- Major decision on 'virtual child porn'
The US Supreme Court made a landmark First Amendment
decision this week when, by a 6-3 vote, it overturned an effort by Congress
to ban "virtual child pornography." The law that the Court struck down
was the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. The decision was a victory
for free speech advocates and "a setback to those who had argued that
there is no way for viewers to differentiate between real-child pornography
and virtual-child pornography," according to the Christian
Science Monitor. And it affirmed "that free speech principles apply
with full force in the computer age," the New
York Times reports.
The decision, in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition,
et al., was unsettling to many, including SafeKids.com's
Larry Magid, who wrote this week, "As a card-carrying member of the ACLU
[the American Civil Liberties Union], I'm against censorship and strongly
in favor of free-speech rights on the Internet, even when that speech
is detestable. But, as a board member of the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children [NCMEC], I'm highly sensitive to the role that
child pornography can play in the exploitation of children - even children
who aren't used to produce that material." In his
article, Larry explains how "virtual child porn" images are made and
why the Supreme Court's decision makes it more difficult for police and
prosecutors to find real child porn and prosecute its producers.
For a thorough analysis of this new burden on
prosecutors, here's a memo
at the NCMEC's Web site from the Center's chief legal counsel. It's based
on "the collective analysis of a number of legal scholars," and it's an
important perspective in an important national debate. The memo calls
for a new "constitutional statute prohibiting the possession, manufacture
or distribution of virtual child pornography that is virtually indistinguishable
from actual child pornography."
Apparently, Congress was listening. The Congressional
Missing & Exploited Children's Caucus had already announced Thursday
that it will introduce just such legislation. See the news links just
below for more reactions.
In other coverage, here is...
- The
New York Times on general reactions to the overturning of the Child
Pornography Prevention Act.
- The
Washington Post on US Attorney General John Ashcroft's, saying he'll
now work with Congress to develop anti-child porn legislation "that
will survive judicial scrutiny."
- A
Christian Science Monitor editorial, saying the Supreme Court was
right to strike down such a broadly brushed law and calling on Congress
to come up with a better-written one.
- In related news, JapanToday
reports that Japan, "long accused of having a lax attitude toward child
pornography," plans to "tighten" Japanese laws to make transmission
of such material over the Net a criminal offense.
- Teen online safety spotlighted
NBC's
"Today" news show aired a segment on teen online safety Thursday morning
highlighting a recent Girl Scouts USA study (see
our coverage, "Girl Scout survey," 3/1/02). The TV story included
a taped comment from SafeKids.com's Larry Magid about the need for teenagers
and parents to be alert to what teens encounter in online chatrooms, followed
by a live interview with Dr. Harriet Mostatche of Girl Scouts USA. The
MSNBC Web page has useful tips for parents and teens on how to stay safe
online.
Tell us about the online-safety solutions and
rules that work well for your family - we would love to share them
with your fellow readers. Email us anytime via feedback@netfamilynews.org.
- Children's 'Nobel Prizes' announced
More than 125,000 school children around the world
participated in the just-announced vote for the World's Children's Prize
and the Global Friends' Award (which have become known as the Children's
Nobel Prizes), established by the Sweden-based nonprofit organization,
Children's World. Queen Silvia
of Sweden announced the winners this week:
- South African Nkosi Johnson, who died of AIDS
at the age of 12 last June, was honored with the 2002 Global Friends'
Award posthumously. Queen Silvia presented the award to Nkosi's best
friend, Eric Nicholls, and Moshe Nhlapo and Manini Mkhabela, all 12
years old. Moshe and Manini are AIDS orphans now living at Nkosi's Haven,
a home for women and children with AIDS (here's a CNN.com
article about Nkosi's Haven).
- The 2002 World's Children's Prize is shared
by Nkosi Johnson and Maiti Nepal, a non-profit organization in Nepal
that supports victims of child-trafficking and prostitution. "Maiti's
founder, Anuradha Koirala, received the prize from Queen Silvia, together
with three girls who were freed from brothels in India to which they
had been sold as slaves. One of them was only 7 when she was sold. When
she was freed at the age of 12 she had already contracted AIDS," reports
the Children's
World press release.
- Free email: An update
Many Web users - including teens seeking their
own, passworded, email accounts - have become dependent on free, Web-based
email services. Well-known examples include Microsoft's HotMail, Yahoo
Mail, and AOLMail. Well, these services are increasingly less free. What
we mean is, services included in them such as mail-forwarding, spam filtering,
email storage above a certain limit, and customer support are rapidly
becoming premium services; to get such features, users will have to pay
a fee. Wired
News published a useful update about all this. EmailAdresses.com has an A-Z list
of free-email providers, with updates on services to which they're
starting to attach fees.
For anyone who doesn't need to store more than
50 messages at a time and who really does not want to receive viruses
or spam (unsolicited commercial, or "junk," email), check out ActivatorMail.
It has "very powerful anti-virus and anti-spam filtering," EmailAddresses.com
reports, and a porn-filtering option available for a small fee. A different
type of filtered email solution called JustSafe is now in beta testing.
Its producers say it filters for sexually explicit content, profanity,
hate, and violence (here's their description).
- Children's Web sites prefs
They're not much different from ours, actually.
A new study by Nielsen Norman Group found that "the bells and whistles
often used on sites designed for kids do not necessarily impress," and
children are impatient with poorly designed Web sites, the BBC
reports. SafeKids.com's Larry
Magid also wrote about the survey in his column for the San
Jose Mercury News. "It may come as a surprise to some children's Web
site developers who like to use odd colors and weird typefaces that kids
want sites with text that is legible and easy to read," Larry wrote. "Yahoo
and Amazon scored high with this age group [5-to-11-year-olds], despite
- or perhaps because - they're so plain and simple."
The study found some interesting gender differences:
"Boys are more annoyed by verbose pages, while girls like instructions.
Boys are also more likely to spend time alone on the computer, whereas
girls spend more time with a parent," reports the BBC, which also reminds
us of significant (Datamonitor) figures, showing that 65.3 million children
between 5 and 17 have access to the Net at home in the US and Western
Europe, and 54.1 million have access at school.
- European Parliament on filtering
Interesting, in light of pending federal court
decisions on the fate of two US laws concerning kids' online safety: The
European Parliament recently voted against regulatory or legislative Internet
filtering. IDG.net
reports: "Instead of blocking sites, content providers and ISPs should
self-regulate and users should take advantage of filtering technologies
and content rating, the Parliament said. It asks that the European Commission,
the EU's executive body, promote creation of content filtering systems
to support parental control."
The two laws awaiting action in US courts are
the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, for which a Supreme Court ruling
is expected later this spring or early summer (here's the
Center for Democracy & Technology's page on COPA), and the Children's
Internet Protection Act of 2000, just argued before a federal court in
Philadelphia (see "CIPA
on trial" in our 3/29/02 issue). Our thanks to QuickLinks
for pointing this one out.
- US kids' cell-phone use rising
A survey of several thousand users of popular
children's Web site Neopets.com has found that "even the youngest of America's
children have taken to using cell phones with a vengeance," Advertising
Age reports. Though respondents ranged in age from 5 to 23, more than
91% were 18 or younger. Eighty percent of them said they use cell phones,
Ad Age says, including 57% of 5-to-7-year-olds, 76% of 8-to-12-year-olds,
and 84% of 13-to-18-year-olds. "And while only 28% of all 3,050 said they
owned their own mobile phone, 79% of those who didn't said they wanted
to." As for what they use (or would like to use) those phone for, "more
than 56% want cell phones that play music, 40% want to surf the Web on
their phones, 37% want cell phones that can take photographs, 52% want
better quality cell phone games, and 40% said text messaging is important."
Meanwhile, watch out, parents of cell-phone users:
A recent article in TheFeature.com
(which focuses on mobile technologies) reports (with a few too many sexual
puns) that adult content providers such as Virgin Mobile and Playboy.com
have big plans for wireless services and cell phone users.
- Beware e-bullying
More than one in four UK 11-to-19-year-olds has
been threatened via their computers or mobile phones, a recent survey
has found. British children's charity NCH, which commissioned the research,
suggests that young people need to be taught how to deal with 21st-century
bullying techniques, the BBC
reports. Of the 856 11-to-19-year-olds surveyed, "16% had received
bullying or threatening text messages, 7% had been harassed in Internet
chatrooms, and 4% by email. "NCH cited one 15-year-old boy who had given
his mobile number to a friend in a football chatroom." After an argument
the boy had received text messages "threatening to find out where he lived,
beat him up, and even kill him," the BBC reported, adding that eventually
his cell-phone service provider allowed him to change his number and the
threats stopped.
- Monitoring IMs
Monitoring employees' instant messages is on the
increase in the US. Both the Associated Press (via MSNBC
and the New
York Times offer a corporate perspective on this popular communications
tool, but the reports can give parents and teachers some insights, too.
While companies are beginning to notice that employee IM-ing can represent
a security risk, parents and teens are becoming aware that - because IMs
can be captured and copied - IM-style gossiping bears risks to its participants,
too, not just its subjects. Here's a CNN.com
piece on software companies use to monitor and what it does. (Our
thanks to the National Center for Missing
& Exploited Children for pointing this piece out.)
- Kids choose Net over TV
Given one media choice, a third of US children
would choose the Internet over other media, a new study by Knowledge Networks/Statistical
Research found. The study found that 33% of 8-to-17-year-olds would choose
the Net over television, radio, or the telephone, reports Nua
Internet Surveys. TV was the second choice (26%), telephone third
(21%), and radio fourth (15%). The gender differences were interesting:
"Thirty eight percent of boys chose the Internet as their first choice,
compared to 28% of girls. Overall, boys preferred Internet and television,
while girls preferred the telephone and radio," Nua reports.
- Japanese teens' use of dating sites
A survey on teen Net usage sponsored by Japan's
National Police Agency (NPA) found that nearly a quarter of that country's
female high school students have visited online dating sites. The survey
was published "by a working group to combat online content that is harmful
to children," AsiaBizTech
reports. Here are other findings: 12.4% of Japanese middle and high
school students have visited dating sites. Breaking that down, 18.4% of
male and 22% of female high school students have accessed dating sites,
and the corresponding middle school figures are 2% (male) and 7.1% (female).
More than 76% of all dating site visits are from mobile phones, as opposed
to 23.9% from PCs. As for illegal or harmful content, the survey found
that 13.9% of respondents said they had viewed pornographic images, and
7.4% said they had viewed "images of cruelty." Because the survey also
found that "45% of Japanese parents allow their children to use a PC without
supervision," the NPA concluded its report recommending that voluntary
measures be put in place by Internet service providers and dating site
operators. Recommendations included age checks by site operators, with
an age minimum of 18; ISPs employing mechanisms to prevent underage access;
and clear age-minimum labeling of advertising, according to AsiaBizTech.
