{"id":62664,"date":"2012-10-27T10:50:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T08:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=62664"},"modified":"2012-10-27T10:51:33","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T08:51:33","slug":"app-store-games-in-sa-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/62664-app-store-games-in-sa-soon.html","title":{"rendered":"App Store games in SA \u201csoon\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Film and Publications Board (FPB<\/a>) has been working on a system<\/a> that could allow content such as games from Apple<\/a>\u2019s App Store<\/a> to be legally sold in South Africa.<\/p>\n

This is according to Mmapula Fisha<\/a>, COO of the FPB, who was responding to a question from Andre Gaum<\/a>, Minister of Parliament for the ANC<\/a> in the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs.<\/p>\n

Gaum jokingly said after a presentation to the committee by FPB CEO Yoliswa Makhasi<\/a> that the \u201cguilty party\u201d causing many apps to not be available in SA had been identified. He then asked the FPB for an explanation.<\/p>\n

Lack of capacity to classify all the games wasn\u2019t a valid excuse, Gaum said. \u201cThat is, in a democracy, not necessarily the right approach,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Gaum went on to suggest that in the event of a lack of capacity, content should be allowed \u201ca point of departure\u201d and then the FPB should catch up later.<\/p>\n

\"Andre

Andre Gaum<\/p><\/div>\n

This system to allow distribution of digital content in South Africa without having to go through a local ratings procedure has been in the making for some time, however.<\/p>\n

When MyBroadband and MyGaming asked the FPB during April 2011 about the fact that there was no games category in the local App Store for iOS<\/a> devices such as the iPhone and iPad, the board said that they have not refused to accept content.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather, distributors have not submitted nor have they formally approached us to outline any problems regarding the classification of this type of material,\u201d the FPB said.<\/p>\n

However, a month earlier the FPB told MyGaming that they are constantly in touch with distributors such as Microsoft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever a distributor has a demonstrable desire to comply with the substance of our mandate and where it is possible to develop a model, the FPB will always consider [proposals to recognise international ratings in SA],\u201d the FPB said.<\/p>\n

\"Yoliswa

Yoliswa Makhasi, Film and Publications Board CEO<\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier this year (May 2012), Microsoft said that they have been working hard behind the scenes to support the FPB\u2019s efforts to improve the SA rating situation for video games in general.<\/p>\n

The FPB disagrees that it is the \u201cguilty party\u201d, as stated by Gaum, however.<\/p>\n

According to Makhasi, the FPB was following the legislation given by Parliament which required certain things to be done in a certain manner.<\/p>\n

She added that they have been working with industry to see how the issue could be tackled, and that legislation is needed that doesn\u2019t frustrate industry or compromising on the key principles of the FPB.<\/p>\n

Fisha later picked up where her CEO left off and explained that there was a need to look at core regulations with the industry to see if there was a way to let industry to use their own ratings system for South African audiences.<\/p>\n

\"Mmapula

Mmapula Fisha, Film and Publications Board COO<\/p><\/div>\n

In Apple\u2019s case there are simply too many games, Fisha said. She said that Apple told the FPB that they were not going to submit their 101,000 games for classification as they already had a system for age ratings.<\/p>\n

South Africa is only one of two countries in the world that insists on its own system of classification being used, Fisha said.<\/p>\n

The challenge, therefore, is to find a way to comply with regulations without individually classifying every game, Fisha said.<\/p>\n

Fisha said that South Africa was part of a global team that worked on a system to classify apps, while they were working locally to deal with these issues as well.<\/p>\n

The FPB had enhanced their research capacity to be able to do this, Fisha said.<\/p>\n

She went on to explain that classification boards in other countries had merely allowed the distributors to keep distributing whilst they found way to regulate it.<\/p>\n

The FPB has allowed this in South Africa with manufacturers such as BlackBerry<\/a> and HTC<\/a>, Fisha said, but Apple decided that they did not want to go against the law so they would rather not distribute.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h3>\n

Is using Steam in South Africa illegal?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Film and Publications Board rating procedure explained<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

iTunes online store remains limited in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Xbox LIVE SA team working to improve Marketplace service<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa is one of two countries that insists on its own classification measures for games<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":58419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[16302,605,97,2134,2138,35,403,123,16306,11851,16304],"class_list":["post-62664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-andre-gaum","tag-apple","tag-blackberry","tag-film-and-publications-board","tag-fpb","tag-headline","tag-htc","tag-microsoft","tag-mmapula-fisha","tag-regulations","tag-yoliswa-makhasi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62664"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62718,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62664\/revisions\/62718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}