Statement of Pamela Horovitz

President

National Association of Recording Merchandisers

Before the Senate Judiciary Committee

September 20, 2000

Good morning. My name is Pamela Horovitz, and I am President of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the trade association for retailers and wholesalers of recorded music. I am also the mother of a ten year old.

NARM has supported the RIAA Parental Advisory Program since its inception in 1985. Over the years we have worked closely with RIAA on improving the program, providing feedback from retailers who hear directly from their store personnel and from parents about what is or isn't working. Because of that feedback, the language, look and placement of the logo have been refined, and more uniform guidelines for applying the label have been developed. We have collaborated with RIAA in publicizing the program to parents via posters and counter cards in the stores. This past year we have been working with our members and with RIAA to take the Parental Advisory online.

Our members use the Parental Advisory in a variety of ways. Some companies choose not to purchase recordings that carry the sticker. Some restrict the sale of these titles to 18 year olds, others to 17 year olds, others to 13 year olds. Some companies let the advisory sticker speak for itself, and some companies place the responsibility for how to handle the product in the hands of a local store manager who is frequently most in touch with the needs of a specific community.

Last week, the findings of the FTC report on industry practices with respect to violent entertainment were presented to the NARM Board of Directors. We welcomed this study as a useful snapshot of how the various segments of the music industry are addressing this important issue, and also as a benchmark of comparison between music, film, and videogames. We are in the process of publicizing the findings of the FTC to our member companies along with the newest guidelines for the Parental Advisory program.

We also discussed the recommendations of the FTC and concur with the conclusion that marketing plans for entertainment products should be consistent with the content. We concur that the findings indicate that we need to redouble our efforts to increase parental awareness not just of the music industry advisory, but of all the entertainment industry ratings programs.

The one recommendation with which we do not agree is the one which advocates restricting access to this music by anyone under the age of 17 and which characterizes this as "compliance" with a system that was never intended to be more than an informational aid to parents. Let me tell you why we disagree.

The FTC report has a lot of good information in it, but sometimes facts just don't tell the whole story. For example, here's one fact that every parent knows: kids mature at different speeds and in different ways. Some kids can play violent video games but have nightmares after a scary movie. Some kids' neighborhoods are scarier than any song will ever be. And Bobby Knight still isn't old enough to go see Gladiator or play Doom or listen to Eminem. So what is appropriate for one child isn't always appropriate for another child, even if they're are the same age, or go to the same school, or are even in the same family.

Several years ago, NARM and RIAA sponsored focus groups on the Parental Advisory program. We learned about the wide variety of responses that parents had to situations in which their kids had purchased records that carried the PA sticker. Some parents returned the CD to the store. Some parents threw the tapes in the trash and told the kids they had just blown their allowances by purchasing something they knew wasn't allowed. Other parents restricted play of such records to personal listening devices because older siblings had permission to hear the record, but younger ones didn't. Still other parents used the appearance of stickered product in the house to listen to the record themselves and later ask their kids why they were attracted to these songs. The parents' interactions with the PA program were as varied and unique as the kids themselves were.

If you try to restrict kids under the age of 17 from access to all of this music, either through direct legislation prohibiting the sale of such music to minors or through legislation that would enable content providers to boycott retailers who sell stickered or rated product, you are taking away every parent's opportunity to have these kinds of interactions. You are saying, in essence, that Americans don't have the right to practice their parenting in this area because Congress has decided that they aren't up to the challenge. "Parents, you don't have to monitor entertainment products anymore, because we've taken care of the problem by removing it from the marketplace." You would have us believe that all kids, once they hit age 17, will somehow magically be ready to hear, play, or watch adult material even though they haven't had the benefit of any dialog with their parents before hand.

And you are also saying, at least in the case of the music industry, that five giant companies, (all of whom are now beginning to sell music over the Internet themselves) should get together and jointly decide to boycott any retailer they claim has not complied with the labeling system applicable to music products. Not only am I told that such an exemption from antitrust law would be unprecedented, but the opportunity for abuse – i.e., to eliminate from the marketplace retailers with whom the five major music companies are themselves now directly competing – is obvious and, quite frankly, frightening.

I believe America's parents and America's kids are much better served by a retail environment in which the practices of retailers are as varied as the families that they serve. This approach inevitably means that more kids, including my daughter, will come in contact with entertainment products that they're not yet ready to handle.

Each day that I send my daughter out the door, I know that potentially she will encounter language that I don't approve of or see behavior that I don't condone, not just in entertainment, but at the softball game, at the playground, at the grocery store. I will have nights when I'm too tired to do a good job of explaining a news story on TV, and times when I will lose my patience at the constant barrage of advertising masquerading as entertainment. But when I signed on for this job of parent, I knew I wasn't going to get to pick which nights would be sleepless and which battles would be easy. And even if I do a less than perfect job, I still think it will be better than letting some record company or retailer who doesn't know anything about me or my daughter decide what's appropriate for my family.

The music industry is filled with people like me, who aren't just in the business, but who are parents. We have worked hard at balancing artists' rights with parents' rights. We recognize that businesses need to thrive, but that kids do too. We will use all the tools available to us to keep on improving our understanding of this issue, including the feedback from parents as articulated in the FTC report. We know from talking to parent’s year in and year out that they prefer a voluntary information system to censorship and government regulation. Accordingly, we object to censorship by a private trade association of content providers that is given congressional authority to do what Congress itself is prohibited from doing directly.

Thank you.