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Internet and Video Games

My hon. Friend raises an interesting question. It is fair to say that I have had discussions on a number of subjects with the BBC in the past few weeks and that is one of them. He makes an important point, because it demonstrates why the watershed itself is becoming less and less meaningful. Now that we have video on demand, the iPlayer and personal video recorders in many homes, the idea that children cannot access material because it was originally transmitted at 10 pm is becoming ridiculous. That is not to say that we should abandon the watershed; I do not think that we should. However, we should be realistic and accept that it is not going to prove a particularly effective means of protecting children. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. We talked to various content providers that are responsible for online video content. Obviously, the most well known of all is YouTube, and I think that it is fair to say that we had a vigorous discussion with YouTube. YouTube is responsible; it has a clear view that its site should not be used for material that shows sexual content or very violent content. However, we had a slight discussion with YouTube—indeed, an argument—about how it dealt with that type of material and whether it could do more to identify it before it was made available. The issue of pre-screening is very difficult and two concerns were raised with us about it. The first was the sheer volume of material. YouTube argued that 10 hours of video content are uploaded to its site every minute; in fact, I think that that figure has now gone up to 12 hours a minute. YouTube argued that that made it impossible for its employees to sit and look at all that material before it went online. The second concern that YouTube had was a legal concern about the effect of the e-commerce directive. It was concerned that if it attempted to identify potentially illegal material before it was shown, then it would become liable if it failed to spot something that was subsequently put online. The Committee was not wholly convinced on either of those counts. It seemed extraordinary to us that the law could possibly suggest that an attempt to remove inappropriate content could lead to a liability for prosecution whereas standing aside and doing absolutely nothing about such content left YouTube protected and not liable to prosecution. That seemed utterly perverse and I find it hard to believe that that really is the case. If it is the case, it needs to be tested rather quickly and addressed, so that it is not the consequence of the e-commerce directive. Equally, there is the question of whether a company can screen all the material that is uploaded. I accept that it is plainly impossible to sit and look at the 12 hours of material that are uploaded every minute. However, we felt that that did not mean that YouTube should not make an attempt at least to identify material that was likely to contain unacceptable content, or material that would possibly contain unacceptable content. In particular, we were alarmed by the report of a video of a gang rape that was uploaded on to YouTube and viewed 600 times before it was taken down. We were even more concerned when we discovered, in the course of taking evidence, that the video had been flagged by a user as inappropriate and that YouTube had failed on the first occasion to take it down. Therefore, although the YouTube method of relying on its users to tell it when they come across inappropriate material is undoubtedly effective and results in the vast majority of such material being taken down, we felt that more could be done. We were impressed by one or two other companies, particularly MySpace, which told us that it pre-screened material before it was made available. Obviously, there are other concerns. I had a meeting with some Finnish MPs two days ago who raised the serious issue of the man who murdered a number of children, having been shown brandishing a gun on YouTube just a few days before. I understand that YouTube is now changing its rules about showing videos of people brandishing guns. However, this is a difficult issue because, of course, nobody was to know that that man was going to do what he did. In retrospect, it is very shocking to look at his video, but the video itself is relatively harmless. What is shocking is what he went on to do after uploading the video. I do not in any way dismiss the problems attached to the issue of pre-screening. There are possible technical solutions. For instance, computer software can now identify large quantities of flesh tones in a video. That is not to say that such videos are necessarily pornographic, but if they are identified they can perhaps be quarantined until somebody looks at them and decides whether or not it is permissible to show them. I know that a lot of these companies are devoting resources to this area. However, we were slightly concerned to learn that the industry standard for the take-down time of inappropriate material is 24 hours, which seemed to us to be too long. Again, that is an issue that the UK council should look at. One area of the internet that is growing in usage, particularly among young people, is social networking sites. Virtually every teenager in Britain is now a member of Bebo or Facebook and that is a part of their way of life. In the main, social networking is of great benefit: it is a means of communication; it saves parents a huge amount of money on telephone bills, as children can have instant messaging conversations that are entirely free; and children can make friends. All of those things are very valuable, educational and part of the process of growing up, and they are to be welcomed. However, one of the concerns—perhaps the major concern—about social networking sites is that a lot of the users are unaware that when they post information on them it may not be visible just to the people whom they want to see it. In many cases, it is visible to anybody. It is very alarming to discover the extent to which young people are putting up details about themselves—where they go to school, their mobile telephone number, their interests, the name of their dog and all of these things—on a social networking site and not restricting that information to the people whom they want to see it. The person who was identified on ““Panorama””, for instance, had been able to strike up a conversation and talk about favourite pop groups or dogs and make friends because that person had used a social networking site to access to that information about the person with whom they were communicating. One thing that we felt very strongly was that, rather than waiting for the user to decide to restrict such information, the default setting for social networking sites should be set so that, at the very least, information is available only to the user’s nominated friends. If users want to make that information made available more widely, it would be a matter for them. The assumption should be that people use social networking sites to tell their friends, not the entire world, about what they are doing. It would be easy to change default settings in that way. There is an issue with the direct reporting of abuse. We were particularly impressed by Microsoft’s Messenger service, through which the user can click a single button to be taken directly to CEOP to report a potentially abusive contact. There was argument among other providers as to whether it is necessary to go directly to CEOP via one click, or whether it is better to offer a range of bodies that might assist. We received evidence from CEOP that that service is valuable, and we think that it should be commended. Providers such as Microsoft told us about the parental controls that they have installed into products such as the Xbox. There is not just the facility to apply filters. In the latest version of Windows, parents can obtain a record of every site that their child has visited. They can block not only individual sites, but sites that are classified under headings to do with sex or violence, for example. A range of parental controls are available, but it is part of the problem that most parents are blissfully unaware of them. Even if they did know about those controls, they probably are not capable of setting them. As the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) suggested, a large part of the problem is helping parents to understand how to use the technological solutions that are available. We were impressed by the commitment that almost every major industry body, including internet service providers, social networking sites and hardware manufacturers, has shown regarding the protection of young people, but there is no commonality. Each has its own standards, some of which are tougher than others, and there is no agreement on the minimum take-down times that should be required. We feel that a self-regulatory industry body is still needed in that case. We were told time and again that the answer to the problem is self-regulation, not Government regulation, and I agree. If at all possible, I prefer self-regulation, and I think that a lot of good work is being done. There is a single, self-regulatory body for advertising and the press to which all of the industry’s players sign up as members and accept a code of conduct that applies across the board. Such bodies provide a highly visible place for people to go to if they wish to register a complaint or raise an issue. Those bodies can adjudicate when there are complaints, publish their findings and publish statistics on performance, so that people know how different companies compare. That is the common approach in most self-regulatory systems, but not in this area, in which every company does its own thing. In order to increase consumer confidence, there is a strong case for having an industry body to implement the recommendations of the UK council, with agreement, across the industry. That part of the structure is missing, and we feel strongly that that should be addressed. We also feel that more needs to be done on media literacy and the education of children and parents. There is a case for having a single site, possibly on the Directgov network, to which people can go to learn about the various available options. There is also a case for drawing up a single leaflet to be supplied with every piece of equipment, be it a new PC, a new computer programme or any other component part, so that the same message is put across to parents and young people. Those recommendations could all be addressed by the UK council, and would increase child protection in that area. I am conscious that others wish to speak, so I shall not speak about the final part of the report for too long.