Apple, Softbank Told to Beef Up iPhone Web Filtering

It may be Japan’s favorite smartphone, but Apple Inc.’s iPhone isn’t above the law. The Internet access law, that is.

A Japanese government panel said Monday it requested Apple’s Japan unit and its sole official distributor Softbank Corp. to improve the iPhone filtering system to prevent users under 18 year old to access unseemly sites.

The panel, comprising industry experts, deemed the current filtering service to be insufficient based on the edicts outlined in Internet safety law for young people implemented in April 2009.

The measure requires mobile phone operators to provide free filtering programs to limit access to websites not considered “wholesome.” The regulation targets social networking sites that do not apply their own internal monitoring systems in light of increasing incidents of cybercrime and offenses rooted in young people meeting suspicious characters online.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Must-Reads from other Websites

Panos Mourdoukoutas

Why Apple Should Buy China’s Xiaomi

Paul Graham

What I Didn’t Say

Benjamin Bratton

We Need to Talk About TED

Mat Honan

I, Glasshole: My Year With Google Glass

Chris Ware

All Together Now

Corey S. Powell and Laurie Gwen Shapiro

The Sculpture on the Moon

About Voices

Along with original content and posts from across the Dow Jones network, this section of AllThingsD includes Must-Reads From Other Websites — pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Six posts from external sites are included here each weekday, but we only run the headlines. We link to the original sites for the rest. These posts are explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that the content comes from other websites, and for clarity’s sake, all outside posts run against a pink background.

We also solicit original full-length posts and accept some unsolicited submissions.

Read more »