V Chip

Sex. Violence. Protecting children. Morality, politics and culture. With all these enticing elements in the mix, why don't people seem to care about the V-chip? Perhaps because the debate, politicized from the get-go, has so seldom been waged in honest terms. This came to mind at a recent daylong seminar, "Filtering Out Sex and Violence," sponsored by the USC Law School.

Federal regulators are expected today to take the final step in deploying the controversial V-chip technology, which will enable owners of new television sets to block programs that contain objectionable violence or sex. The FCC is expected to order that the V-chip blocking technology be installed in 50% of sets by mid-1999 and 100% of all sets by the end of that year.

It's the case of the missing V-chip. More than a year after the television industry began labeling shows according to their suitability for young audiences, the electronic blocking device that was supposed to link the ratings to TV sets is nowhere to be seen.

U.S. regulators unveiled a plan Thursday for technical standards for television manufacturers to begin phasing in the so-called V-chip that will help parents block programs they don't want their children to see. The Federal Communications Commission rule, which is now up for public comment, "will ensure that V-chip technology does in fact exist in a relatively short period of time," Chairman Reed Hundt said.

I invented the V-chip after the 1989 Montreal shootout in which a man, whose apartment was later found to contain violent videos, killed 14 students. So I feel somewhat responsible for the present debate and controversy surrounding the V-chip and television ratings ("Content Ratings Intended as a Guide for Parents," Counterpunch, Aug. 18, and "Ratings for Content or Control?", Counterpunch, Aug. 4). The modern television is a marvel of enforced stupidity.

The Supreme Court on Thursday extended free-speech rights across the Internet, striking down a federal law that had prohibited sending "indecent" material over the global computer network. President Clinton responded by proposing to shield children from such content by creating the Internet equivalent of the television V-chip.

With the Dow Jones industrial average hitting a record high of 7,333.55 last Thursday--before diving 138.88 points on Friday to 7,194.67, as jitters revived over Tuesday's Fed meeting--the speed with which stocks have rebounded from their early-spring decline remains a source of amazement on Wall Street.

Movies got much more violent and sexy after the rating system was instituted, and the same thing is going to happen to television: After V-chips are installed in television sets across America, TV producers will no longer feel a need to limit the amount of sex and violence in their programs. Thus, the current crusade to limit the content of TV programs through a program rating system will have effects directly opposite to what its proponents are hoping for. RICHARD SHOWSTACK Newport Beach

The controversial V-chip, which has become a major element of the raging debate over television ratings, is still more of a political lightning rod than a consumer product. Four years after Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) asked an electronics industry trade group in Washington to come up with a technology that would allow parents to block objectionable television programs, the V-chip remains a collection of software and circuitry that is not yet ready for prime time.

Nina J. Easton's examination of the precarious relationship between "reluctant warrior" Jack Valenti and the V-chip crusaders is a lucid, finely crafted treatise on the sordid nature of paternalistic government and interest-group politics ("He Knows What You Want," Oct. 20). Even more strikingly, Easton demonstrates the outright absurdity of Valenti's election as arbiter of this cultural dispute. The genesis of the V-chip imbroglio is this: It is what free-market-oriented economists call the "tragedy of the commons"--that is, the intractable and vicious conflicts that arise when a given resource, such as television, is "publicly" owned, controlled or supervised.