the others are rather smaller, piggy-backing on these networks and they adhere to the code, yes. Q135 Alan Keen: They adhere to it and they have all signed up to it. Can you control that if somebody comes along and says "I am not interested in that"? Presumably you would stop it from using your network. Mr MacLeod: Yes; correct. Mr Bartholomew: Yes. Q136 Alan Keen: Sorry to interrupt. Could you carry on with what you were saying about the wi-fi developments? It is fascinating. Mr Bartholomew: From the perspective of the consumer, the new generation of devices gives a fantastic mobile Internet experience. Finally the hype, which we have all heard about for years, has become a reality. You can surf the Internet at high speed, on the move, using wi-fi and the iPod touch and the iPhone are two very good examples of that. The experience is fantastic and it is like having a computer with a smaller screen. I have had an iPhone for four months. In the evening at home I use it to surf the Internet via wireless router. I spend more time surfing on my iPhone that I do on a laptop; the experience is that good. The challenge from a content regulation point of view is that many of these devices cut out the mobile network altogether. The Sony PSP and the iPod touch are two very good examples of that. We have no control over how citizens use those devices to access the Internet, because they are not mobile phones and they come nowhere near a mobile phone network. What we need to see is other parts of the value chain take a more active role. For the last six years it has just been the mobile phone operators. If we are going to retain public confidence moving forward over the next six years, it cannot just be the mobile operators, it needs to be the handset manufacturers but also the wi-fi providers getting more actively engaged in addressing the problems. Q137 Alan Keen: Are the people starting to address this or just beginning to think about it? I know it is not your direct responsibility. Mr Bartholomew: I think they are and I hope they will because, like us, they would recognise that there is just a responsibility and a duty to do it, but I suspect they see it the same way. They are big companies, they have big brands and if they want to protect their brand but also grow their market and retain consumer confidence, they need to protect the public, they need to protect their customers. Q138 Alan Keen: Are we safe as the market is developing, because you have a company of a certain size to develop the technology; the small companies do the development initially, but to operate with the public, do you have to be of a certain size or are we going to get to the point with the technology changing where there are very small companies who would be less responsible than the people that you are representing? Mr MacLeod: It probably depends what part of the value chain you are talking about. In terms of major infrastructure and putting out the transmitter bases, you probably do have to be a pretty large company to get involved in that but at the content provision end of this, there are very, very, very few barriers to entry. We have basically got hundreds of millions of people out there publishing stuff on the Internet. Q139 Alan Keen: Talking about mobile telephones, is that restricted by development costs so small people cannot get into that? How many manufacturers are there now of mobile phones? Is that controllable or is that opening up? Mr MacLeod: It is certainly true that quite a large proportion of the market is probably concentrated within five or six providers, but yes, there is still potential for there to be manufacturers at the margin producing niche products certainly. Q140 Alan Keen: Obviously this is something that we should be aware of and you are hoping our inquiry and then report will highlight these sorts of oncoming dangers. We need to look ahead not just at what is happening now. Mr MacLeod: Down the track, if products come onto the market where you can do the tailoring and the filtering at the device level rather than rely on what goes on at the network level, that might be useful. It has happened in the PC market because 85% of the market is Windows based and there are huge economies of scale and there is a ready market there for these filtering products to go at device level. The economies of scale and various different operating systems and such like make it more difficult, more challenging and also of course it is an international market. The Nokias and the Motorolas of this world are selling all across the globe, they are not selling products for the British market really and within the UK perhaps the levels of concern, the thinking, are possibly more advanced than in other parts of the world. So that whole debate probably needs to catch up a bit before we start seeing the filtering and what have you being done at the device level. Q141 Alan Keen: It is obviously good news that you heard from your child yesterday, coming back from school and you realised that the work that you have been doing is now being reflected in school. We have reached this stage now where the Select Committee is doing inquiry. Is there something else that we should be saying that education should be pursuing with more energy than they are? Obviously progress has been made as you indicated. Mr MacLeod: That sort of advice is always helpful and influential and I recognise the challenges that the education system is under to deliver on all sorts of things. However, there is absolutely no doubt about it that the challenges that the Internet presents to us as a nation are very, very different to what has gone before. In broadcasting it is single geographic territory where command-and-control regulation has been effective and that is just not going to work with the Internet, so children and teachers have to develop their awareness. When we talk about self-regulation, this is about individuals self-regulating too. There needs to be a much, much greater appreciation of people's responsibilities to behave in an appropriate fashion and not do things like publish gang-rape sites on YouTube, which is obviously completely unacceptable. Q142 Mr Sanders: All mobile operators provide filters to prevent access to Internet content on mobiles with a classification of 18. Some operators set the filter to maximum by default. Should it be mandatory for all mobile operators to set access filters to maximum? Mr MacLeod: I am not sure I quite follow your question actually. The Internet filter on mobiles, under the code, is an optional requirement and most of them provide it by default to the pre-pay base. Q143 Mr Sanders: They all provide it, they provide the filters, but some operators set the filter to maximum by default. Should that be the same across them all? Mr MacLeod: My understanding is that the editorial choices that they make, as to the level they set the filter, are pretty similar actually. Q144 Mr Sanders: How easy is it for children to get around filters on mobile phones? Mr MacLeod: It is much more difficult than it would be in the domestic situation where, as somebody has already pointed out, the children might know more about it than the parents because the filter is set at the network level. It cannot be disarmed by a child; you actually have to go through the age-verification procedure before you have the filter removed. Q145 Mr Sanders: Have you received any complaints about the filtering system? Mr MacLeod: We have been operating the code for getting on for three years and the level of complaints that we have received about all aspects of the code, not just that aspect, has been really very, very low indeed because there are various channels through which we could receive complaints: through Ofcom - although they have no formal mandate in this area they do get complaints about all sorts of things; through our independent mobile classification body; through the MBG; and through the operators themselves. Our experience is that it has been very, very low, so we are reasonably confident that the policies that we have been following have been appropriate. Mr Bartholomew: We categorise the types of phone calls we get into our customer service centres from our customers. One category is for child-protection-related issues. Going through the figures yesterday, I saw that last year, one in 100,000 calls was a complaint or a question or a call connected to child protection issues into O2. That may be to do with filters; it may be to do with happy-slapping or text bullying. That is the sort of level of calls we are getting into O2 at this point. Q146 Chairman: Steven, you were saying that you sat at home using your iPhone, but you were using a wireless router rather than a mobile network. Presumably, if that is the way most people are going to access the Internet, using a mobile phone, that is something which you cannot filter at all. Mr Bartholomew: Yes, that is correct; not from a mobile network perspective. Q147 Chairman: The ISP could. Mr Bartholomew: Exactly. The only way in which we could do it would be to seek to convince or persuade, one way or the other, either the ISPs or the handset manufacturers that they need to put controls in place. That could be either through commercial agreements potentially with some of those companies or just by sharing the learnings and the experiences that we have had in the mobile space and convincing them that, in order to maintain public confidence, actions need to be taken. Q148 Chairman: It could be done another way. We took evidence from Microsoft, who explained to us the parental control systems that are built into Windows Vista and therefore are at PC level in the software. Could you not therefore have a similar protection built into the handset? Mr Bartholomew: That is the option; it is for the handset manufacturer. At the moment, as I say, the only action that has been taken over the last six years has been by the mobile network operators, the likes of O2 and Orange and T-Mobile. Where we need to see things move forward in the future is manufacturers of devices but also the wi-fi providers taking steps as well. It is not just manufacturers of mobile phones, it is also those other devices that do not even come near the mobile network and the iPod touch or the PSP is a good example of those devices. They are not mobile phones, but they are devices that you can access a web through. Q149 Chairman: Let us look at the major manufacturers, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, Ericsson and Motorola. Are they putting parental control systems into their handsets? Ms Kramer: We are seeing more and more of the handset manufacturers embedding content within their handsets and they will bypass our parental controls, or they may well do. We are just seeing it right now but to my knowledge they do not have parental control. Q150 Chairman: Do you think they should be doing more in this area? Ms Kramer: Yes I do. Everyone within the value chain should take responsibility for protecting their customers. Q151 Chairman: So, is that something that the network operators are talking to the handset manufacturers about? Mr MacLeod: Yes it is, but we are just one voice really and we are one market. Q152 Chairman: We are another voice. Do you think we should be talking to the mobile manufacturers? Ms Kramer: Yes. Mr MacLeod: Yes. Mr Bartholomew: No problem. Q153 Rosemary McKenna: You all seem to be saying that the key is controlling access but implying that there is no way to stop the harmful content being out there. Is that right? Mr MacLeod: It was not exactly harmful content but last week we saw two examples with the drugs report and with Prince Harry of how little control we have. Despite the entire British establishment, the population, not wanting something to be published on the Internet, it was. So the answer to your question is no, we are not in a position to control and prevent all harmful content appearing on the Internet. Q154 Rosemary McKenna: Providing a control on all the devices is the only way to actually prevent children and young adults from accessing that harmful content. Ms Kramer: Access control does help but that is a technical solution. Hand in hand with that it is about media literacy, it is about educating the children, parents and teachers to teach them how to go onto the Internet safely. You have to look at both those aspects together. Mr Bartholomew: If you start with the illegal content, if the content is deemed to be illegal, we can and we do take action to prevent that either being posted or people accessing it. If it is not illegal, there are things that can be done. The companies that host that material can ask themselves whether they are happy being associated with this kind of content, whether they are happy for this content to be available to the public over the Internet via their service. Q155 Rosemary McKenna: Does that apply also to the virtual sites? Mr Bartholomew: It applies not just to operators; it applies to content companies like YouTube or others. Our personal take on this is that we do not want to be associated with harmful content, we do not want to be associated with content that glamorises violence or gangs, so we will not allow it and if we see it, we will take it down on the sites that we actually operate ourselves. For the rest of the Internet, because we only own or have control over a very small piece of the Internet, our answer is to give customers the ability just to turn that part of the Internet off. Q156 Rosemary McKenna: Is there nothing that governments can do to say to companies that they must not allow this content or access to this? I know there is good in the virtual world, but it is the harm that is done. Mr MacLeod: It is incredibly frustrating I know to have to wrestle with this problem but you have just said it: taking the good with the bad, overwhelmingly the opportunities and the information, the opening up, the media plurality that is provided through the Internet are a fantastically positive thing. The flip-side is that we do have these extremely tricky issues to deal with and if stuff gets published in Vanuatu and what have you, there is no way that we are going to be able to prevent that. It is about learning as individuals how best to go, to use the Internet safely using such tools as are available, but they also have their limitations. It is about developing your own skill and sense of personal responsibility. Q157 Chairman: May I finally just turn to media literacy? You have laid great stress on educating parents to be aware of the regulatory structure that is in place, the parental controls that are in place, can you say what you are doing to contribute to greater awareness in media literacy? Mr Bartholomew: You heard evidence last week from Heather Rabbatts from the Media Literacy Taskforce. O2 is a signatory of their media literacy charter and we see, across industry, an awful lot being done in terms of trying to educate customers; leaflets, dedicated websites, we have our own dedicated child protection website and I know that T-Mobile does as well. Orange does some great work on DVDs for schools. We have recently just co-funded the new child net DVD for the DCSF to send out into school as well. In terms of education material, in a way the problem is not too little information but perhaps almost too much information, too much fragmentation and not enough focus and the challenge is how we take all this different information from people like Microsoft, from T-Mobile, from Orange, from ourselves and bring it all together, make it readily available to the public. That is where we see Government playing more of an active role. I endorse the recommendation that Microsoft made to the Committee last week which is that there is a bigger role for Government in this space and perhaps there is more that we can do to assist Government. Q158 Chairman: But just within the mobile operators, do you all do your own thing or do you actually come together to support initiatives? Mr Bartholomew: A bit of both it is fair to say. Ms Church: A bit of both. Mr MacLeod: We have done both. Ms Church: We are all currently working on a European schools net project which will see education going out into all the schools for the teachers on how to get these messages across. Q159 Chairman: We have also heard that some have actually questioned whether this is having any effect at all. It is all very well trying to put this message out but the people in a sense who most need to hear it are the ones who are probably least able to. The children from households where there is almost no parental responsibility are probably the ones in greatest need of protection. Mr MacLeod: I have heard that comment made too and this may just be a time factor. It is all relatively new and it is also relatively new that this Internet protection has been part of the formal education process. Let us give it a bit of time there and let us keep going with our three-tracked approach which is: through the formal education; through parental education; through us doing what we can to educate our own customers. The Ofcom media literacy audit, which was published about 18 months ago, did reveal that things were not quite as bad as one might think, bearing in mind all the comments one sees in the press and what have you. We are starting from a reasonably high base. Quite a lot of material is frankly quite dull to look at and parents have got better things to do some of the time, but nonetheless, if we keep plugging away at it, we will improve people's skill levels, we will improve people's knowledge about how to go about using the Internet safely. Keep plugging away at it rather than having a dramatic change to what we are currently doing. Ms Kramer: We all do provide information on our websites, provide parents with tips and advice so that they can speak to their children about how to use their mobiles responsibly and we do know that people are going onto those sites and we know which categories they are looking at and what they are viewing. So they are interested and it is not just a case of us putting it out there and not actually monitoring what goes on. Q160 Chairman: But it is not just a question of putting it up on a website and hoping somebody is going to come and look at it: you do actually need to do a bit more to promote it. Ms Kramer: Yes and we do that where we can. Q161 Mr Sanders: Would it be possible at the point of the bill to produce with the bill each month the websites that were visited by the child? I am sure in most cases, if it is the parent that is paying the bill, that the parent could then see at the end of the month which websites had been visited. Ms Church: On the PC, yes, is the answer to that one. If you have the parental controls installed then you can see what sites any particular account has accessed. Q162 Mr Sanders: But you cannot do it through the mobile. Ms Church: I am not aware of it on the mobile. Mr MacLeod: Within the device there is a history thing, but the vast majority of mobile customers of course are on the pre-pay tariffs and they do not tend to get bills. Q163 Philip Davies: The Chairman asked earlier if you were working together or doing your own thing and you said a bit of both and most people will probably say that you should do more of this, working together on this kind of thing. Can I argue the exact opposite of that? Can I argue that you do not work together on these things in the sense that you should be in competition with each other; you should not be working with each other. Working together on these things will mean that you will go at the pace of the slowest and that you will all be quite comfortable with that because nobody will be doing anything more than you are doing. Can I urge you not to work together and actually compete with each other? That will drive up standards a lot faster by competing with each other than it will by some sort of cosy relationship where "We will not do this, if you do not do that", which will actually hold things back. Mr Bartholomew: That is probably why we said we are doing a bit of both because there are certain things that we do collaborate on, they do take time, they are worth doing, but we are seeing choices and decisions by different companies to approach the issue in different ways. Believe me, we can compete vigorously on the high street for each other's customers but we try to set aside some of those differences in this area because it is such an important area of public interest. Ultimately we will do our own thing where it is right for our own individual base of customers. Mr MacLeod: It is a fair point you make, but there are certainly disadvantages to everybody just doing it themselves. For one thing, we could not have established the Independent Mobile Classification Body unless there had been some sort of pan-industry agreement to do something like that. The other thing is that the more you multiply the messages and make them subtly different and what have you, the risk is that the consumer just gets more and more confused. If we can have simple, clear messages and not too many of them hammering through loud and clear, that does serve the consumer a lot better and the European Schools Net thing is a pan-European initiative because this is obviously not just a problem that manifests itself in the UK. Chairman: We have no more questions. Thank you. |