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April 20, 2001
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Kids & Net ethics: It's about time!
The basic message for parents in Winn Schwartau's new book, "Internet & Computer Ethics for Kids (and Parents & Teachers Who Haven't Got a Clue)," wasn't even written by Winn. It's found in the words of former hacker Chris Goggans (now CTO of an Internet security company and probably a protege of Winn's), in the foreward to Winn's book. Here it is: "It is unfortunate, but if a [hacker] does not have an 'inner voice' telling him or her the difference between right and wrong, [s/he] may be a lost cause. That kind of compelling inner voice can really only develop through consistent family interaction. I was lucky that my mother took an interest in what I was doing, and let me know exactly how she felt about it."
Chris is talking about serious hackers (we use "hackers" as a neutral term) because he's telling his own story. But no child who uses the Internet, hacker or not, should be online without some training in ethics. The training doesn't have to be in a media lab or computer class (though that wouldn't hurt!); ideally, it's in family, or class, discussions and life lessons that have nothing to do with computers. In fact, it just could be that the Internet will enliven ethics discussion everywhere (do we hear cheers?!).
To be fair, Winn himself has a basic message for parents, too - an extremely basic message - in his book's one chapter for us (Chapter 40): "You're the parent. Act like one." He can say that because he's a parent, too (as well as a well-known computer security expert and author of/contributor to more than a dozen books on the subject; this is his first book for kids).
In fact, what really got the book off the ground, he told us in an interview, was when his 9-year-old son hacked into the neighbors' computer last summer. Winn said, "I told him, 'Adam, I don't know how many laws you've broken, here. I've got to call the FBI.' He was terrified. So I told him, 'Maybe there's a way around it [calling the FBI]. I want you to go to the neighbors, tell them what you did and show them how to secure their computer.' " Winn confirmed our suspicion that this experience gave 9-year-old Adam quite a leg up in the area of tech ethics. "Fifty to eighty percent of the problem is not technical…. It's people. A lot of this is about social things and behavior, not technology," Winn added.
Anyway, even if for no other reason than its timeliness, "Internet & Computer Ethics for Kids" is a super new online-safety tool. But there are other reasons:
Parents and teachers, if you find any of this material useful or if you've been down this road a ways with your kids, do email us your comments and experiences! You know the address: feedback@netfamilynews.org.
More on Net ethics & Netiquette
A recent survey conducted for MSN found "some shocking lapses of etiquette" in emails sent by people under 25, reports the BBC, adding that "most have no conception of what counts as proper manners when penning a digital missive."
Here's ZDNet on general "power rudeness" or "geeks behaving badly" - the previously unimagined bad manners to which technology has given rise.
"From Teen Hackers to Job Hunters", an interesting Washtech.com piece on an "almost mythical" hacker organization's good influence on young hackers.
TurnItIn.com - an interesting service that helps teachers detect plagiarism in students' papers. "This Web-based tool analyzes written assignments against its database of hundreds of thousands of papers, as well as general Web content," the service says.
A work in progress is the "Responsible Netizen" project by the Center for Responsible Use of Information Technologies at the University of Oregon. The site links to a number of academic papers and presentations on the ethical issues involved in Internet use in K-12 schools (including sample acceptable-use policies). A book is forthcoming; we'll tell you about it late this summer.
On/for character education in general:
"Parents, politicians mull teaching right, wrong" - a recent CNNfyi piece on the state of character education.
CharacterCounts.org - "a nonpartisan, nonsectarian coalition of schools, communities and nonprofit organizations working to advance character education by teaching the Six Pillars of Character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship."
TeachingValues.com - another nonsectarian resource for parents and educators (e.g., see the "Universality of the Golden Rule" page). Some of the products and services are free (newsletter, book recommendations, sample story + activities), some may be purchased (parent coaching services, books, stories.
A subscriber's question: Kids' privacy & parental protection
There's kids' online privacy, and then there's kids' online privacy in the home. Certainly parents want to protect their children from invasions of their privacy from out on the Net. But how much privacy should we allow them when it involves what their own parents can know about their online activities? Subscriber Gail in New York emailed us this week with this tough question in hopes that you would share your families' experiences and lessons learned. Please email your comments, and we'll publish a sampler. Thanks in advance. Here's Gail:
"My children are very sensitive when they are writing a letter to a friend, whether on the Word program or in email, and they always cover the screen. I know it is personal and want to respect their privacy, but I also want to be aware of what they are doing on the computer. I can't help but glance anyway, because it is right near the kitchen and I am constantly walking back and forth during the day. Is it okay to let them have their privacy, or should I insist they show me what they are doing?"
Kids' online privacy: A report card
The US's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has been in effect for one year now, and - thanks to the Washington-based Center for Media Education - we know that children's Web sites…
That's a fairly simplistic snapshot of the findings from CME's survey of 153 commercial Web sites targeting children. The full report, announced this week, can be downloaded in pdf format from CME.org).
Here are some Web sites the report specifically mentions:
Three other sites in the news for noncompliance this week were GirlsLife.com, InsidetheWeb.com (now Beseen.com), and BigMailBox.com, which - in a settlement with the FTC - will pay a total of $100,000 in penalties. Here's Washtech.com on this development.
It's no surprise that CME recommends continued monitoring of kids' Web publishing by the FTC. There were many more detailed recommendations for the FTC, policymakers, and Web site publishers. Two involving parents suggest that the FTC look into how well we can view and control the data that sites are collecting on our children and that there be research done on how well we understand COPPA. Do you feel you understand the law and believe it's protecting your kids? Comments are most welcome, as you know! For more information, two great resources are CME's KidsPrivacy.org and the FTC's KidzPrivacy site.
KidsCom.com's privacy test
If any of you are interested in participating in this grand, ongoing experiment in protecting online kids' privacy, you can help test a new solution that one kids' site has just come up with.
With the FTC's support, KidsCom.com, one of the Web's oldest sites for kids, is trying something new for COPPA compliance: From its sister site for parents, Parents-Talk.com, KidsCom is going directly to parents to get them to register their kids (instead of telling kids to go get Mom or Dad to do so). It may not seem particularly revolutionary, but what's different, here, is that you can register your child for this site right on the Web without having to print out the form, sign it, and snail-mail it in (which many COPPA-compliant sites require). If it works - if parents like it and use it - this way of getting parental consent could be good for everybody: parents (convenience) as well as Web publishers (lower compliance costs). KidsCom.com would certainly be interested in your feedback (email tad.gospodarek@circle1network.com) and says it will "continually monitor" this method and "sit down to reevaluate it" in mid-July.
For more information, here's ParentTalk's press release on all this.
In honor of Earth Day
As usual, NationalGeographic.com has come up with a creative way to mark an important day (Sunday, 4/22). With EarthPulse, conservation central at the Web site, kids and grownups this month can learn how to "read" and run Idaho's Selway River, learn about global food supplies and water conservation, and participate in the debate over the Columbia River's past and future. Part of EarthPulse is the Ford Motor Co.-sponsored "Heroes for the Planet" contest (answer conservation questions), whose winners get to join heroes such as Sylvia Earle, Amory and Hunter Lovins, and Bob Ballard on National Geographic expeditions.
If any of you take kids to this resource, do email us what you all thought of the experience.
Web News Briefs
A commentary in CNET by tech-consulting giant Gartner says that the current battle over filtering Internet content is one that "needs to be fought." And it will be a protracted one. Gartner proposes a solution for public libraries as well as businesses. Here's a CNET article on the view from the San Francisco Public Library, as the Children's Internet Protection Act is being challenged in court by the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations.
For anyone concerned about the complicated and highly charged environment of US high school these days, there's food for thought in "Sean in the Middle," a story at Slashdot.com. It's about 16-year-old high school student Sean, "a computer geek and gamer who has never been in serious trouble," as writer Jon Katz describes him. Sean was "thrown out of a Texas school and ordered into 'alternative education' for responding to a year's worth of bullying and harassment, some verbal, some physical," Jon writes. "His crime was to fantasize out loud about revenge. He got as much due process as Chinese dissidents get." Read the story and you'll see that the situation Sean and his parents face is complicated; they are learning as they go. What we find disturbing is the school's apparent unwillingness to learn anything from this incident. But what do you think? Do email us your own thoughts and experiences.
A special report at CNET says the free-wheeling Web that once was a civil libertarian's dream is rapidly becoming tamed. "A combination of new technologies, recent laws, and international restrictions - sometimes related, more often not - are making possible a kind of online regulation once thought impossible." The news will raise both cheers and boos.
Regardless of what the NASDAQ says, the Internet is here to stay and more popular all the time in the US. Witness recent figures from Jupiter Media Metrix showing that the amount of time Americans spend online jumped 57% in the last two years and is now more than 20 hours per month, according to the Nando Times.
Most of us know that search engines use "spiders" - software bots that "crawl" around the Web, gathering words and phrases on Web pages, which is how the search engines "know" where the words and phrases we ask for are. (Ok, someone help us explain that better!) Anyway, now you can watch the spiders at work! According to Internet.com, thanks to some students at the University of Iowa, "users can enter a search phrase and watch 10 spiders crawl out onto the Internet in real-time in order to find the terms" they're seeking. It's experimental technology, but it's great to check in on a student project and peer into the future.
The number of online casino and gambling sites has doubled in the past year to between 1,200 and 1,400, according to a recent study by Bear Stearns (cited by Newsbytes.com). An anecdotal New York Times story looks at how "addictive" online gambling can be and, in a sidebar, the shifting laws surrounding it. Meanwhile, the USIIA Bulletin reports that Great Britain aims to become the world leader in this corner of cyberspace: online gambling: "The British government has altered its tax laws to encourage bookmakers to bring their offshore gambling sites back to Britain in return for lower taxes. The British note that the US will likely 'be tying themselves in knots for years' on the gambling issue while they corner the global market." Australia, on the other hand, plans to crack down on electronic gambling, reports Reuters (via Wired News).
Is this an indicator of the power of the media? Last week many news outlets reported on an increase in Yahoo!'s porn sales (see our Web News Briefs item on this). This week Yahoo! announced it was dropping both the sale of pornography and banner ads from adult sites from its shopping service. Here's CNET's story, to which the USIIA Bulletin adds that Yahoo! was "swamped by thousands of complaints" after consumer and children's groups asked customers to boycott the site.
Today's Gloria Steinem's are using the Internet to learn how to be activists, according to Wired News. The story - which is not just about feminism, but social activism in general - reports on new Web sites that have sprung up and new campaigns that have developed quite spontaneously because of the convenience of email and the Web.
Here's a nice resource to point out to the Net newbies in your extended family and workplace: "Easing Web Anxiety By Going Online," at the New York Times, tells several newbies' success stories and provides the URLs to six Web sites that have helped them out. And here's another useful Times piece on the basics of getting DSL (by someone who'd been through the process and lived to tell about it).
Hard to believe, but - for college students - stereos are rapidly becoming obsolete. According to Wired News, a study by Mercer Management Consulting shows that "nearly one-third of students listen to their music using their PCs," and only 48% of them packed up their stereo systems and lugged them to school. Even the pros, DJs, are playing party music with computers - 10% of them!
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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Anne Collier, Editor
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