RESEARCH INTO DISTRUBUTION

How can I choose appropriate films, TV and music videos for my family to watch online on their computers, tablets, games console and smartphones?

The BBFC works with a number of on demand services to provide trusted age ratings for video content available for download and streaming online. Some of these platforms also provide parental controls allowing parents to make available to their children films with an appropriate age rating for them. The BBFC and home entertainment industry recognise that this is helpful to parents when both they and their children are selecting film or TV content to stream or download.

For more information about the pilot to age rate music videos online, visit our Online Music Videos page. 

Why are digital age ratings useful?

Providing BBFC age ratings for online content allows viewers to make the same informed viewing and purchasing choices for themselves and their families when using Digital Video Services, as they do when visiting the cinema or renting or buying DVDs and Blu-ray.

In 2011 the BBFC commissioned some research which showed a public demand for the same BBFC ratings to be available for online content as for DVDs and Blu-rays in shops and for films at the cinema. The research found that 82% of parents prefer to download films that are classified with the trusted BBFC age ratings, symbols and BBFCinsight information. This research is available on our research page.
 

Online services and other places using BBFC age ratings

The BBFC age ratings can be found on a number of Video-on-Demand platforms, content producers, film studios and airlines. These include:

Services

Amazon Instant Video/Prime Instant Video

BFI Player

British Airways High Life

BT TV

Curzon Home Cinema

DisneyLife

EE Film Store 

Film 4OD 

Find Any Film.com

Google Play

Google web search

Hopster

iTunes Movie Store

Kaleidescape

Netflix

Picturebox

Sainsbury's

TalkTalk TV Store

The Horror Show

Ultraviolet

Virgin Media

We Are Colony

Wuaki TV

X-Box Video (Microsoft)

Airlines

British Airways

Monarch

Thomson

Virgin Atlantic

BBFC has persuasion job over online ratings

Online-only shows, such as Netflix's House of Cards, are not legally covered by BBFC ratings so the organisation is on a mission to persuade.

'House of Cards', starring Kevin Spacey 

By Christopher Williams, Technology Correspondent

7:41AM GMT 14 Mar 2013

Follow 4,099 followers

"That is the family silver for us," said Mark Dawson, chief digital officer for the British Board of Film Classification, as he discussed the way the organisation's ratings logos - 18, PG, U - have embedded themselves in public consciousness.

Everyone knows what the ratings mean, and according to the BBFC's research at least, almost everyone agrees with its assessment of what it is appropriate for young people to watch.

"We just implement the guidelines, which are set by public consultation," said Mr Dawson.

In cinemas and shops, the judgment of the BBFC's classifiers is protected by law. The 1984 Video Recordings Act and insists that it gives an age rating to all commercially distributed films.

At the time this meant cinema and video, and because of the way the law was written, it still does. The MPs of 1984, stirred by the "video nasty" furore, legislated without the benefit of technological clairvoyance. Their definitions were broad enough to cover DVDs or even films loaded on USB sticks, but not a world where digital downloads from iTunes, or streaming from Netflix or Amazon's LoveFilm are rapidly usurping "packaged med

Mr Dawson's task is to make sure the BBFC's family silver maintains its value as the film industry migrates online.

Without statutory backup, his is a job of persuasion. He must persuade film companies and the big digital retailers and services to pay for their creations to be classified for online consumption (as well as cinema and DVD) and to show the BBFC rating and incorporate it into login controls so parents maintain their trust in the system.

Progress has been made. Some 250,000 films have now been been classified for online consumption and major players such as BT Vision and Netflix are using the ratings.

The BBFC is particularly pleased that Netflix submitted its hit Washington-based remake of House of Cards for classification. Made for the internet, and released as 13 episodes simultaneously last month, it was widely seen as the start of an important trend in entertainment. The BBFC gave all the episodes a 15 rating, except one, which featured a graphic suicide and got an 18.

"We're not about censorship and haven't been for a long time," said Mr Dawson. "We're about giving people the information they need."

Netflix will surely test that claim later this year when it debuts Hemlock Grove, another exclusive, created by Eli Roth. The director is best known as the founder of the "torture porn" genre with his sadistic 2006 horror film Hostel. Subsequent imitators 2009's Grotesque and 2011's Human Centipede 2, were both refused any classification.

Theoretically, if Netflix's adventure in original content produce something so distasteful the BBFC does not award a classification, it could simply go ahead and distribute it anyway.

"If self regulation doesn't work then there is the possibility of new legislation," said Mr Dawson, "it would take changing two words in the law."

He strongly emphasises, however, that the BBFC is not seeking and would not seek new powers to regulate internet firms and that the government supports its attempt to bring the online industry on board voluntarily.

To prove it can work, the BBFC needs to persuade Apple and Amazon, the dominant forces in internet film distribution, to use respect and display its ratings.