Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Parents Beware: Porn-Casts

The folks at CBS4 Boston write another article about the potential worries parents have protecting their children from exposure to mobile adult-oriented content. The article cites podcasts as a threat since they "are transmitted through the internet and are exempt from the indecency rules governed by the Federal Communications Commission."

Nitin Gupta at Yankee Group said, "You can type in any explicit word you can think of and you can probably pull up a podcast related to that subject." Although there are filters, Gupta noted "their effectiveness is limited." He said, "In most households the kids tend to be more tech savvy than the parents. So in that case it just goes back to old fashioned parental supervision."

And with Apple making mobile video easier to access via iTunes, it's only the beginning. Gupta added, "Right now it's explicit audio content, but soon it will be explicit video content as well that parents should be concerned about."