Germany

[DE] KJM Criteria for Recognition of Youth Protection Programs

IRIS 2011-7:1/17

Anne Yliniva-Hoffmann

Institute of European Media Law (EMR), Saarbrücken/Brussels

The Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz der Landesmedienanstalten (Land Media Authorities’ Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media - KJM) published criteria for the recognition of youth protection programs on the World Wide Web on 11 May 2011.

The KJM’s discussions were based on the notion that providers of content that is potentially dangerous to young people or their development can fulfil their protection obligations under the Jugendmedienstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement on Young People in the Media - JMStV) by setting up recognised youth protection programs for their content. The recently published document is designed to provide information about the conditions for such recognition.

The KJM begins by describing youth protection programs as user-independent youth protection filters, i.e., technical filter systems that provide users (who are minors) with age-appropriate access to telemedia services and can be switched on and off, and configured and expanded by parents or guardians. They must also be functional, manageable and compatible with other applications, it must be possible to update their content and technical elements, and they should be easy for parents/guardians to use and, at the same time, difficult for children and young people to bypass. Programs must also be as reliable as possible at blocking unsuitable content, with a block rate of at least 80%, block all content indexed by the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons - BPjM) and allow parents/guardians to expand the list of blocked content. Finally, they must provide minors with access to telemedia services appropriate to their age, offering different settings for different age groups, and be able to read and interpret standardised, machine-readable age classifications accurately and reliably.

In addition to the program recognition criteria, the KJM indicates the type of proof that providers must supply or the procedures they must complete in order to show that each individual condition has been met. These conditions are expressly non-exhaustive and open to future technical or content-related adjustments.