Search this site!

June 14, 2002

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this second week of June:

• Family Tech: First Amendment v. children?; Protecting privacy online
  
• School filtering: Your views wanted
  
• Web News Briefs: Net governance scrutinized in Senate; IM-ing at school; Library that still filters; Soccer central; Music file-swappers beware; The other kind of Web surfer....

~~~~~~~~~~Support NetFamilyNews.org!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To support this free, nonprofit service, please visit our contributions page at one of these locations....

 

(Making a donation is fast, easy, secure, and tax-deductible!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Family Tech

1. The First Amendment v. children?

   "A nascent industry is emerging to traffic in this now legal commerce," writes SafeKids.com's Larry Magid in his latest San Jose Mercury News column, referring to virtual child pornography. "I recently looked at a Web site calling itself 'Virtual Child Porn Headquarters,' which cites the Supreme Court ruling." The site boasts: "With the law by our side, we are embarking on a marvelous journey, exploring the very frontiers of your rights as an American. Give me virtual child pornography or give me death!"

   Since the US Supreme Court's decision in April to strike down a law that made these images illegal (see our 4/19 issue), protectors of children have rarely been so at odds with protectors of civil liberties. Which is a challenge for someone who is a member of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the board of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Still, Larry thinks "it is possible to craft a law that helps protect children from predators without jeopardizing our free-speech rights" - legislation that is right now in the works. In the column, he explains how virtual child porn is made and how it victimizes children when they are depicted in but not actually photographed for sexually explicit images.

2. Protecting privacy online

   Also this week Larry Magid reminds readers of an easily overlooked online privacy breach, for parents as well as kids: children giving out their own and family passwords. "Kids need to be reminded not to share their passwords with their friends - even their best friends," he writes in his syndicated column, "I know of one middle-school student who almost got into serious trouble after a classmate complained that he had sent her harassing e-mail. It turned out that someone else sent the message, by logging on to AOL with that student's user name and password." Kids need to know that what they're protecting in some cases is their own credibility and reputation, not just a password!

   Larry goes into a number of other ways families can avoid privacy invasions, from junk email to credit-card number theft. He offers more advice on passwords and provides the URL of the makers of firewall software that families connected via cable-modem or DSL can download for free.

   Here's the Electronic Freedom Foundation's just-released "Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy." Larry mentions a number of them, but a little redundancy never hurts where privacy and safety are concerned. Also, here's the Federal Trade Commission's online-privacy site for kids and families, which debuted when the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) came into play, April 2000. Finally, if you just want relief from "spam" (junk email), for free, filtered email there's ActivatorMail (but you have to change your email address); for more ideas, see a piece on just this subject this week in ZDNet.

* * * *

School filtering: Your views wanted

The US government is seeking your comments on the effectiveness of filtering technologies and other protective measures being used in schools right now. When we called the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) this week, Director of Communications Clyde Ensslin assured us they're seeking comments from all interested parties - educators, parents, anyone who has first-hand experience with filtering or blocking technologies in schools and/or school Net safety policies. The report needs a variety of perspectives, he said.

Specifically, here's what the NTIA (part of the Commerce Department) wants to hear about by August 27 (email works, but here are complete instructions and contact information):

• "Whether currently available technology protection measures adequately address the needs of educational institutions in protecting children's safety on the Internet;
• "How to foster development of measures that meet such needs; and
• "The development and effectiveness of local Internet safety policies currently in operation after community input."

The public-comment procedure is a requirement of the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000 (CIPA). In its request for comment, the NTIA (whose job it is to manage this process) refers to "growing concern about children's exposure to inappropriate online content." It cites figures from its February 2002 study, "A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet," showing that more than half the US population (143 million) was using the Internet as of last September. As for kids, nearly 90% of US 5-to-17-year-olds (48 million) now use computers, and a significant number use the Net at school or home - 55% of 14-to-17-year-olds, 45% of 10-to-13-year-olds, and 22% of 5-to-9-year-olds, the study found.

"Noting the heightened interest regarding the possible exposure of children to unsafe or inappropriate content online, the Department of Commerce report notes that for the first time households were surveyed to determine the level of concern about their children's exposure to material over the Internet versus their concern over exposure to material on television. The results indicated that 68.3 percent of households were more concerned about the propriety of Internet content than material on television," the NTIA Web page points out. It also provides useful background on the e-rate and CIPA, and cites and links to other studies concerning kids and the Internet.

* * * *

Web News Briefs

1. Senators scrutinize ICANN

   Members of the US Senate's influential Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee this week heard expert testimony on the performance of ICANN, the Net's chief governing body. According to Wired News, "testimony centered on the question of whether [the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers], in its four years of operation, has taken on too powerful a role in setting domain-related policy. Panelists also considered what, if anything, should be done to rein it in."

   Several of the senators and a Bush administration official said "they were planning to increase oversight of ICANN," which "would have to change the way it operates if it wants to continue to oversee" the domain-name system ("NetFamilyNews.org" and "SafeKids.com" are domain names), reports Reuters (via the New York Times). The lawmakers did not go so far as to say the US should run ICANN. The organization, which isn't yet in full control of the domain-name system because it hasn't met some of the requirements of its original contract, has been "a magnet for controversy" since it was created in 1998 to take over control of the system from the US government. Reuters reports that "domain-name businesses complain that ICANN moves too slowly and imposes too many restrictions, while grass-roots 'cyber-citizens' complain that their voices are not heard. Charges that the nonprofit organization operates in an opaque and arbitrary manner come from all quarters." ICANN.org is the organization's Web site.

2. Soccer central

   Not just because American TV commentary is pathetic (where the World Cup is concerned), soccer/football fans in the US find the Web the best source for World Cup updates. "For an international game like soccer, the New York Times reports, "the Web's depth and reach are a fan's dream. Expatriates can follow their country's exploits through native sites. Discussion groups allow partisans to swap analysis and opinion, not always typing in a native language. The forums often splinter into subgroups devoted to minute analysis of, say, the antics of Rivaldo, the Brazilian star who admitted he had been play-acting when he fell to the ground writhing after Hakan Unsal of Turkey kicked the ball at him." The article mentions lots of Web soccer hangouts, from ESPNSoccernet to Pele.net to expat fans' own favorites. And of course there's the official site of FIFA, soccer/football's governing world body. FIFAWorldCup.com, run in partnership with Yahoo, is available in English, French, Spanish, Korean, German, Japanese and Chinese.

3. IM-ing at school

   This story's not what it seems. In the case of a class of 7th-graders in a Boston public school, instant-messaging is *part* of the curriculum. The New York Times describes the River City project, a "multiple-user virtual environment experiential simulator, or Muvee," to which students log in, assume an identity, and join other student players in gathering information and solving problems. In "River City," circa 1890, citizens are plagued by a mysterious illness. Students meet up with local citizens and snoop around the houses, hotels, and streets to figure out what is causing the epidemic. They compare notes with instant messaging. The project is funded largely by the US National Science Foundation and designed by scientists at George Mason University and the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

4. A library that still filters

   A library system in Virginia is ignoring a recent federal court decision against the Children's Internet Protection Act (see "CIPA overturned" in the May 31 issue). According to the Washington Post, the board of the Prince William County Library is waiting to see if the CIPA decision goes to the Supreme Court and then what the US's highest court decides before it considers changing its policy to have "limited" filters on computers for adults and more restrictive filters on computers for children. A county attorney for Prince William told the paper that "library officials researched Internet use in county libraries for four years. They tried less restrictive ways of keeping offensive material at bay, but they still received complaints from patrons that it was accessible, she said. They also studied a 1998 federal court ruling that struck down the use of filters in Loudoun County's public libraries and decided that they were in compliance with the law, added Horan, who has been advising the library board." For a broader picture, here's a useful resource page, "The Internet and Public Libraries: Issues and Opportunities", by librarian/Internet consultant Gail Junion-Metz, with her annotated links to articles, research papers, laws, policies, and other related link lists. Our thanks to librarian Marylaine Block and her Neat New Stuff newsletter for pointing this resource out.

5. Music file-swappers beware

   Parents of MP3 file sharers beware: Researchers connected with Hewlett-Packard Labs have found that "a significant percentage of KaZaA users have accidentally or unknowingly allowed private files like email and financial documents to be shared with the global Internet." The problem is, the New York Times reports, people are just misconfiguring the software after downloading it, and its publisher, Sharman Networks in Sydney and Vanuatu have done little to educate them. KaZaA, the Times adds, "is currently the most widely used of the services. It is used by an average of 2 million people at any time."

   KaZaA is notable for reasons other than security flaws, too. It's an experiment in whether music file-swappers will prefer "pay-per-view" (or "per-listen") file-sharing from independent sites (KaZaA is beginning to sprinkle such files into its service of mostly free tunes) to the record companies' subscription services now available on the Web. The latest news on the latter is that two record-label giants are finally responding to the file-sharing revolution in a positive way. The Los Angeles Times reports that, "acknowledging that online piracy is forcing dramatic changes in the music industry, the world's two largest record companies [Sony and Universal] are poised to make it easy and cheap for fans to buy - rather than steal - songs off the Internet." One interesting example is Universal's plan this summer to sell "tens of thousands of high-quality digital singles for 99 cents or less at online retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, and Sam Goody" (see the article for more interesting developments - the L.A. Times requires free registration).

   Meanwhile, Business Week says "a host of cable companies" may soon slow or shut down file-swapping for a lot of customers (and ease record company fears) by starting to charge them for their Net-pipe clogging activities.

6. Using the Web to surf more

   There are Web surfers, and then there are surfers who use the Web to find out where to surf. Where the latter go to surf (the Web) is Surfline.com, the New York Times reports. Surfline, "with more visitors in a month than all global surf magazine readers combined," not only has about Webcams strategically placed at "more than 100 of the planet's best surf spots," it also has LOLA - software that "gathers data from weather satellites, offshore data buoys, ship reports and wave and weather models developed by the Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The program then churns through the data, using parameters that take into account underwater topography and compare current conditions with those observed in the past." In other words, LOLA predicts where the good waves will be. The upshot of all this (besides a phenomenal business)? Middle-aged surfing. "Now, with knowledge of where the best waves are and will be, at their fingertips," the Times reports "surfers can plan their lives and travels and remain committed to their sport well into their responsible years." Yet another way someone has figured out to use the Internet to change life as we know it!

* * * *

Share with a Friend!! If you find the newsletter useful, won't you tell your friends and colleagues? We would much appreciate your referral. To subscribe, they can just send an email to subscribe@netfamilynews.org - no need to type anything in the Subject field or the body of the message.

We are always happy to hear from potential sponsors and distribution partners as well. If you'd like to make a tax-deductible contribution or become a sponsor, please email us or send a check payable to:

Net Family News, Inc.
P.O. Box 1283
Madison, CT 06443

That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

 

HOME | newsletter | subscribe | links | supporters | about | feedback

Copyright 2002 Net Family News, Inc. | Our Privacy Policy | Kindly supported by the UK Domain Name Registration Centre.