Classification Board Director Wants to Rate Mobile Apps

Australia’s Classification Board wants to extend its sphere of influence to mobile applications.

Classification Board Director Donald McDonald (left) has written to Commonwealth Censorship Minister Brendan O'Connor on the issue and also relayed his concerns to a Senate Estimates Committee, expressing his unease that:

Some so-called mobile phone applications, which can be purchased online or either downloaded to mobile phones or played online via mobile phone access, are not being submitted to the board for classification.

The delayed rating of World of Warcraft down under—it took five years for the title to receive a rating—apparently spurred McDonald’s interest in rating mobile content, reports Australia’s ITnews.

A Classification Board spokesperson clarified that McDonald’s rating talk was referring only to “mobile applications which are computer games.”

Apple currently governs its own content on iTunes, but said that if changes needed to be made, “We do what the Australian Classification people tell us to do.”

In rating any mobile content, the Classification Board said it would “apply the National Classification Code, the Classification Act, and the Guidelines for the Classification of Films and Computer.”

|Via Edge-Online| Thanks Ryan