Government safeguards for emerging audio-visual content
The Federal Government is to establish new safeguards to protect consumers from inappropriate or harmful material on emerging content services such as 3G mobile phones and subscription-based Internet portals.
“The Government supports the development of innovative new communications services which provide access to the Internet, email, games, instant messaging, chat rooms, video clips and television programmes,” said Communications Minister, Helen Coonan. “However, these new content services may also potentially carry offensive or harmful content and we need to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect children from exposure to content that might be harmful.”
The government decided to act after a recent review of the regulation of content delivered over convergent devices found there is a need for specific safeguards for users of these services.
