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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 353-vi House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE culture, media and sport committee
harmful content on the internet and in video games
TUESDAY 13 mAY 2008 MR ED RICHARDS and MR STEWART PURVIS
MR DAVID COOKE, MR PETE JOHNSON, MR PETER DARBY and MR LAURIE HALL Evidence heard in Public Questions 504 - 576
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday 13 May 2008 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Philip Davies Mr Nigel Evans Mr Mike Hall Alan Keen Adam Price Mr Adrian Sanders Helen Southworth ________________ Memorandum submitted by Ofcom
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Ed Richards, Chief Executive and Mr Stewart Purvis, Partner for Content and Standards, Ofcom, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good morning. Welcome to this further session of the Committee's inquiry into the content on the internet and in electronic games. This morning we are focussing on the regulators and I would like to welcome to the first part Ed Richards, the Chief Executive of Ofcom and Steward Purvis, the Partner for Content and Standards. Adrian Sanders is going to ask the first question. Q504 Mr Sanders: Evidence of direct harm from exposure to inappropriate material on the internet appears to be limited. What evidence underlies your approach to regulating access to potentially harmful or offensive content in broadcast material or film? Mr Richards: The reason I think we focus on broadcasting in the way we do as opposed to the internet - which is obviously an approach we are developing now - is because broadcasting has been the established mass medium in society for many, many years now. I think its broader impact on society has been debated but is widely accepted. In terms of the research and understanding of harm and issues of the impact of broadcasting, as with the internet that has been hotly debated over many, many years. There is a very long established body of research about the role broadcasting plays. There are still disputes about the impact and the question of harm, but I think as a result of all those debates and all that research over many years - many of which have taken place in here - we have a fairly settled view on how we want to approach broadcasting. That is clearly in contrast with the evolving set of policy or arrangements that we have for internet content. Mr Purvis: Clearly there is an ethical problem in really detailed research in the sense that we are not going to ask children to be put through various tests to see what the impact of various potentially harmful content on them is and that is inevitably a quite proper inhibition on research. The consensus seems to be on the balance of probability that there is a potential harm to children from exposure to certain content and very few people have actually challenged that. One thing I would say about broadcasting and online content is that clearly we are the leading regulators on broadcast content; we do not regulate online content. We have other responsibilities in the online world in terms of the roles of the ISPs and other services, but we do not regulate the content. You could ask where is that heading. At the moment broadcasting has come from a background of being a mass media; the internet has come from being a what is sometimes called narrow-casting. They inevitably are getting closer together and the European directive, the AVMS Directive, identifies the use of video online as an area where there is a cross-over and therefore we are working with government to understand the implications of that. The consensus has not yet been reached nor is there any kind of conventional wisdom that the overlap between broadcasting and online is so great now that there has to be one regulatory regime for content in both. If that situation did occur - and it may occur - Parliament will almost have a choice which in a sense toughening the regulation on the internet or actually loosening the regulation on broadcasting. One should not presume that Parliament would actually want to do that if that moment ever comes. Q505 Mr Sanders: Do you treat broadcasting differently from online broadcasting? Mr Purvis: We treat it in the sense that every day I see a list of complaints about broadcasting because that is what we are asked by Parliament to do. I do not see a list of complaints about content; those complaints go either to the websites themselves or the ISPs or, in a more serious area, they would go to people like CEOP and Internet Watch Foundation. Our role is really media literacy which is something Parliament asked us to do which is to try to help the public understand their choices in these worlds rather than to specifically regulate the content. Mr Richards: The answer in one sense is that we regulate it in a profoundly different way. The changes over the last five years, including the discussions around the Byron recommendations and so on, show the distinction beginning to blur. It shows the introduction of the idea of self-regulation for the internet - which is the first step doing something around internet content - and equally a recognition that there are different tiers of regulation even within broadcasting. There is much tighter regulation for the public service broadcasters; you have multiple tiers of regulation as opposed to the generality of cable and satellite channels which enjoy a relatively freer environment. That said, as we sit here today, there is still a structural difference between the way we regulate licensed broadcasters and the way we do not regulate providers of content on the internet. Of course the overlap which Stewart has talked about is richer again because all the broadcasters are now offering their content online and that is regulated because it is begun in the broadcast regime. You have the newspapers offering a great deal of content online and that is subject to the PCC codes. Then you have another array of content providers who are not regulated in any way. That I think is the description of the terrain that we are currently in as far as regulation of media content is concerned. Mr Purvis: We should never forget that there are at least ten pieces of legislation which apply across this sector so in a sense Parliament has set forth a whole series of other ways - call it regulation or not - but it is not as if there is a completely wild west on the internet; the internet content creators are subject to the law of the land like any other content creators. Q506 Mr Sanders: There is a concern that the watershed, for example, which is quite clear on broadcast television but if you can access programmes again at any time in a 24 hour period on the internet then clearly the watershed is meaningless if children are able to use BBC iPlayer or any other play again facility. Mr Purvis: If you look at the BBC iPlayer it is a very good example. When you register there it immediately asks you if you are over 16 and there is a parental guideline or parental check which can be put in. The question which arises is: are children as likely as parents to understand it or more likely to know how to override it? In a sense, what is new? Parents always had responsibilities in the old media world but they were quite simple, physical responsibilities where you said to children, "Go to bed, it is past nine o'clock" or where you said, "I'm not going to take you to that film because it is not the right certificate". Technology has now got in the middle and has arguably disadvantaged parents of my age group compared to parents who grew up with the internet in the sense that all our research - that is one of our major areas of responsibility here - shows that crudely parents are half as likely to understand the internet as their children. That may be a generational issue which may change, but that is the situation at the moment. Broadcasters like the BBC are aware of that issue but of course there are sites where you can watch programmes where there is no parental control. Q507 Mr Sanders: If you accept that children can now access material that in the past was easier for parents to regulate in the sense that they would go to bed before nine o'clock, does that change the way that you apply your regulatory function to broadcast material? Mr Purvis: It has not so far. People have asked exactly what you are asking, what is the logical position, not just to do with the internet but even to do with time-shift television and if you use what is called PVR to record a programme and as a parent you record a programme after nine o'clock if you do not put a parental lock on it your children could come and watch it at six o'clock the next day. That is another example of where the watershed is constantly being questioned, but actually it goes back to my point that at the moment when they fully converge what would you do? Would you actually say that there is somehow a nine o'clock watershed online, which is impractical, or would you have to review the nine o'clock watershed on television? That is ultimately a decision for Parliament. Mr Richards: As soon as you move to an on-demand world these notions that we have all grown up with are very difficult because the inherent nature of on-demand is a world in which the idea of a watershed is absurd, it is impossible. It very quickly brings you back to the controls around the access to that piece of software or the controls associated with, for example, a gaming console. Is it possible for parents to police the access of their children to certain content by using that software or that hardware in a particular way? I think in all honesty that is the territory we are heading into. It is very difficult to imagine us regulating the broadcast stream in a particular different way unless we were to say that we are now going to stop certain content even after nine o'clock, which is almost unimaginable. Otherwise the content will be there and once it is there and offered in an on-demand world you can access it whenever you want to. Therefore I think we have to accept that the regulator's role is slightly different in that world and the issue or concern of the importance of parental responsibility and parental knowledge and awareness of these issues is one of the important points that our research that Stewart referred to draws out. Q508 Helen Southworth: Ofcom has responsibilities under Section 3 of the Communication Act 2003 to ensure that radio and television audiences are protected from harmful and offensive material. Is that a key concern for you? Is this something that you wake up in the morning and you are going out there and do it? Are you scrupulous about enforcing that? Mr Richards: Is that one of the important duties that we have? Unequivocally. Do I wake up every single morning worrying about that and that alone? There are a lot of other things I worry about as well. Is it a matter of important debate within Ofcom? Yes, it is. Do we get complaints about those sorts of things? Yes, we do. Mr Purvis: Part of my brain does meet your requirement in the morning and that is because there are almost every day issues which come out of the flow of complaints and also what we call targeted monitoring which, if we think an issue is arising, we will view the channels. It is worth saying that the part of Ofcom for which I am responsible oversees 2000 television and radio outlets so it is not practical that we have a team monitoring those 2000 outlets but we know enough about the media scene to know where there might be problems. Frankly you would be impressed if you were to see a team at work by their conscientiousness and also their open-mindedness as to whether a code should be reviewed, has something happened which means we need a consultation period? Every time we review a code or think of changing one we consult widely. It is very important and it is done professionally. Q509 Helen Southworth: In your opinion is it really important to the public? Mr Purvis: I think it is. To give you a couple of examples recently, there has been quite a lot of debate about what is an acceptable level of violence in Eastenders. We came up with an adjudication from one of our panels that basically said that a fight in Eastenders went beyond what should be appropriate before the watershed. You may have seen that the BBC itself put out a statement in the last few days about a sequence on Eastenders where somebody was buried alive. These are issues which really connect with viewers. Q510 Helen Southworth: It is certainly my understanding from my constituents' perspective that that is what they expect, but I was really confused by some of the answers we were getting before because I did not get that sense at all about the internet. Is this issue more that it is not your responsibility and it is going to be very difficult? Mr Richards: The internet is not our responsibility. I think we were trying to draw a distinction in the earlier questions between what we are responsible for in broadcasting - which is very clear, and we undertake it, for example, in the way that Stewart was describing - and the internet in which we simply do not have those responsibilities. Q511 Helen Southworth: Part of what we need is the specialist experience of people who are working in these fields with people with media to know how these things can be applied to the internet. If the sense we get is either that this is too difficult or this is not properly the responsibility of anybody other than the individual then that is perhaps very different. Mr Purvis: I can reassure you on that front. Although it is not part of our direct responsibilities our route into this is via media literacy, it is about increasing people's understanding of their choices as citizens and consumers to express their concerns. That is why we submitted a large body of evidence to the Byron review and Dr Byron incorporated some of our suggestions in her plan, if you like. The key to this really is to bring the stakeholders together in the UK Council as is suggested by Dr Byron. What is our role in that? Two roles have been suggested, one is of research because I think we would claim to have a large body of research on this. Secondly as an audit function: can we in some way advise the various stakeholders? There is a third possible which is: could we help in some coordination of codes? There is already an informal coordination of codes between regulators (you will hear later on from some of them). It is not as if we are in any sort of territorial battle, we actually get on rather well, and as a result for instance the Broadband Stakeholder Group coordinated a series of discussions about the code and we had an input into that; our colleagues at the Press Complaints Commission who have the self-regulatory responsibility for video on newspapers websites, we talk to them about the judgements that are made. There is a connection. The question is really what is going to flow from the UK Council? Are we going to see the kind of progress that Dr Byron envisages? I think we would hope so. Or is it just going to become a talking shop and we may have some small advisory role? We would welcome that. Mr Richards: Do we think this is an issue in terms of internet content? Absolutely. Have we made that clear through our evidence? Yes, I think we have. Do we think that the right next step is effective self-regulation? I think we do on balance; that is the right way forward. Is it absolutely critical that during the next 12 months we see real progress and we see effective self-regulation emerge? Absolutely. Otherwise I think there will then be a whole new set of questions emerge about what is the appropriate way of doing it. Are we in a position and ready to help with that self-regulation to make sure it is effective through the expertise we have in broadcasting, through the expertise we have in understanding harm and offence, through the development of the voluntary code and through are research? Absolutely, and we are ready to do that as the Council would have us do. We think this is a very big issue and we have a lot of expertise to help. The path that has been recommended is a self-regulatory one. We need to see if that works and we hope that it does work as a first step. Q512 Chairman: To a young person accessing video content either on television or through the net - probably through YouTube - there is not a great deal of difference; they regard both as pretty much a normal activity. However, you are describing a world where the video content which happens to be broadcast on television is subject to considerable regulation with you debating whether or not a violent sequence in Eastenders went too far at 7.30 in the evening, yet on YouTube there is no control whatsoever. When we talked to Google we discovered that a scene of a gang rape was allowed to go through because some people did not think it was too objectionable. That decision was overruled eventually when somebody else came to look at it. Is it not curious that for a young person there is not a great deal of difference in the content and yet one is subject to great regulation and the other appears not to be regulated at all? Mr Richards: I think for a young person it probably is curious and I think that is why the current set of arrangements cannot persist. I do not think they can persist. That is why I made the remarks about the importance of the self-regulatory proposals over the next 12 to 24 months. It is very important in our minds that they are effective. Take the scene that you describe, what are the weaknesses we see at the moment? The weaknesses we see at the moment are of precisely that form. In issues of that kind or content of that kind, we are not clear what the take down procedures are, we are not clear what the complaints procedures are, they are not transparent and therefore we do not have anything even approaching an effective self-regulatory model for this. In our view we have to do that quickly over the next 12 months to ensure that that internet world which the child that you are describing occupies comes closer to the broadcast world which we are more familiar with where we make judgments about harm and offence on a regular consistent basis. I think it is very, very important that that does take place. The test for us will be how much progress is made over the next 12 months? Does industry step up to the plate or not? Can we examine in 12 or 18 months' time effectively whether that has taken place? In our view if that has not taken place for precisely the reasons you say then you will have this huge disjuncture between the two regimes and I think some very serious questions will have to be answered. Q513 Chairman: Would that potentially involve Parliament and legislation? Mr Richards: If you take the two extremes of the broadcast world being regulated in a way which actually has widespread consensus and support across our society (people have different views about different instances but the general approach has widespread support) to a world where internet video is becoming much more mainstream - it is in bedrooms, it is living rooms, it is videos and not just text - that onward march continues and if we imagine that onward march continues but the regulatory approach or the systems and procedures around complaints, around take down, around harm and offence stay where they are today, then one might say that is likely to be an untenable position. Mr Purvis: A traditional difference between broadcasting and online, if you look at a lot of the early regulation around broadcasting it was because it was coming into people's homes, a mass audience but into people's homes. The first generation of computers was seen almost as office equipment and they have gradually become more and more a domestic appliance; now there are screens which combine the broadcast signal and, if you like, an online signal so they have absolutely come into the homes. This is another reason why it seems to us that self-regulation really has to mean self-regulation and not in a sense an excuse for lack of action. Q514 Helen Southworth: You are focussing on self-regulation there but you have also talked in terms of seeing action within the next 12 months seeing some significant progress, seeing real change. If you are going to be able to measure that to see if it is has actually happened you are going to have to have some indicators in your own head as to what is acceptable progress. For example, what would you expect to see in terms of take down time for a serious complaint? Mr Richards: That is something we would want to discuss with industry. We would want to hear the views that people on the Council would articulate about that. I would be nervous about giving you a specific time but I think the first thing we need to have without any doubt is transparency about what the take down procedures are; I do not think we have that. The second thing we would need to have is a well-understood code and credible timeframe for take down, particularly once notification has happened. Mr Purvis: I would re-enforce Ed's nervousness. The Council has not even started yet. There were a lot of discussions within the Byron review about how the Council will be structured ----- Q515 Helen Southworth: Can I just interrupt you there? Can I just ask for your personal opinions then? If there was a video of the type the Chairman was describing there, how fast would you expect that to be taken down? Would you want to have a discussion with the Council about it or would you want it off? Mr Richards: I would want it taken down very promptly and you would expect any responsible company to take it down very promptly. I think the concern that a lot of parents have in this area at the moment is because in the absence of transparency and in the absence of fact there is a sense that sometimes material of that kind is not taken down promptly. A similar concern exists on the copyright front. This is a serious set of questions but the direct answer to your question is that you would expect something like that to be taken down very promptly indeed. Q516 Mr Evans: Ed, should you just be standing on the top of Ofcom headquarters shouting to the Government, "Give us the powers"? Mr Richards: No. Q517 Mr Evans: You want to wait 12 months whilst more damaging material gets distributed on the internet and then you will see how self-regulation does not work and then eventually you will get the powers. It is absurd. You have just admitted that the nine o'clock watershed is dead; you have to have it on broadcasting but effectively it is dead. Anybody who wants to watch anything after nine o'clock at four o'clock in the afternoon can watch a lot of it now on their internet. Then you say that it is a bit difficult to do anything with the internet because it is a global thing, it is very complicated and you have no power over that. It sounds as if you are surrendering. Mr Richards: Definitely not. We are definitely not surrendering; it is not a word in my vocabulary. It is important to remember that the watershed is not dead. Despite the huge rise in the use of the internet people in this country are still watching pretty much as much television as they have always watched, I think it is about 24 hours on average a week. People are using other time to access the internet. Television is and remains remarkably resilient as a medium and still hugely important. The watershed in television terms is still very important and I think will remain so for some years. We have a new challenge though which is the on-demand world and the online world and we have to meet that challenge. Are we surrendering? Do we or should we be calling for extra powers? I do not think that is the right response yet. It may be in due course; it does not feel the right response at the moment. The reason for this is that our instinct has always been and remains to regulate in the least intrusive, least bureaucratic way possible. In this instance there is a real opportunity for self regulation to be effective so we should not start by assuming we should put statutory powers in place, we should not start by giving us a great heavy set of powers. It may be necessary in due course but let us see if we can do it in a less intrusive and less bureaucratic way first. Why might that be possible? It might be possible because I think the mood on this issue has changed; I hope it has changed. What do I mean by that? I mean that I think there is now widespread public concern; there is concern that this Committee has expressed; there is concern that Dr Byron has expressed and many others. What that means is that significant companies who are responsible for a very substantial proportion of where young people are going online will recognise the responsibility they have and recognise that it is in their interests to do something effective in this area and to work together with the National Council to ensure that there is effective self-regulation. I am optimistic that it can work and that self-regulation is the first correct step. As ever with these things you keep an open mind and a watching brief to see whether that is an accurate forecast or not. Q518 Mr Evans: Would you be happy with a ten year old watching Shameless? Mr Richards: Parents have to make their own judgment on this. Shameless is on after the watershed; the episodes of Shameless vary. I think ultimately those decisions are matters for parents, to be honest. The issue for us is: is Shameless in the right place in the schedule? If it is after the watershed, is it reasonable dramatic material? I think it is; I think it is very, very good. Is it signalled to parents that they know what to expect after that time? I think it is, it is well known. Q519 Mr Evans: You know very well that when youngsters go into their bedrooms and they have access to the internet, they would be able to download all sorts of material including Channel 4's productions, therefore the parents are not shoulder surfing. Mr Richards: Shameless takes us right back to the example of the iPlayer that Stewart used. So long as a parent is ensured that the age above 16 or not has been expressed as a preference then Shameless download should be limited or controlled by that. Q520 Mr Evans: How many parents do you think do that? Mr Purvis: Whose responsibility is that at the end of the day? We cannot shirk responsibility as parents; we have not shirked it over sending them to bed at nine o'clock so why somehow should it be thought acceptable for parents to shirk the responsibilities in an online area? Maybe we do not understand it as well as some of the children, but that is not a good reason either if you think about it, is it? Mr Richards: We are not exercising a judgment about whether any individual ten year old is or is not watching Shameless and we cannot; we have never been able to and we never will be able to. Q521 Mr Evans: Part of your responsibility under the Communication Act 2003 is to make the most of services on the internet and to learn how to manage the risks to which they are exposed when online. That is for consumers. Tell us then, how much money did you spend last year on telling parents how they were able to control what their kids could be watching on the internet? Mr Richards: This is our media literacy role. Q522 Mr Evans: You know the kids are more intelligent about computers than their parents so I assume you are spending significant sums of money on educating parents on how they can control the risks for their youngsters online. Mr Richards: We have a duty to promote media literacy along with the BBC, not a duty to deliver it. We do absolutely everything we can. As a matter of fact, we are given half a million pounds by the Department for media literacy. This year we have doubled that in order to spend more because we think it is a significant priority; we are spending more than double what we receive in grant in aid because the Board recognise this as an important priority. We have established a number of partnerships and activities with other organisations. Mr Purvis: We prompted the idea that there should be a BSI kite mark for internet software filtering, something that had not happened before. Together in partnership with, for instance, the Home Office, we were able to help bring this about. That did not cost us a lot of money but there was a lot of initiative and a lot of enterprise behind that and it was welcomed by the partners. When the launch of that kite mark happens relatively soon and there are products that people can buy, that will be good use of public money to help promote an understanding by parents of how they can actually install something that makes a difference to their own children's consumption of media. We are not funded by government to run a poster campaign for, if you like, the kite mark or for the internet filters, but we can be an enabler that actually promotes a process and helps a process go along in which stakeholders around the Council table, for instance, can actually take positive steps. Have we spent a lot of money on doing something to make a practical effect? No. Will it have it have a practical effect? Yes. Mr Richards: We are definitely not the right body to deliver a mass campaign for promoting media literacy across the UK. That is not what we do. Even if you gave us the money for it I would say that we are the wrong organisation to do it. We are not equipped to do it; we do not have the skills to do it; we do not have the reach to do it. I think somebody probably does need to do that but I do not think it is a regulator like Ofcom. The duty to promote it and use our position at the apex of the communications industry is a sensible thing, but delivering that sort of mass campaign to bring parents' understanding and literacy of these issues up such that they can meet their responsibilities effectively, that is not an appropriate role for us. Q523 Mr Evans: I remember when John and I were on one of the broadcasting bills and Gwyneth Dunwoody was the formidable chairman of that. I mentioned the internet several times in one of my speeches and she said, "Sit down. I do not want to hear the mention of the internet again; this is about broadcasting." You know where I am coming to: convergence is already there. It is not just YouTube, there are a number of other sites that are up there which have near broadcast quality pictures. You have put yourselves in an impossible and an absurd position. I do not understand why you are not allowed to control what is basically broadcasting on the internet. Mr Richards: We have not put ourselves in any position; Parliament put us in the position we are in. It was Parliament that debated whether Ofcom should have a role in the internet or not and it was Parliament that decided that we should not. If you go back to when that legislation was passed the mood at the time was that the internet was an extraordinary new phenomenon with amazing innovations taking place and the consensus of opinion was that the last thing that should be done was that it should be regulated by anybody. "Let a thousand flowers bloom" was the zeitgeist of the day. The debate we are having now is because the world has moved on and rather than being a new phenomenon that no-one really understood and was purely about innovation, it is much more mainstream so it is bringing with it mainstream concerns. That is why we are having the discussion we are having. You should be very clear that we did not put ourselves in any position in relation to this at all. We are absolutely duty bound to carry out what we are asked to do by Parliament and we were not asked to do anything in relation to the internet content. We obviously do regulate the networks that carry the internet and do so quite extensively. Q524 Mr Evans: You are just waiting for the tipping point. Warp speeds are going to be with us very shortly and increasingly people are going to be watching their entertainment via a tube. Mr Purvis: We should again mention this European directive which comes into effect at the end of next year by which what are called TV-like services on the internet fall under a broadcasting regime. Even if Parliament did not ask us in 2003 to look at this, the European Parliament is aware of this issue and the situation may change. We are doing the job that we are asked to do; we are doing it with not a lot of money and I would say that we are doing it rather effectively. Q525 Mr Hall: What are the implications for you with the EU directive on Audio Visual Media Services? Will we end up having three systems or just one? Mr Richards: The main implication is that it brings into the formal regulatory orbit what are described as TV-like services, in other words content on the internet which passes the definition in legislation of what a TV-like service is. For the first time ever that will bring those services into a gentle formal regulatory orbit. The expectation is that that will be addressed through co-regulation, that is a form of self-regulation but which is backed with statutory powers. That is, I think, the single most important change. Mr Purvis: I think that sums it up. Obviously there are going to be consultations ahead on what exactly is a TV-like service; let us not hide from that rather important issue. However, it does signal a change in the attitude of legislators towards this issue and it will be very interesting to see how it develops. Obviously it has wider implications as some of the case law that comes out of that unveils. Q526 Mr Hall: Can you explain this concept of co-regulation which is self-regulation and statutory regulation at the same time? That sounds like an oxymoron to me. Mr Richards: It may well be an oxymoron but the way I think about it is that there is a continuum really and there are three big points on that continuum. There is statutory regulation which is what we do for broadcast; there is self-regulation at the other end which is essentially voluntarist so industry agrees voluntarily to create a regulatory code; co-regulation is the point in between the two where there is a statutory basis for the regulation but the approach taken is one of co-regulation, regulating with the industry so the bulk of the work, but the drawing up of the codes possibly with advice from ourselves will be undertaken by an industry based body. So it is somewhere between the two. Mr Purvis: It is worth adding that sometimes the co-regulatory bodies are actually areas where we, for instance, had a statutory responsibility and we have decided that it is best done in a co-regulatory way by creating some new body. In that sort of situation the default power falls back to the statutory regulator but in all these models it seems to me the default power falls back to Parliament. If Parliament does not think that any of these regimes are working it has options. Q527 Mr Hall: We do have to have some clear direction. We might have a dual system, we might have three systems operating. When you have plurality you have a real problem actually enforcing whatever it is you want to do. Mr Purvis: When I took up this job - I have only been here about five months - I was asked to write an article and I worked out that there were at least ten content regulators in the UK and I ended by saying, "Is that a problem or is it a solution?" The answer is that you could argue it either way. You could argue that the devolved responsibility to co- and self-regulators is part of a wider regulatory framework which we are in favour of, or you could argue that there are too many people disagreeing about things. I think I have reassured you that there no fundamental disagreements about the codes between these various bodies. The issue we have at the back of our minds at all times is public awareness: do the public actually know where to go to complain? Do they know about these ten different organisations, one for mobile, one for video, on-demand et cetera? That is where media literacy comes in to play as well. We are not just interested in the regulatory talk; we are really concerned about the public's awareness and of its rights to complain to the right body. Q528 Mr Hall: On that particular issue, have you had any complaints about the Darren Brown Trick or Treat programme on Channel 4 on Friday night where there was the potential of a rabbit going to be electrocuted live on television? Mr Purvis: I am told that there was a psychologist or an animal psychologist on standby, but there is an answer to that point. Q529 Mr Hall: I have had a number of letters already about it. Mr Richards: If you pass them on to us we will treat them as complaints and take it forward. Q530 Adam Price: It is not just content that is potentially harmful but also the advertising or the marketing material that is bundled in with that content. Is there any evidence that some of the advertisers that have been shut out of the broadcast world have migrated to online platforms in targeting children? Is that true? Should we be worried about it? What potentially could be done about it? Mr Richards: The kind of advertisers who might have targeted children in the past on broadcasting sites have been shut out of that for a long time so it would probably be difficult to identify whether they moved, but that does not undermine the general point that you are making which is: is there an issue that is emerging about appropriate targeting of advertising? I think the answer to that must be that there is an issue and there is a concern. It is absolutely one of those things that in the question about whether self-regulation is going to be effective or not it has to be on the list. Mr Purvis: I think one of our five "must be reviewed by the Council" suggestions to the Council was what we call a code of practice for online advertising. That is the prominence we give it. As I understand it retail websites fall outside the definition of advertising in the sense that in-store displays are not actually counted as advertising, so there are issues around that as well. As far as I am aware there is no suggestion that that has been abused by retailers, but it is certainly a window via which some retailers could produce harmful content, somehow bypassing these codes of practice. It is an area which needs consideration. Mr Richards: I think it is a very serious issue and it takes us right back to the big question of how will the companies involve respond to this. It is clearly something that society would rightly be concerned about but it also seems to me something that could lend itself to effective self-regulation. Will it be? We will have to wait and see. Q531 Adam Price: In our next session we are going to concentrate on video games. Which of the spectrum of different models of regulation that you outlined in an earlier response do you think should be applied to the video games sector? Mr Richards: We have not studied the video games sector; it is slightly outwith our remit really. I think our instinct on this would probably be close to the response Stewart gave a few minutes ago which is that what matters here is transparency and clarity for parents. If the issue here is concern about some very violent games or unsuitable games being available and accessed in an unsupervised or unclear way by young children, the test is: do people know what the ratings are? Do they trust those ratings? Do they understand where they can identify them and see them? That, for example, is where we are with the watershed; it is well-known and well-understood, everybody is clear and that in a sense is the test of this issue. Q532 Adam Price: Your instinct would be that effective self-regulation - which is the phrase that you use - should be able to produce that kind of transparency. Mr Richards: We honestly have not looked at it, but you would start there and if you have good reasons not to believe that then you would move a step up. Mr Purvis: I think basically you should never underestimate the power of transparency. It is a phrase that is used a lot but people have to answer direct questions about their systems and their methods and about such things as how long does it take to take things down. Before I took up this job I was at a conference where I asked a social network site how many content monitors they had per million users and frankly the number was not very high. Transparency on resource issues like that I think would really open up some important issues which the Council could then follow through on. Q533 Alan Keen: I have not heard about the rabbit being electrocuted by some people might be offended by rabbits being eaten on television, not alive of course. What it does to show is that, as you have said already, it is up to parents to make the decisions. You have already said that it should not be your responsibility. It is an enormous role to have, but how should it be done? It is pretty obvious from some of the facts we have been given that the majority of parents do not understand the internet, full stop. I agree with you, whose role should it be and what are you doing to pass it on to someone else? Mr Richards: What we have done is work very extensively, provided a lot of research and evidence to the Byron review. We saw that as an opportunity to express our concerns in this area. We did that. I think the answer to your question is that the Byron review is in the right territory, it is a big self-regulation opportunity and challenge and the National Council needs to meet that. There is a big educational question and DCSF and the Government need to meet that opportunity. There is a big outstanding challenge for framing an overall media literacy strategy which is more focussed upon adults, so not schools but more focussed on parents and parental knowledge and, as we said earlier, we do the best job we can of our duty to promote and put extra resources into it, but delivering something like that is an outstanding question. Who is going to deliver that? How can it be effective? It is a very major challenge because you are grappling with what is a profound generational difference in an instinctive understanding of this new technology. Q534 Alan Keen: What would you like us to say in our report? Mr Richards: If I were writing your report I would put in place tough tests on the National Council and on industry to demonstrate early effectiveness of self-regulation. I would invite us to assess the effectiveness because I think we are well placed to do that in 12 to 18 months' time. Has it made a difference? Do they meet basic standards? I would place a real challenge to government in relation to the educational and younger people's side of things. I would place a challenge to government in relation to the framing and delivery of a comprehensive media literacy strategy. Q535 Alan Keen: It is clear from the inquiry so far that this is the greatest gap. Your answer earlier was that you could not give the answer yourself - and rightly so - about a decision. The vast majority of parents just do not know how to do it; the kids are miles ahead of them and will stay there. Mr Purvis: We do not know the exact knowledge of parents in general but what we believe is that part of the media literacy strategy is not just helping people understand but help them find out where they can get help. That is one of Dr Byron's recommendations about a one-stop shop. As somebody who, last week, was trying to install internet filtering software, it was not actually very simple to find out where exactly I could get some help on that issue. I think that is a major outcome that the UK Council could clarify but it has to be part of a wider strategy. There are specific things that could be done to help parents and support parents rather than just chastise parents which arguably I did earlier. In the case of iPlayer which is now part of the mainstream consumption of media in just a few weeks, it is not that complicated to do it. It actually asks you a question. The question behind that is are children more likely than parents to know how to bypass it? For every simple solution there is going to be a complication factor and we just need to understand that, but that is not a reason why we should not do the simple things. Mr Richards: I am glad Stewart added the point about the single point of contact and information. I would underline that. The self-regulation strategy, school strategy, media literacy, these are all important but it will be crucial that the typical parent knows and there is a widespread understanding of where they can go quickly and easily to get simple, straightforward advice on how to do some of these things. Some of it is relatively simple as soon as you know how to do it. It is like basic bits of DIY, it seems horrendous at the time but actually if you just follow the instructions you can do it. That will be a crucial outcome over the coming months and years. Alan Keen: I think it actually needs one person or a team of people to make the recommendations and to start to educate parents. Q536 Chairman: Before you go, can I just raise one other matter with you? Since you came to talk to us at the session we had on your Annual Report you have announced a fine on ITV for abuses of PRS. Do you see that as the end of the matter or do you think, particularly given that nobody appears to have lost their job let alone be required to face a consequence, there may be a further role for investigation by the police? Mr Richards: It certainly is not the end of the matter in the sense that we have further outstanding cases. I think ITV themselves took the decision to put into the public domain one particular case which was the British Comedy Awards; that is in our process at the moment and will be out in the coming weeks. I think there is without doubt a general question about that period which relates to the issue of corporate compliance. It is easy, I think, to identify or think about this programme by programme and that is in a sense what has happened, but my own view is that there is a broader question about the standards of overall corporate compliance in what was clearly a systemic and widespread problem. Whether that should involve the police or not is a matter for the police. In a previous case the Serious Fraud Office did contact us, did ask us for the files and information which we immediately gave them (this was the GMTV case) and to our knowledge they have not taken that particular case further. The question of whether it is a matter for the police is really a matter for them. They know what we have done; they know the issues; it is fully in the public domain. No-one could possibly have missed it so I think that is a question properly addressed to them. My own view is that there is an important outstanding question about the overall level of corporate compliance because it clearly was and I think has been recognised as a widespread systemic problem, not a single issue. Q537 Chairman: Have you transferred the files relating to your investigation of ITV to the Serious Fraud Office? Mr Purvis: They have not asked for them but all the adjudications are already in the public domain on our website. We are aware that they are aware of them and should they wish to ask for more details we are only too happy to provide them. Q538 Chairman: You do not feel you should draw their attention to some of your findings? Mr Richards: I think they are well aware of what has happened. They were in contact with us during the previous case and they are very well aware of the situation. Q539 Mr Evans: How do you know they are aware? Have they spoken to you about it? Mr Richards: They have not spoken to us about this particular case; they have spoken to us about previous cases. Q540 Mr Evans: How do you know they are aware of this case? Mr Richards: It is difficult to see how anyone could not be aware of these cases. They have an established interest in the topic because they came to us. They cannot be unaware of the situation; it is plastered over every front page. Q541 Mr Evans: Are you surprised they have not got in contact with you? Mr Richards: Last time they did not get in contact with us over night, it took a little while. Mr Purvis: Sometimes we do get an individual phone call from an individual police station as well because they have read something and they want to follow it up. If we were hiding away our findings I think you might ask why we have not handed them over, but we have not exactly hidden our findings. If I could just pick up on the other point in a non-police sense which is: does the regulatory system work? I think this issue of a system based on individual licences for channels which is where we are, life has moved on now and these channels are sometimes consolidated, there are media organisations which have a number of channels and the sanction system is based per channel but, as Ed said, actually sometimes responsibility lies at the corporate centre. We have other cases in which this is an issue. I suspect one of the lessons learned will be crudely: where does the buck stop? Should it be down to the managing director of an individual licence holder or does it lie at a corporate centre? Mr Richards: I think this is a very important issue. If Parliament were considering new legislation in this area now one of the things we would, without doubt, say to you is that the sanction system should be linked to where the real responsibility lies rather than attached to single individual licences which has been an anomaly and a constraint in relation to our meeting the seriousness of the concern in this area. No-one spotted it; it is a product of the history of ITV being a regional system. In reality these are network programmes that are running across the whole of ITV, but actually the sanction only relates to an individual licence. Mr Purvis: The issue applies not just to ITV but to other major media organisations. Q542 Adam Price: When this first came to the public domain I wrote to the Metropolitan Police asking them to investigate. They wrote back to me and said in terms that it was a matter for you, as a regulator, to refer the matter to the police. You are saying it is a matter for them. Both cannot be correct. Mr Richards: What we are not expert in is deciding whether something is a criminal offence or not. That is not what we are expert in. We are expert in deciding whether this was a breach of the broadcasting code and, if it was, setting a sanction. What the police are expert in is deciding whether something may or may not be a criminal offence. We do not want to get ourselves in the position of recommending or suggesting that something is or is not a criminal offence; it is dangerous territory for a regulator to get into. In the case of the SFO what we found in the previous case was that "who is going to tell who" as it were resolved itself perfectly happily with them making a single call to us, we gave them the files and they investigated it. That may well be what happens again on this occasion. It has found a way of resolving itself. Adam Price: Certainly there seems to be some degree of confusion on the part of some police officers and police stations. Chairman: Thank you; we need to move onto our next session. Memoranda submitted by the British Board of Film Classification and the Video Standards Council Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr David Cooke, Director and Mr Pete Johnson, Head of Policy and Business Development, British Board of Film Classification, Mr Peter Darby, Operations Manager and Mr Laurie Hall, Secretary General, Video Standards Council, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good morning. We now move to the second part of this morning's session and I would like to welcome David Cooke, the Director of the British Board of Film Classification and Pete Johnson, the Head of Policy and Business Development; and from the Video Standards Council, Peter Darby, the Operations Manager and Laurie Hall, the Secretary General. Adrian Sanders is going to begin. Q543 Mr Sanders: Do you accept the rationale underlying Dr Byron's recommendations on classification of video games? Mr Cooke: Yes, obviously subject to the views of this Committee and whatever views you reach yourselves. We certainly think the analysis starts in absolutely the right place. The need is to bring awareness up to the kind of levels we have fulfilled in DVD and that is really the starting place that I think Dr Byron followed. We think it is sensible to have a single set of symbols and obviously our preference coincides with Dr Byron's in that it is sensible to choose the BBFC's because of the degree of trust and recognition that they have and because the way we examine games means that we can provide more content information. We welcome the proposal to get us involved in games from 12 and up. Certainly on the film and DVD side there are problematic issues around the 12 border line so that seems to be a sensible place to start. We also welcome the fact that that proposal is for online games as well as physical games which are obviously going to be very important in the future. So far as online games are concerned, we are very happy to work through the PEGI Online system which is in place at the moment. We have classified some online games ourselves already but PEGI Online recognises BBFC symbols and I think we all recognise that there are extra issues with online games so it seems sensible to pool our resources on that. There are two detailed recommendations which have had some criticism, there is one about having BBFC symbols on the front of boxes and PEGI symbols on the back of boxes; people have expressed views about that. We are quite prepared to do that if people are content with it. I understand the rationale; I know that Dr Byron was keen not to lower the profile of PEGI too much within the UK. Probably the recommendation that causes us the most difficulty in principle is the notion of using BBFC symbols for the 3+ and 7+ games which we would not ourselves examine. We are always nervous about the idea of putting our symbols to a methodology that we are not ourselves operating. I understand that PEGI is intending to introduce testing for 3+ and 7+ games which I think would be very important provided that we could agree some kind of a checking system to make sure that our symbols were being used properly, then that would be okay. I think some of this, if it all goes ahead, will require primary legislation, but not all of it so it would be possible to be getting on with some of this in advance of legislation. We are certainly clear that it is a workable package and we do not have any difficulty at all with the resource implications. We estimate that probably between 350 and 500 extra games a year would come to us. We have been used to gearing up to a much greater order of magnitude than that with the expansion of the DVD market from the late 1990s to 2005/2006 and we have about 12 examiners who are experienced, qualified, trained games examiners. Our current turnaround times are about ten calendar days. I really do not think there would be a problem there at all. Mr Darby: PEGI also welcomes the Byron review. It is quite clear that the rationale behind it is the protection of minors and that is something that PEGI has been working on right from the outset so we certainly welcome that. Dr Byron put forward the view that PEGI is not as well known as it might be and that is something that is fully accepted by PEGI. PEGI have said that they are ready to spend a substantial amount of money in attempting to promote PEGI even further than it has. The BBFC symbols are clearly much better known than the PEGI ones, but BBFC has been in existence for a hundred years and PEGI has only been in existence for five years. The research that Nielson did in 2007 indicates - this was supported by Dr Byron - that probably about 50 per cent of the population in the UK do understand PEGI and in five years we think that is quite an achievement to get that sort of level of recognition within the UK. The suggestions of the hybrid systems would not have been a road that we would have suggested going down in the first place and our evidence was that we would have preferred a single system. However, if the hybrid system is the one that is recommended PEGI will certainly work towards achieving that. Maybe there is a possibility of adapting the hybrid system so that it is PEGI that is seen on the front and BBFC symbols seen on the back because one of the things that Dr Byron was suggesting is that the public need to see the BBFC symbols certainly for a few years so that they understand what the symbols that PEGI is using really mean. By using the BBFC symbol on the back of the package perhaps that is a way of educating the public which I think both the BBFC and PEGI think is the biggest achievement that the public should understand; the consumer must understand that some of these games are for adults. Q544 Mr Sanders: We live in a really complex world and making things as simple as possible I always think is a good thing. Where the public come across symbols, for example in tourism in looking at accommodation, the tourism industry for decades has been trying to rationalise its symbols into one recognisable set of classifications and they still have not actually achieved it. Do you not think that you really ought to be looking for one set of symbols on a product, not two, and that that set of symbols ought to be the one the parents - who are the people most concerned about this - recognise? Mr Cooke: Obviously our ideal would be for the BBFC symbols to be the single ones. I understand the rationale in Dr Byron's recommendation but it is for others to comment on whether that is the best solution or not. If you go back to the starting point of the analysis, the recognition that games classification is clearly, on all the evidence, less well-understood than film and DVD classification, it makes sense prominently to use film classifications to try as part of a series of campaigns to raise that awareness. I know that some argue that games are different from films, sufficiently different that they ought to be regulated completely separately; that is not my position. My view is that with increased photo realism in games, with the number of common franchises - I think about seven or eight current games in the top 20 are actually based on film franchises - it is actually better to be able to look across the content on the different platforms and it is then possible to answer questions more clearly of the sort: what difference does interactivity actually make? Does it mean that the experience is more immersive than watching a film? Does it make it less immersive in some way because you are more detached because you are operating through the controls? We have indeed begun to commission research on those questions ourselves. My argument would be that it is better to look across the piece and to try to raise the awareness of games classification. Q545 Mr Sanders: There is a big difference between a game and a film and might you not end up with the situation where you have a film that is classified 18 but the game of the film, because its content is slightly different, would have a lower rating? Would that possibly then confuse the market? Mr Darby: I think you have to follow the content where it takes you and if the game version is indeed a lot milder than the film version then you have to give it the right classification based on the analysis. Q546 Mr Sanders: Can the game not market the film or vice versa? Mr Darby: As a rule it tends to be the other way round. PEGI deals with most of the games below 18 and because most of the games we get that are a sequel or a follow-up to a film the game tends to get a higher rating. That is based on the fact that we consider the game to be different to the film and think it should be rated differently to the film. I have an example of a game that was sent to me where I played through and the publisher said they wanted the same rating as the film but it was one rating higher. I said, "No, I have been able to kill more people five minutes into this game than James Bond killed in all of the films put together". That is where we think there is a difference. The games do allow much more interactivity and a repetition of what is actually happening within the game. The use of sexual expletives is, I think, a very good example. If it is used once when it is put in context and it is in a film, then it might get a lower rating, but what PEGI says quite clearly is, "If you use a sexual expletive in the game just once it will get a 16" and we base that on the fact that to play through a game it is not possible to do it all in one go normally so each level has to be played through several times. Therefore it is not just one sexual expletive; it is the same sexual expletive time and time again as you are going through. We do not think it that is right to put that into any form of context. The word is there and it should be rated because the word is there on one occasion. Mr Cooke: I also think a more precautionary approach, at least for the time being, is sensible for games, not least just because games are less well understood so you get this phenomenon of the Grand Theft Auto games not being regarded in the same way as an 18 level film. Of course there are more complicated factors as well. There is the one that Peter has mentioned; there is also the possibility that you can play games in lots of different ways. It is possible to play perversely; you can play a shooting/killing game in a way where you deliberately do not kill very many people or you can play it the other way round and you can explore the potential of certain moves over and over again with lots of variations. I, too, think it makes sense to be more cautious. Mr Johnson: I think we all agree that the content should be classified on the basis of the content in that particular product. The fact that there may be differences between the film rating and the game rating is really the same as when you get franchises of films where different ones in a series may have different ratings. Of the Mission Impossible films I think one is a PG, one is a 15 and one is a 12 because the content was very different. What becomes important then is to give parents a clear content advice that explains to them why it is different. I think that is where the BBFC system of content advice which is to use a specific single phrase which enables us to grade the content and describe the violence so that we can say whether it is strong, it is frequent, it is bloody, it is sadistic, it is mild, it is fantastic, it is comic. Those subtleties become very important because then the parent can see why the rating is different. I think that is very important and that is why in our research 86 per cent of adults find our consumer advice very useful when they are choosing material - whether it is games or DVDs - for their children to view. It is a very important part of the package; it is not just about classification any more, it is about the clarity of the consumer advice that is provided with it. That is a particular strength of the BBFC system. Because we actually play the games at length we have a very good feel for what the parent needs to know about that game apart from our rating and that is what appears on the back of the pack. Mr Cooke: Could I also just mention extended consumer information? This is something which we have recently started doing for new films and for games. The idea is to use the fact of the way we examine to generate a small paragraph's worth of material on the game so there will be the complete rationale for why the age rating is as it is. All the different factors - there may be seven or eight all going on at once - will be picked out. This is the beginning of an attempt to provide parents with more information to take informed decisions. Mr Darby: The other issue in respect of what the label should be saying is that we believe the label itself should say that this is a game and not a video, but in addition, in a few years' time when the majority of games are actually coming from the internet and being played online, it is going to be the PEGI label that is seen. We think that the best way of educating the consumer as to what they are going to see in the future is to be presenting them with those logos at the moment so the educational process has been completed by the time the majority of games are online. Mr Hall: We think that there is a clear need to distinguish between films and games. Watching a film is a passive experience; as has been said playing a game is an interactive experience. Watching a film you sit down for two hours, it is finished, that is it. With a game you can spend several hours, several days, several weeks playing it. What you see on the screen is controlled by you and you can vary it. The problem with adopting a film classification approach, putting matters in context, we think it is wrong and does result in lower ratings to be given in this country for a game that is rated by the BBFC than the rating that same game is given in the rest of Europe. Mr Cooke: I think this is a genuine point of disagreement between us. We are very attached to the fact that we can look at the context of a film and indeed a game as well - there is an analysis of this in the Byron report - and sometimes it can lead to a lower classification when the BBFC has done the examining, sometimes higher. There may be a game where the content itself is not particularly strong but the tone of the thing is such that you need to take account of that as well. There was a lot of controversy about a game called The Rule of Rose a few months ago. That was a case where the tone of the game was, in our view, a factor as well as the actual material that you saw in the game. I make absolutely no criticism of my PEGI colleagues for not giving such weight to context because that would clearly be a difficult thing to do with 20-odd member countries. I do think that national cultural sensitivity is important here and it is a valuable thing to be able to do. Mr Johnson: It is also worth noting that we do not use exactly the same methodology for classifying games as we do films. We watch films at the cinema; we watch DVDs on a DVD player and monitor; we play games through the game. That enables us to recognise the differences between game playing and watching films. It also enables us to read across where issues and content are similar, and often they are similar as we have seen with seven out of the top 30 games being film franchises. The latest range of DVDs - the Blu-ray discs - actually allow films and games to appear on the same disc. For instance, with the Disney Blu-ray release of Cars you can play Cars and watch it as a film or you can play it with a games application running over the top whereby every time a character appears you press a button and you are rewarded if you get it right with some bonus footage. So there is real convergence and there is a whole range of material like that about to come out on Blu-ray. Alien Vs Predator will probably be a 15 rated Blu-ray disc and that will have the opportunity for you to watch the film or to watch the film with a games application playing and whilst the games application is playing characters appear on screen and you can shoot them. The two come absolutely together. To try to separate those out is a nonsense because the whole point of the technological advance is convergence; it is not divergence, it is convergence and the two come together very much in the Blu-ray world. Q547 Chairman: The BBFC's approach seems to me quite straightforward: you sit, play the game, work out what the appropriate age is and stick a label on it. PEGI, you are largely dependent upon the games manufacturer to tell you what they think it is. Mr Darby: It is a self-regulatory system whereby the publisher has to fill in a questionnaire which goes into detail about what the game is about. Once that is put into the Online system it then gives a provisional rating. The game is then examined by the administrator along with further details that are provided by the publisher. The job of the administrator is to ensure that the answers that have been given are accurate and that the game then accurately fits in with the provisional rating it has been given. Q548 Chairman: So you can overrule. Mr Darby: Yes, and we do on a number of occasions. We have probably taken as many games down as we put up because we do not like a game being put in at a higher level when it should be at a lower level, for example a game being given a 16 when it should be 12 because that actually starts to destroy the credibility of the whole system. We move games down as well as up. Mr Hall: I think this recognises the fact that games are different. I would say it is almost impossible, without the help of the game manufacturer to view everything that is in a game. It was in the press last week about the new Grand Theft Auto game where one of the press reporters commented that he played through it a dozen times and each time the game was different; if he played through it two dozen times it would be different on two dozen occasions. Who knows the game better than the game developer himself and we rely upon him to start the PEGI process going. Q549 Chairman: But BBFC rated Grand Theft Auto IV; how many times did you play it? Mr Cooke: We sampled it at all levels for at least five hours. I think in that case it was more like seven or eight hours. That particular game came to me as well because of the profile of the game. We did examine it extremely thoroughly and we are the only regulator I know of who looked, for instance, at the particular issue where prima facie there was a concern about whether you were being given instructional information about how to make the drug crystal meth. We actually took independent advice on the point and eventually were able to satisfy ourselves that some of the crucial ingredients and techniques were missing so it was not a genuine cause for concern. Peter and Laurie are right, that under whatever system you do need the cooperation of the publisher and it is standard practice for the publisher to be told to provide us with all the help they can; normally they are extremely good and they will draw attention to likely category defining elements. They will often provide a DVD play-through which can be a useful tool although it is not a proper substitute for playing the game itself. There is an onus on the publisher too but it is collaborative working. Obviously if they do not tell you important things that you need to know about then you need to revisit the classification. Q550 Chairman: Are you confident that you explored every permutation in Grand Theft Auto before reaching your judgment? Mr Johnson: It is worth saying that eight hours of our game play is equivalent to significantly more than the average gamer, not just because we employ very expert gamers but also because we get the publisher to provide cheat codes so that we can through to various parts of the game much quicker. Q551 Chairman: The publisher may not always tell you everything. Mr Darby: The PEGI code of conduct which the publisher has to sign up to before they are allowed to use the system anyway has sanctions in it and for a deliberate misleading of the administrator the current sanctions are between 250,000 and 500,000 euros. That is the maximum but if it just negligence it would be significantly below that. There is an enforcement committee that would look at what sanctions should be imposed on any publisher that actually misleads the administrator. Q552 Chairman: What happened with regard to the previous edition of Grand Theft Auto, the notorious hot coffee incident? Mr Darby: The hot coffee issue was not so much of an issue within Europe as far as PEGI was concerned because it already had an 18. The inclusion of the sexual material which was the issue certainly within the United States could not have raised the ratings any higher. So although we had not seen it, it still had the correct rating. Q553 Chairman: You said that if they misled you or failed to provide information, then you would sanction them. In this case they did. Mr Darby: In that particular example it was not deliberate; it was an unfortunate mistake. Q554 Chairman: I have not seen the hot coffee section but as I understand it it was as close to graphic sex as you can get in a video game and they just forgot to tell you about it. Mr Darby: It was not part of the game. My understanding is that it was sealed off within the content of the game so the gamer could not get at it. However, there was a hacker somewhere in Holland or Sweden who was able to find a hack to put into this so that somebody could download this from the internet, run it alongside the game and open up a bit of the game that was not meant to be available to the consumer. That is where it all went wrong. Q555 Chairman: It does beg the question, what was the point of it being there if the consumer was not supposed to see it. Mr Darby: That I cannot answer. Mr Hall: As I understand it, it was originally meant to be part of the game but they decided it was not going to be but did not take it out properly. Q556 Chairman: This does raise the question about whether or not you can rely upon games manufacturers to tell you what you need to know. Mr Darby: I would say that since the beginning of PEGI in 2003 and to the extent that the BBFC examined 16s and 18s, we have not had one single example of a publisher deliberately misleading us. We have had mistakes and errors of judgment, but not deliberate intention. If you think about it, why would a publisher join a voluntary PEGI scheme if he intended to abuse it? Mr Cooke: I think it is rare. Chairman, your phrase "every permutation" bothers me a little bit. I calculated that we spent over a hundred hours examining the Manhunt 2 game and it feels I was personally involved in every one of those hours. Even then I am not sure we could honestly come to the Committee and say that we knew every permutation. We knew the game extremely well and we knew where all of the category defining elements were. As we have been saying, you just have to recognise that a game is a different entity in lots of respects. Q557 Mr Hall: In an earlier answer to Adrian Sanders you said there were about 250 video games being classified at the moment and you have 12 members of staff dealing with that. In evidence to the Committee you said you expect the market to grow by 300 to 500 a year. Is that year on year? Are you saying that in the year 2013 we will have something like 3000 video games a year going onto the market? Mr Cooke: Every different industry analyst you talk to gives a slightly different response to this question. I have seen the figure of 100,000 in five years' time that was quoted to you by, I think, the games industry. That is not a figure I recognise and it is not a figure which any industry and panellist I have spoken to recognises. I suspect that it probably included things like casual games which might be very brief games; it might well have included things like the mini games you see on a cover mount disc and quite often when we classify one cover mount disc we will be classifying maybe 30 or more mini games within that. When you have an online game you get patches and upgrades submitted and it may also have included those. Obviously online games are different and raise extra issues. I think an important distinction which I would invite you to consider is between publisher generated content and user generated content. I think it is reasonable to operate in a way that means that if a publisher upgrades the content in a way that changes the appropriate age rating then that content in turn should be examined. With user generated content and user behaviour one of the big issues with online games is simply bullying and I think a different model then has to operate and you have to work through publishers maybe with checking mechanisms in place as a backup. These are the kind of approaches which my colleagues have been developing through PEGI Online that I was also involved in. I suspect that all of those different elements were probably in there in the figure that the games industry quoted. I really do not think a tower full of censors - I think that was the phrase - would be necessary to deal with that. I find it a slightly colourful phrase. The other thing I would say is that we have shown with DVDs that we can gear up extremely quickly; because we operate on a basis where we receive no government money and the only thing we do is cover our costs from fees that we charge the industry it is possible to gear up very quickly. I think one difference between us and PEGI is that PEGI probably would need to have a discussion with the industry before recruiting extra staff, we would not. Q558 Mr Hall: From your evidence, if the figures are right, you are expecting by 2013 about 3000 new video games a year to come on the market. That is the top end of the figures that you provided. You will have to take on more staff to deal with that and you have just said you will still be self-financing. Is that a correct assumption? Mr Cooke: Yes, indeed the greater the volume that you take on, that can have the effect that you are able to reduce fees. That is what we were able to do with the DVD expansion. I think there were between 3000 and 4000 DVDs submitted to us in 1997 and by about 2005 it was getting up to 17,000 or 18,000. That gives you an idea of the kind of orders of magnitude that we have already shown we are able to respond to. Mr Darby: If I could come in on those figures, PEGI has actually rated 5,500 games - unique titles - since the system started five years ago. We would anticipate that being a minimum between now and 2013. In addition to that the games market is changing quite a bit. I have actually got a meeting in two days' time which is looking at a totally new concept for a game which is going to be a core game online and maybe once a week a different level or a small mini game is going to be attached to that. All of that content is going to need some sort of examination. It cannot just be put there and say that there is going to be a new level in this standalone game and it may affect the rating. We have to look at a way in which we are going to be able to deal with that. We do not have the answer yet but we have the meetings to deal with it but that is the way the media is actually going. Mr Cooke: What I do not see is the industry argument that somehow PEGI is more future-proof than the BBFC. PEGI has 20-plus members but if you look at all the big games markets in the States, Japan, Germany, they do their own rating and I think these issues that we are talking about come down to questions of enforcement, they come down to questions of resources, taking the right initial decision and then generating good, clear, full content information for parents. I do not myself see that any of that is somehow made more future-proof by a system that has 20-odd countries, some of whom are very small markets it needs to be remembered. I do think myself that there are national cultural differences. You see that with films; you only have to look across the Channel and see the ratings that my French colleagues give to Quentin Tarantino films and consider what would happen to me if I were to attempt to follow suit. I do think that that should not be forgotten about in relation to games as well. Q559 Adam Price: You referred to the online context, I think in the BBFC's submission you referred to the pinch points at which you think it is possible to intervene to control potentially harmful content. Could you explain what you mean by these pinch points, what they are and how they would work. Mr Cooke: Could I say a very quick word and then hand over to Pete because he has been doing a lot of work on this. We are just about to launch a voluntary scheme called BBFC Online which I think is probably not directly relevant to this particular debate because we do not see it as an instrument for classifying games, as I said before we prefer to work through PEGI Online. However, putting together that scheme - Pete will tell you a bit more about it - has once again brought us back to the question which I think we have discussed in the Committee before: what about the people who will not play in your voluntary scheme and what about the people who simply do not have an incentive responsibly to self-regulate? We have done quite a lot of thinking about that as well and maybe you could cover both those angles, Pete. Mr Johnson: I think our experience has been what Ed Richards said earlier about the mainstream industry having incentive to self-regulate. That is right. We have been working very much with household names in the field of content provision, the people who make the content, have the rights to do it and in terms of online retailers as well who helped develop the scheme which we are going to launch very soon. That is great for the mainstream. Dr Byron made the point that most children are accessing content through a very small number of internet portals and internet sites so if you can get those within the scheme you have done an awful lot of good through the self-regulatory mechanism. We are very aware because we do regulate extreme content on DVD and in many cases have to cut or reject such content in the UK that there is a significant body of material which will not subject itself to self-regulation because no self-respecting self-regulator would pass it. I think a couple of members of the Committee have been to the Board and seen some of the examples that we are talking about. For those we do think that it may be that Parliament decides something does have to be done about that, that we cannot simply leave children and in some cases adults to be exposed to material which is likely to result in harm. The problem that is always cited in respect of material on the internet is the jurisdictional problem: what do you do about stuff that is outside the UK? Our first response to that is that there is value in doing something anyway. We have not taken the "we cannot do anything" response in relation to indecent images of children. The fact that we cannot stop them being posted in the USA or in Russia has not stopped us adopting a very, very effective means of making sure that indecent images of children do not appear on the UK servers. That is one point, but the other thing is that if you really want to do something about it there are places in which jurisdiction of the UK does bite when you are accessing material online. If you are talking about commercial content, money goes from a UK bank account to the provider of the service. The US a couple of years ago used this route in order to attack the online gambling industry. They decided that online gambling was a threat to the US state of such extremity that it had to be dealt with. What they did was to define payments to an online gambling service as restricted transactions and then they required the payment system - so they required the credit card companies and the banks - to block restricted payments. So they put the onus on the banks to actually identify the services and not provide financial services to them. That pretty well wiped out online gambling in the States overnight. If you want to do something you can do something. You would not necessarily have to put the onus on the banks to identify the services; you could put that onus onto a regulator whose job it was to identify sites which were offering the sort of material that Parliament has decided needed regulation and to identify, if they had not had it regulated, to construct a blacklist which the banks had to block payments to. That is one route. The other route is through the ISPs because you access the internet through an internet service provider and the internet service providers have been very effective in blocking material that the Internet Watch Foundation has identified as being illegal under the Protection of Children Act and that is a route. It would not be popular with the internet service providers but things can be done because the internet does not exist completely outside national borders. The money touches down in the UK and the internet service providers touch down in the UK. The key, I think, is to define a set of material which warrants such intervention because it would be quite significant intervention. That could be defined quite tightly; we are not suggesting that everything on the internet should be subjected to this, but there is material - abusive pornography, extreme reality material in which collections of people being beheaded in Iraq are edited together for entertainment purposes - which do and which must pose a potential serious harm and which might warrant significant action. I think if you can tightly define that type of material there are these routes available to try to control it. Q560 Adam Price: Do you already have the elements of a definition through your main activity? Mr Cooke: Yes, indeed we do. I imagine there may well be a legislative vehicle resulting from this whole area of work and if that is the case then that could be used. Q561 Adam Price: The Committee would be very interested in seeing that, I am sure. Turning to the Video Standards Council, what do you say to the argument that is put to us by some people within the industry that you either have a domestic UK classification system or you have a global classification system and the idea of a European regime actually is neither fish nor fowl and is quite frankly irrelevant? Mr Darby: I do not accept that it is irrelevant. The publishers have a job to do which is getting a product to market, getting that product to the consumer. The PEGI system is owned by the European arm of the publishers. A lot of them are US based companies that have a European arm and so the publishers themselves are global but they are publishing within a European market. An example of the international aspect would be a US based company with a European arm with a game that is going to be played in Europe (it does not matter whether it is in the UK or anywhere else in Europe) but it is being posted on a US server. The only way of having any control over that from Europe is with a self-regulatory system by that publisher being responsible and saying that to go into Europe I have one system I can use so I do not mind waiting and then that will apply throughout the whole of Europe exactly the same way as the ESRB applies throughout the whole of North America. Mr Hall: I think the alternative of doing a BBFC in the 27 other countries in Europe would just be out of the question. Mr Darby: Using what I just said about the US based server, I think that if PEGI was to fail throughout Europe what I personally think is likely to happen is that the ESRB rating - which will have been obtained in the US - will be the one that the consumer throughout Europe will actually see on the product because they will not go through the process of obtaining 27 different ratings when it is online and they are not required to do so. Mr Cooke: I still do not really see this because in this context the UK is not like Poland, say, it is like the States or Germany or Japan or Australia, none of whom are members of PEGI and all of whom have systems which do factor in national issues and sensitivities. Q562 Mr Evans: I have to admit that I do not play these games at all so I am in completely new territory. In your estimation is it violent people who like to play violent games? Or can the violent games actually make people violent? I completely understand the difference between watching a film for an hour and half or two hours and then playing a violent game over several days where there is a lot of violence and you are the one causing a lot of the violence. Mr Cooke: There is pretty good analysis of this in the Byron report because she did get a lot of experts in the field together. The conclusions accord pretty much with our experience as well. Every time a researcher produces a claimed effect another researcher jumps on them and pulls it to pieces. I think what you are left with is some studies that show some kind of link with aggression rather than necessarily causing criminal behaviour which I think no study really demonstrates. The other thing though is a question mark about whether there are particular games and particular personality types and particular situations where the combination is bad and you need to take account of that. I do strongly believe that if you try and base classification just on the behavioural social science research you will come unstuck and you have to look wider than that. To use an old-fashioned work I think you have to look at moral harm as well. You have to look at possible more insidious effects on attitudes. I think that is entirely consistent with national and European law and I do not really know of any classifier in the world who tries to do it just on the basis of the academic social science research; I do not think you can. Mr Hall: I would hasten to add that the PEGI system was introduced across Europe with the fundamental objective of protecting children from unsuitable material, almost irrespective of what the evidence is on whether there is any harm effect. Whether there is any harm caused by viewing violence on the screen, we have to go along with the Byron report; there is no conclusive evidence either way. Q563 Mr Evans: There is a piece I have just been reading about which I find incredibly ironic about when Grand Theft Auto was released in Croydon there was a queue of people and somebody actually got stabbed randomly. That is what it says here; I do not know whether that is the case. Mr Hall: The story is untrue; the person who got stabbed was not in the queue and was a quarter of a mile away. Q564 Mr Evans: So that is completely fallacious. Mr Hall: Yes. Q565 Mr Evans: This is all part of the aura about these games like Grand Theft Auto. Tell me, what is Grand Theft Auto like? You have played it for hours. Mr Cooke: I have played several of them. Q566 Mr Evans: Did you enjoy it? Mr Cooke: It is very much an adult game; it is not suitable for people below 18. It contains material which some people will find a lot of fun and other people will find very offensive and tasteless. It is very different from Manhunt 2; there is a lot of humour in it. It may or may not be your cup of tea but there is irony, there is satire. The difference between something like GTA4 and Manhunt 2 is that the latter just has such a single-minded focus on exploring the kills. Potentially you could have hundreds and hundreds of kills in the game and there is any number of permutations; you could do it with any number of a huge range of weapons. There were three different levels for the kills - white, orange and red or something like that - so there was a tipping point in the game where you very quickly got to the point where you were skilful enough to escape the so-called hunters - these people who are trying to stop you escape - and any competent gamer would quickly get to the point where the real significance of the game was just exploring the kills. GTA4 is not like that at all, it is more of a kind of sopranos theme except that I think they are Eastern European gangsters in something that looks remarkably like New York. Does that give you a flavour of it? Q567 Mr Evans: Yes. When you work with the publishers do you say to them, "Listen, we'll give it a certificate but you have to take this out and that out"? Mr Cooke: That is the kind of dialogue that happens a lot with film. We always like to give people a choice; we do not particularly like saying, "You must cut this", but what we will say is, "If you are desperate to get to a 12A rather than a 15 then the only way you are going to do that is by reducing certain scenes. That is a bit more difficult with games because of the way in which they are constructed, but in principle the same kind of conversation can happen. It did happen, for instance, with a game that masqueraded for a while under a Latin name of Canis Canem Edit and then reverted to Bully which it was going to be originally I think. We did have a dialogue at a very early stage with the publisher and some changes were made, so it is possible. Mr Johnson: It is worth saying as well that we have a reject power that if we refuse to classify something it cannot be legally sold in the UK. That does give us purchase with the distributors. For instance, a couple of games relating to that, The Punisher for example, had a solarised effect over the worst of the violence in order to make sure that they got an 18 certificate and also in relation to an 18 rated game called 50 Cents which is based on the supposed life of the US rapper we were able to persuade the publisher to conduct a responsible marketing campaign. We asked to see evidence of that before we classified that work. The fact that we have that reject power gives us a point of purchase. Q568 Mr Evans: How often do you reject games? Mr Johnson: We have only rejected two games in ten years. Q569 Mr Evans: I am just wondering what it needs to take for a game to be rejected. You have just explained Manhunt 2 in vivid detail what the game is all about and if that is not going to be banned what was contained in the games you banned? Mr Cooke: Manhunt 2 has probably taken years off my life. You have to do what you think is right and as you probably know our decision was twice overturned by our independent appeals tribunal - the Video Appeals Committee - by the narrowest of margins, four-three, so they clearly found it very difficult. I think the one good thing from our point of view was that web went to the High Court as well as part of this process and we did clarify the definition of harm which is absolutely at the core of these decisions. Rejection is obviously a very strong step and I understand why some people do not like it and why people in the games industry do not like it. Our view is that it does have a significance, as Pete says, that goes beyond the individual titles that you actually reject. The mere fact that you can do it means that you can have dialogue and influence on quite a large number of other games as well. The two examples he gives are very real. I think it is an important power for us to have. Dr Byron I think concluded that it was important and it should be retained. I perfectly understand that it would be a very difficult power for PEGI to equip itself with because there are going to be Member States who will not be comfortable with having that kind of power, but in my view it is essential to retain it. Q570 Mr Evans: Do you think in your own mind, after having played some of these violent games, that people could become violent because of them? In your own mind that is, never mind the research that has been done, do you think that if you play that for long enough it could actually turn you? Mr Cooke: I doubt it. It depends on the person. I can get a very short term buzz when I play a particular game but obviously we cannot classify for Broadmore patients. I do also hink there is a real issue about duration of play. Addiction is the word that some people use; I think that is quite a strong word, maybe too strong, but there is evidence that people are having sessions that may last more than 24 hours on end - quite substantially more in some cases - so I think there is an issue there too. Of course with the online gaming you are also incentivised to go on playing because you may lose your position or potency or whatever it is if you do not go on playing very regularly. Q571 Alan Keen: You mentioned just now that you place a barrier and therefore people will discuss with you because you have the power to reject. First of all, what was the effect of the High Court ruling on people coming to you with further games? Did it have an effect? Did it give them an impetus? Mr Cooke: It did, actually. I think there were one or two titles where I sensed that people were either pulling back a bit or at least asking a question. The High Court decision itself - Mr Justice Mitting's judgment - was very helpful because one of the arguments was that we have to demonstrate devastating harm, devastating effect and he said he did not see that this was a reasonable thing to ask a regulator to be able to demonstrate. How can you show that a game is going to have a devastating effect on somebody? That was very helpful. He also said that we needed to look at potential harm and not just actual harm. Clearly if you have a game like Manhunt 2 which is not actually released then it would be almost impossible to demonstrate actual harm when nobody has actually played the thing apart from poor suckers like me. That was a very helpful clarification of the law. Mr Hall: I do not think the Manhunt 2 situation and what happened there will have the effect of encouraging more and more games' publishers to chance their arm, if that is the right way of putting it. There is no indication of that. The percentage of games that have had to go to the BBFC over the last ten years or so because of gross violence has consistently run at the two and half to three per cent of the total; it has always been in that region and there are no signs that it will change. There will always be publishers who are knocking the door at the front end and always will be, but I do not think it will increase. Q572 Chairman: You have only ever banned two games, one of them you lost in the High Court and is now out on sale. Mr Cooke: Both. The first one was a game called Carmageddon and again we lost; this was ten years ago. Q573 Chairman: Does it not rather undermine the credibility of the system if you have only ever tried to ban two games and on each occasion you have failed? Mr Cooke: You have a reject power; you have to use it and you have to accept the result that an independent judicial tribunal comes up with. I make no secret of the fact that I regret the decision in the case of Manhunt 2 because I thought that the arguments that we put forward for rejection were cogent; I though there were real concerns that we had addressed. We had dialogue with the publisher which resulted in modifications to the game. We said that this is an improvement but they needed to go further and at that point the publisher exercised their right not to continue those dialogues so the case went to appeal. I think the fact that it was 4-3 on both occasions was an indication of how fine a balance it was. Yes, it is not frequent that we have used the rejection power but then that is true for DVDs as well. It will usually only be one or two cases a year. We have rejected a DVD quite recently called Murder Set Pieces and it is not something that we like to do because there is a clear presumption that comes through every time we consult the public - we consult on a very large scale, 11,000 the last time we revised the guidelines - that at the adult level people ought to be free to choose their entertainment provided it is not illegal and provided there is not a clear harm argument. We thought there was a clear harm argument in the case of Manhunt 2; we did not win in the end but we win some of our appeals, we lose some of them. Mr Johnson: It is worth emphasising that the version of Manhunt 2 that is going to be released now is significantly less graphic in its violence than the version that was originally submitted to us and that is because we have that reject power. We rejected the most violent version of the game; we then also rejected a less violent version of the game and the appeal that we lost was only on the less violent version. The one with the unexpurgated violence remains banned in the UK. Mr Darby: It is worth pointing out that what David said is right, that PEGI will not have the ability to actually ban a game but that does not mean that it does not accept what Dr Byron has said, that within the UK that remains a necessity. PEGI itself cannot carry out the banning because of the question of censorship around Europe; some countries sit uncomfortably with any outside body having any form of censorship on any material going into their country. The way PEGI can deal with this is by doing very much as we do now. Any material that we see at that upper level that we think ought to be considered we could either refer to the BBFC or perhaps some independent body who could actually look at the sensitivities within the UK and then make a decision on whether that product was going to be allowed to be released in the UK regardless of whether it had a PEGI rating for the rest of Europe. PEGI cannot carry it out itself because it is made up of so many European bodies. Mr Cooke: I like to think we are an independent body. Q574 Alan Keen: I am trying to imagine if games could be made even worse. Has anybody attempted to enable the players to upload photographs of well-known people or next door neighbours so they could then pursue or something? I would regard that as absolutely unacceptable, that people playing these violent games would be enabled to produce the characters of people they actually identify. Mr Cooke: I think the scope is endless. Q575 Alan Keen: Yes, it is; I am really asking what is coming next? What do we need to watch out for? Mr Cooke: Something that would bother me a lot would be sexual violence of a kind that might encourage emulation because there is more of a research base for thinking that possibly people might copy that. That would be a worrying development and something that we would scrutinise very closely and we would not hesitate to require cuts or indeed to reject a work. The DVD I mentioned earlier, the Murder Set Pieces, was rejected largely on the grounds of sexual violence so if there were to be a kind of game version of that then it would not have an easy ride from us. Q576 Adam Price: Currys have recently said that they are going to have their own classification for games. Before long there will be no room left on the box there will be so many different ratings on it. What do you think of their decision? Mr Cooke: My understanding is that retailers would prefer to operate with BBFC symbols, a single system. I am not sure if they have said this to you in evidence or not, but I have certainly seen press releases that indicate that that is the position of the ERA for instance. Mr Hall: Retailers do want one system; they would prefer one system and they would prefer it to be mandatory, they would also prefer it to be pan-European. Mr Cooke: I am not quite sure that that is what the ERA have said. Chairman: We will be hearing from the ERA. I think that is all; thank you very much.
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