Wanted: an independent content watchdog
Rating: should the industry be watching itself?
by Tony Dennis
I suppose it might be a tad hypercritical to
criticise one industry in the UK – the mobile content industry – for self-regulation when you’ve spent most of
your life working in another industry – publishing – which is adamant that
self-regulation works.
But I’m going to do it anyway. What has sparked this particular diatribe is a
trawl through the latest adjudications from Phonepay Plus – which most surfers
will know better as the body formerly known as ICSTIS. Who did it fine most?
Only one of the captains of our very own industry – Mblox.
Until recently, Phonepay Plus hasn’t been setting any heavy duty fines. That
has changed with a big fine (£0.25 million) handed down to Opera Telecom, for
example.
It’s still not enough because one part of the industry is going through a
melt-down – TV phone-ins. The latest farce is the X factor saga when the
favourite contender, Rhydian Roberts, lost out to Leon Jackson.
It’s obvious to everyone that there must have been a technical fault. And who
got the scoop? The national tabloid newspaper, the Sun, did. It revealed that an
expert had told the newspaper, "The system may have shut down and it’s
possible that when a line came free it went to the phone number with the lowest
number. As Leon’s line ended
with 02 and Rhydian’s was 03 it may have put Leon’s calls through first."
That’s a perfectly rationale explanation and if the watchdogs involved employed
their own technical teams, they would have known about such a possibility and
been able to react swiftly.
However, the whole mobile content industry monitoring system relies on a close
relationship between the watchdog and the suppliers.
In this latest case adjudicated by Phonepay Plus – with the complaint perpetuated
against a certain Wow Telecom – Mblox takes the hit and receives a £10,000 fine
because, as the service provider, it didn’t police its client, the information
provider, properly.
This simply isn’t good enough. Nobody is taking enough responsibility.
The complaint only happened because a member of Phonepay’s own staff received
the offending message – not a member of the public. And he or she noticed it
broke all the rules – including failing to check if the recipient was over -18
or not.
What the mobile content desperately needs is a panel of technical experts – and
probably lawyers, too – who are completely independent and can act swiftly.
Otherwise the dire reputation of one part of the industry – TV phone-ins – will
rub off on the whole content industry itself.
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