With the release last month of its report on Violent Television Programming and Its Impact on Children, the FCC teed up the issue of regulating televised violence and tossed it over to Congress with a recommendation that lawmakers go ahead and swing for the fences. And Congress appears ready to oblige, although not necessarily in the way some at the FCC had originally envisioned.

You will recall that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin used the FCC’s violence report as another opportunity to engage in his monomaniacal, Moby Dick-like quest to impose a la carte regulation on cable and satellite operators. Martin argued that “Requiring cable and satellite television providers to offer programming in a more a la carte manner would be a more content neutral means for Congress to regulate violent programming and therefore would raise fewer constitutional issues.” But it doesn’t appear that the chairman is going to get his whale this time around.

The Washington Times recently reported that "A media watchdog group is criticizing Delta Air Lines for making the graphic HBO series 'Rome' and other bawdy shows available for in-flight viewing after a passenger complained that children could see nudity and sex scenes." Apparently, the offending material was shown on overhead movie screens during a May 6 flight from Atlanta to Duesseldorf, Germany. According to the Times article:

Delta officials say the programs were intended as an option for viewing on private screens in the back of the airplane's seat and were shown on the public overhead screens by mistake. "As soon as our flight attendants became aware it was being shown, it was cut off and we made an immediate apology to passengers," said Betsy Talton, a spokeswoman for Atlanta-based Delta.

But a passenger who lodged a complaint with the captain during the flight and got the flight attendants to cut off the program, also notified the media activist group Morality in Media, which fired off a news release about the incident to the press last week.

I found this incident interesting because I'm about to release a new book entitled "Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods." As the title implies, it's a broad survey of everything on the market today that can help parents deal with potentially objectionable media content, whether it be on broadcast TV, cable, music, cellular phones, video games, the Internet, or social networking websites.

Previous installments (1, 2, 3, 4 & 5) in this series have documented how our government seems to have a difficult time keeping tabs on laptops and personal information. The latest on this front comes from the Energy Department which notified Congress yesterday that it has lost 1,415 laptop PCs over the past six years. However, according to this report in Government Computer News, the DOE stressed that none of the laptops contained classified information. I guess that qualifies as good news on this front.

Congress is considering whether to allow a ban on taxing Internet access to expire.

Taxing Internet access would be a bad idea. Consumers remain sensitive to the price of broadband, and because taxing price sensitive goods can significantly reduce demand, taxing Internet access is likely to have a negative effect on subscribership.

Given Congress's recent hand-wringing about broadband availability and takeup it would be ironic if it were to endorse a policy sure to reduce broadband's growth rate.

(I had a major computer meltdown last week, so I’m a little late getting to this issue but..) The MPAA recently announced that it will take into account depictions of smoking in a movie when considering its rating. Apparently, it will now be more likely that a movie’s rating is more stringent if we see characters lighting up on screen.

Private ratings systems occasionally evolve to take into account changing societal norms, but this recent change to the MPAA system seems to be influenced more by politics. Excuse the pun, but there’s obviously a lot of groups out there today that make a stink about smoking. They are certainly welcome to pressure movie producers and other media providers to eliminate smoking from their art, but when they threaten government regulation as an alternative it’s an entirely different matter.

One wonders where the line will be drawn now that smoking has been deemed worthy of an “R” rating. Would a serious drama depicting drug or alcohol abuse that contained no other offending material also automatically qualify for a higher rating? If not, why not?

The best way to address this issue is with more education, not censorship. There has been no shortage of education campaigns and PSAs about the dangers of smoking over the past decades. Those efforts have made a difference. Smoking is less glamorous than ever before and the risks of smoking are widely understood. Critics should stick to those efforts instead of threatening artists with regulation if they don’t purge any depictions of smoking from their craft.

Legislation is expected to be introduced in Congress very soon that would regulate television programming deemed to be “excessively violent.” This follows the release of the FCC's recent report calling on Congress to act and to give the agency the power to regulate such programming on broadcast television and potentially even cable and satellite TV.

In response to these proposals, I wanted to draw your attention to an event that I will be hosting this week as well as a new study (and a few old ones) that PFF has published on this issue:

(1) EVENT THIS FRIDAY: PFF will be hosting a congressional seminar this Friday, May 18 from Noon-1:30 on “The Complexities of Regulating TV Violence.” The event will take place in Rayburn House Office Building , Room B354. Panelists will include:

* Henry Geller, Former General Counsel, Federal Communications Commission
* Robin Bronk, Executive Director, The Creative Coalition
* Robert Corn-Revere, Partner, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
* Jonathan L. Freedman, Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto and Author, Media Violence and its Effect on Aggression

If you are interested in attending this free seminar, please RSVP here: http://www.pff.org/events/upcomingevents/051807complexitytvviolence.asp

(2) NEW STUDY: PFF has just released a new study, “The Right Way to Regulate Violent TV,” which outlines the many ways parents have to deal with potentially objectionable media content, including violent programming. The 23-page study highlights the many technical and non-technical parental control tools and methods that families can use to tailor video programming to their own needs and values. In the report, I argue that:

Yesterday I highlighted the publication of the transcript from an event I hosted on age verification proposals for social networking sites. Today I want to highlight another excellent event that followed close on the heels of my event and expanded upon several of the issues we discussed that day.

On May 3rd, my friend Tim Lordan, Executive Director of the Internet Education Foundation, hosted a panel discussion on Cap Hill entitled "Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization." The event featured the comments of 4 of the leading experts in the field of online child safety, including:

* Dr. David Finkelhor, Director, Crimes against Children Research Center (CCRC), University of New Hampshire
* Dr. Michele Ybarra, President, Internet Solutions for Kids and author of several studies on youth online
* Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet & American Life Project
* danah boyd, Researcher, University of California, Berkeley and Fellow, University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Communications

It was an eye-opening discussion that shattered many of the myths driving legislative efforts aimed at regulating Internet sites or activities in the name of protecting children. I strongly encourage you to read the transcript, or just watch the video of the event here. It will change the way you think about these issues.

In late March, I hosted a congressional seminar entitled "Age Verification for Social Networking Sites: Is It Possible? And Desirable?" I brought together 5 experts in the field to debate the issue, including:

* John Cardillo, President & CEO, Sentinel
* Jay Chaudhuri, Special Counsel to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper
* Raye Croghan, Vice President, IDology, Inc.
* Tim Lordan, Executive Director, Internet Education Foundation
* Jeff Schmidt, CEO, Authis

It was an outstanding discussion and I'm happy to report that the transcript is now available online here. Also, you can listen to the audio from the event here. Also, you can find the big study of mine that we discussed that day here.

A debate is raging over at the Second Life blog about Linden Labs' (LL) annoucement that the company plans on imposing age verification requirements on its users starting in mid-May. LL says they are making this move "to insure that minors do not inadvertently access Second Life or have access to adult content in-world. In addition, age verification provides an additional layer of trust for in-world businesses and Residents."

Those are certainly worthy goals. But LL face two very challenging issues in attempting to implement this plan:

Jennifer Medina of the New York Times penned an article yesterday on the debate over social networking fears leading to calls for age verification mandates. She noted that measures are moving in several states that would require social networking sites to age-verify users before they are allowed to visit the sites or create profiles there. But Medina also noted that there are many difficult questions about how age verification would work and how "social networking" would even be defined. (I summarize these questions in my recent PFF report, "Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions.")

Ms. Medina was also kind enough to interview me for the story and she summarizes some of what I had to say in her piece. In a nutshell, I stressed that the most effective way to deal with this problem is to get serious about dealing with sex offenders instead of trying to regulate law-abiding citizens. We need to be locking up convicted sex offenders for a lot longer in this country to make sure they behind bars instead of behind keyboards seeking to prey on our children.

I also stressed the importance of online safety education as part of the strategy here. But my comments on that didn't make the cut in the story. But you can read my big recent paper on this issue for additional details.