FCC commissioner, Gloria Tristani, is a member of the V-chip Task Force and highly recommends the tool to parents. Tristani s hopes were realized when congress passed the TCOM Act of 1996. First developed by Canadian professor and engineer, Tim Collings, the V-chip is a recent technology allowing parents to block violent or sexually explicit programs from their TV screens. The chip works in conjunction with a voluntary ratings system developed by the National Association of Broadcasting, the National Cable Television Association, and the Motion Picture Association. The V-Chip is able to read all programs encoded with a rating.
Parents can then choose what ratings they feel are appropriate and block out the others.
Furthermore, the ACLU attacked the V-chip by saying the market already contains set top boxes capable of blocking channels. There is a concern that not all television programs are encoded with a rating such as sports and news. And lastly, there s the question of future censorship. However, the goal in creating and implementing the violence chip is neither to replace parents nor censor programming. This technology s purpose is to make families think twice about what kids watch on television.