Mobile phones & porn

In Europe and Asia, kids' exposure to pornography on mobile phones is becoming as big an issue as their access to Web-based porn is in North America. And it's only a matter of time in this hemisphere, as more and more US families have picture and video phones. Regs are in the works overseas. "Governments in Japan, Germany, Australia, and Taiwan are proposing or passing legislation that requires mobile operators to protect minors from pornographic or violent content on phones and to put controls on cellular chat and dating services," the International Herald Tribune reports, adding that "cellphone operators in Britain have voluntarily adopted a code of conduct and agreed to implement filtering systems by year-end." So far, the problem with Net-connected cell phones, according to one of the Herald Trib's sources, is that there are no password-protected or administrative access controls that parents can put on the phones the way they can on PCs. Phone companies in Europe are beginning to offer some parental controls, and in Asia "the Japanese government has set aside around $2 million to help finance development of new mobile phone filtering technology," according to the Herald Trib. In the US, parental-controls technology for cell phones exists, but the phone companies haven't yet bought in and offered it to customers (for more on this, see my 5/7 issue). Meanwhile, the popularity of "smart phones" - with email, multimedia messaging, camera, games, video and music player, and more - is taking off, the BBC reports. For more on all this, check out London-based Childnet International's hard work on this front.