ATVOD

26 Nov 2005

ATVOD and access control systems

ATVOD and access control systems
Working Paper No 1

ATVOD's commitment
As part of a self-regulatory organisation, ATVOD members accept their responsibility to protect children and young people from unsuitable material, and to provide appropriate information about the content each service carries. The ATVOD Code of Practice (the 'Code', appended), to which all members must sign up, is based on two core principles:

3.1 (i) Members recognise their responsibility to assist Subscribers in their efforts to protect Children and Young People from unsuitable material;
3.1 (ii) Members recognise their responsibility to provide accurate, timely and reasonably prominent guidance in relation to their offerings of (a) content reasonably expected to cause significant offence or upset to some Customers and (b) commercial services.
Further, the Code explicitly recognises that this is a shared responsibility between the ondemand system provider and the customer:
4.3 ..Members recognise that their responsibility is to make such access control systems available to the Subscriber and to promote their use; it is not the responsibility of the Members to enforce utilisation of such systems within the household.

A recently published report shows that respondents have differing expectations about what should and should not be shown on free-to-air broadcast channels and subscription channels (on-demand services were not considered in this study). Respondents are far more likely to suggest greater self-determination when viewing is actively chosen.

ATVOD members discharge their responsibility by providing appropriate descriptions of content, and by utilising scheduling and classification based systems. These systems are used in conjunction with access control mechanisms to facilitate or restrict customers' access to content on-demand or to particular on-demand activities, such as transactions. Research undertaken by ATVOD's members among their customers show how well these systems are working - to date, there have been no complaints about access to inappropriate material and no dissatisfaction has been expressed with the efficacy of the combination of access management systems in place.

Signposting of content
ATVOD considers that the accurate and timely provision of content information to customers is key.

Research conducted in April 2005 among customers to an on-demand system2 showed that most of those (89%) who were parents with children at home said on-screen text guidance was very or quite useful and 81% said the same about age rating guidance.
1 Language and Sexual Imagery in Broadcasting: A Contextual Investigation, Ofcom, September 2005
2 For reasons of commercial confidentiality research from individual member organisations is not attributed.

The usefulness of such information among those without children at home was also apparent with 79% saying that on-screen text guidance was useful. While age rating guidance was of less concern to this group, over two-thirds (69%) could see its value. ATVOD notes that Ofcom also recognises the importance of information, labelling and warnings in its guidance notes3:

'Viewers and listeners are taking an increasing responsibility for what they watch and listen to and, for their part, broadcasters should assist their audience.. giving clear information and adequately labelling content may also reduce the potential for offence.'

Access Control: Scheduling and classification based systems Despite the fact that an on-demand service, by its very character, allows greater control by a customer than a linear broadcast service, ATVOD members have undertaken to provide one of two variants on an access control system - either scheduling - or classification-based (see ATVOD Practice Statement 5 (appended)). The scheduling or 'time of day' system classifies content by reference to a day-part (for example, Allday; 6pm+; 7pm+; 8pm+; 9pm+; 10pm+; 11pm+) and broadly follows the Watershed principle applicable in the current broadcasting environment. As the Practice Statement says:

..the Member is responsible for determining the time of day when a particular piece of content could be shown in a UK licensed broadcast environment in compliance with the prevailing broadcasting regulatory codes (i.e. in an environment where, broadly, the only controls on access to content are (a) through scheduling the time of its availability (b) the inclusion of warnings prior to broadcast and (c) prohibition of broadcast). The Member should utilize clear and consistent classifications ..

By way of explanation: a "7pm+" classification might be made available by the Member without access control from 7pm until 5.30am; at all other times of the day, access to such a programme on the Member's service would be restricted by application of a CAC (Consumer Access Control) System.

The other system approved by ATVOD and used by its members is an age-based system that uses current classification criteria similar to those used by the BBFC.

Again ATVOD Practice Statement 5 describes this:
In this Classification System, the Member would be responsible for determining the minimum age of viewer to which a particular piece of content should be made available by the on-demand operator.

The classification could follow similar classification bands as used by the BBFC in relation to home video classification or could use different age ranges. The access control system utilised by such Members must ensure that the service subscriber (being over-18) is able, if they wish, to ensure that younger household members are prevented by the CAC System from accessing unsuitable content by, for example, requesting the Member to provide an age restricted PIN to younger members of the household.

3 Guidance Notes: Section 2: Harm and Offence, Ofcom, September 2005
In a pure on-demand system, started in January this year, where there have been over 6 million content choices made, there have been no complaints recorded about inappropriate access to material or the provision of insufficient content information.

Access Control: PINs
Currently, all members of ATVOD operating live on-demand services use PIN identification as the corner-stone of their conditional access system. The PIN systems are broadly promoted by members both on screen in promotional windows or in 'Help' channels and in literature posted or emailed to customers. ATVOD members therefore have a high degree of confidence that their PIN systems are familiar to their customers. Research undertaken in July 2005 among a member's on-demand customers showed that the vast majority (84%) agreed that PIN identification was a good idea as it protects children from unsuitable programmes - only 4% disagreed with this statement. In fact the flexibility and choice that such an access control system offers the customer is further illustrated in the finding that only just over a quarter of all customers interviewed (regardless of whether or not they have children in their households) say they would like the ability to turn the PIN system off. Almost half the sample (47%) disagreed with this statement.

There are a variety of blocking devices on offer across Member organisations. Some service providers offer blocking devices that work by locking out whole channels, some block channels classified according to the time of day system described above or based on the classification of content. All these devices are PIN-based. Research conducted in 1999, when the relaxation of Watershed rules for PIN-protected systems was being proposed, showed that most respondents (70%) thought that a PIN-based access system was more secure than having videos in the home.

Content selection is monitored and recorded in members' systems databases to support billing and other activities. In some cases (such as pay per view content), purchased titles are displayed on customer bills, providing the account holder with a means of monitoring account activities. In the 1999 research 85% of the sample said they would notice if inappropriate material had been accessed by looking at their statement. More recent research, conducted in July 2005, showed that over two-thirds of customers (68%) associate PINs with paying for content - "usually means I'm going to have to pay for something" - while more than two in five (44%) found it useful as a final check before purchase.

Conclusions
ATVOD members offer a variety of access control systems to customers, including ,