Background: V-Chips for PC's are Inappropriate

The v-chip provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-104, Sec. 551, codified at 47 U.S.C. 303 et seq.) give the FCC broad authority to require that any device designed to receive television signals be equipped with a program blocking feature based on a common rating system. In its recent Notice of Proposed Rule-Making, the Commission opened the door to applying v-chip requirements to personal computers. CDT and MAP have filed comments arguing that the application of v-chip regulation to the personal computer is both poor policy and contrary the intent of Congress in passing the Telecommunications Act, and that the FCC should reject asserting its jurisdiction in this area.

These comments are necessitated by an unfortunate - and evidently unintended -ambiguity in Ï22 of the Commission's October 1, 1997, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, FCC 97-340 ("NOPR"), which proposes rules to implement the technical aspects of the "V-chip" program blocking requirements established in Sections 551(c), (d) and (e) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That paragraph might be construed to suggest that the Commission intended to define the statutory term "television receivers" broadly, so as to include computers, add-on computer hardware and other devices which are not designed to be video programming reception devices.

To clarify this ambiguity in the Commission's "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking," ("NOPR") MAP and CDT ask that the Commission unambiguously declare that:

the term "apparatus designed to receive television signals" as used in Section 551(c) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 ("the Act")

  1. applies only to devices capable of receiving video programming which
    • is received from broadcast television stations, low power television stations, television translator and booster stations, Multipoint Distribution Services, Direct Broadcast Satellite Services, cable television systems or open video systems; and
    • contains a vertical blanking interval; and
    • includes on its vertical blanking interval ratings signals transmitted pursuant to Section 551(b)(1) of the Act or such voluntary ratings systems as the Commission may recognize pursuant to Section 551 (e)(1) of the Act; and
  2. does not apply to computers and other devices without over-the-air television reception capability, to computers sold without monitors, or to `plug-in' circuit boards.

Section 551 requires installation of so-called "V-chips" in TV sets. The law governs manufacture of television sets, not computers. It is motivated by concerns about the broadcast medium, not the Internet. The Commission should disavow suggestions in the NOPR which might appear to expand the scope of Section 551.

Their remarkable potential to enhance free expression makes the new digital interactive media - best typified by today's Internet - deserving of the highest level of First Amendment protection and freedom from regulation. The broad language of the NOPR appears to extend the "V-chip" from the broadcast media into the new and wholly different new digital interactive media. New digital interactive media have different characteristics which make the "V-chip" particularly inappropriate. Regulating them is more likely to thwart the ultimate goals of Congress in promoting the "V-chip," and is contrary to the clearly expressed will of Congress regarding regulation of the Internet.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the Internet - the most familiar manifestation of the new interactive digital media - is a "a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication" entitled to the highest degree of protection under the First Amendment.

Leaving aside the certain unconstitutionality of the application of a scheme like that contained in Section 551 to computers and to unregulated data networks, it would be for Congress, and not the FCC, to attempt a Quixotic venture of that nature. The language of the statute, Congressional intent underlying its enactment, the statutory scheme of Section 551, and the overall policy objectives of the 1996 Act all preclude the Commission from stretching it to encompass devices which might have incidental similarity to, and/or secondary uses resembling, TV sets.