Recently, Internet capable mobile phones have become a popular communication method among children and since crime incidents including child prostitution arranged through online dating sites are growing in number, establishment of regulative laws as well as technical methods such as filtering which control children's access to dating sites (see Notes 1) are sought for. Similar problems are arising in other countries as well, and in the United Kingdom, filtering will be provided through carrier providers within the year based on the industry guideline published this January in preparation of the launch of third generation mobile phone services.

[...] The project will participate in international standardization processes of W3C for the next generation PICS in order to establish the foundation that will support the rating/filtering methods for mobile phones. The project will discuss how to identify harmful content within sites such as dating sites in cooperation with mobile phone carriers to help in filtering, and will perform proof of concept experiments of mobile phone content filtering (selective blocking of contents) systems with children in cooperation with parents.

Notes 1:
Internet filtering (selective blocking) is a user oriented system that is capable of receiving information selectively and subjectively according the filtering level that a user (or parent) considers appropriate, and that is capable of observing the user's right to "know" and the user's intention of "not wanting to see" or "not wanting the children to see."