Telecom service providers cannot offer adult video download via mobile phones, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday.
“When a telecom carrier wants to offer a new content service, the NCC is authorized by law to review the service plan,” said Liang Wen-hsing (梁溫馨), a specialist at the commission.
“In the plan, the carrier should clearly state the content it intends to offer and how much it plans to charge consumers. The commission can review the plan based on these two items,” Liang said.
Liang cited Article 8 of the Telecommunications Act (電信法), which states that a telecom operator “may terminate telecommunications service to a user, whose business involves providing telecommunications content to the detriment of public order and good morals,” which essentially prohibits telecom operators from offerings free download of pornographic content via mobile phone.
The NCC made the comments yesterday after a story published by the Chinese-language Economic Daily News said that telecom carriers in Japan and adult video content providers had reaped huge profits from adult video downloads, which had surpassed that of music downloads.
In other news, the NCC announced yesterday that as televised contents can now be aired through various new media outlets, including multimedia-on-demand and mobile phones, the commission would soon set up a task force to draft policies to deal with new issues arising from digital convergence.
“We hope that the task force will include NCC officials, academics and media operators,” NCC spokesperson Lee Ta-sung (李大嵩) said.
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