Media union wants 18+ signs on erotic and videos with adult themes
The Estonian Media Enterprises Union (Eesti Meediaettevõtete Liit/ EML) wants to supplement the Media Services Act with an obligation for media service providers to provide a graphic label 18+ in the left-hand corner of the screen with erotic and adult video content.
"In our estimation, we need to use a light transparent gray as the color of the 18+ mark in order to produce less graphic noise in the frame," the union wrote to the Ministry of Culture with an example picture of what this might look like.
The EML said a brief warning should be included in the introduction before a video story containing 18+ content. The Union also considers that legislation should be adopted to clarify the situations in which a video story should always be played with 18+ tags.
Sign language regulation
The wording of the new law states emergency announcements, including public statements and announcements in the event of natural disasters, must be accessible to persons with disabilities.
The EML said the legislator needs to clarify what is meant by "informing people with disabilities".
"Disability is a broad concept that includes (partial) visual impairment, hearing impairment as well as mental disability. If accessibility to emergency notices for people with hearing impairments is a prerequisite for the legislator, this should be highlighted in the explanatory memorandum to the bill. If the legislator's vision also applies to the other abovementioned disabilities, this must be explained in the explanatory memorandum."
The EML believes that visual media service providers should be required to provide sign language translation in certain specific situations.
"The sign language announcer joins a live broadcast on an emergency basis (such as a war situation) in an immediate manner. The media union said such technical capabilities exist on the television stations operating in the market," the EML noted and provided an example.
The EML is an organization working in the common interest of Estonian private media channels, whose members include newspapers, magazines, portals, television and radio channels. Until April 2019, EML was named the Estonian Newspaper Association, but due to the expansion of its membership the name was changed.
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