- The Web: Tool for finding fun activities
Whether you need a complete national directory
of US state and county fairs, specifics on the Gilroy (Calif.) Garlic
Festival, or the dates of the closest bluegrass festival to your house,
the Web has it all. In his column for the San
Jose Mercury News this week, SafeKids.com's Larry Magid has descriptions
of and Web addresses for all the above and more - as well as how to research
the activity of your family's choice. (BTW, we went to the Gilroy
Festival's Web site and noticed that, fortunately, the festival has
its own official breath freshener.)
- Computer shortcuts
Many long-time computer users know there are keyboard
shortcuts that make quick work of copy, cut, paste, and many other computer
tasks. In a column for the New
York Times this week, Larry writes that they fall into three categories:
shortcuts built into your keyboard (like "ctrl, p" for printing), "make-your-own"
shortcuts built into software (e.g., browsers' bookmarks or favorites),
and add-on shortcuts created with software you can buy (such as a product
called QuicKeys). Larry explains all of these and has a sidebar
with links to Windows and Mac shortcut lists at the Web sites of Microsoft
and Apple.
- Carabella: New privacy-ed game
Carabella is "hip" and "wired," and "she loves
music." She's also a great little video game just out on the Web. Developed
by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
and Privacyactivism.org,
it's designed to teach digital music fans of all ages about "ways that
consumers' privacy and fair use rights are being whittled away by digital
rights management technologies, online spyware and data profiling services"
(some parents will also get an intro to the world of online music - you
know, all those terms like file-sharing, P2P, KaZaA, MP3, etc.!).
Players join Carabella as she figures out how
to "get some tunes, keeping as many fair-use rights as possible, without
giving up her privacy, spending money, wasting time, or infringing anyone's
copyright." Points (up to 100) are accumulated (or deleted) as the player
makes decisions along with Carabella.
Here's the game,
the press
release, and CNET's
coverage of Carabella.
- More 'teeth' for Web ratings
Parent-configured software that filters self-labeled
Web sites just got more effective. The reason why it (the free ICRAfilter)
got better is because the Web's most high-traffic publishers - America
Online, Microsoft, and Yahoo - announced this week that they have labeled
93% of their Web pages. "The move gives more teeth to the ICRA program,"
according to CNET.
ICRA says it expects other Web sites to take the Web giants' lead.
Values-neutral labeling (often called Web ratings)
is invisible software code that tells your Web browser (e.g., Netscape
or Internet Explorer) what types of content the page or site contains
- including sexually explicit, violent, or drug-related material. The
labeling works with the free, downloadable ICRAfilter, which parents can
configure to block out content they don't want their children to access.
For example, they can allow their kids to view nudity presented in artistic,
medical, or educational contexts but not that of the adult-entertainment
sort, reports the Washington
Post. (To download, go to ICRA.org
and click on "ICRAfilter" on the left-hand side under "Download area.")
ICRA's Web-labeling system has its critics, especially
and predictably in the commercial filtering software industry. When they
point out the problem of all those Web sites out there that choose not
to self-label, they're correct - ICRA's a voluntary system. But it has
two practical answers to that criticism:
- "Templates" - lists of objectionable Web sites,
developed by other organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League's
list of hate sites. "Parents can download templates that suit their
preferences and block those sites as well as self-labeled sites that
are outside of their pre-approved criteria," reports another Washington
Post article.
- ICRAfilter can also be configured to block any
sites that aren't labeled at all. That's not just online-kid-safety
insurance (though, as of yet, it does eliminate many useful sites on
the Web that have not yet labeled themselves); knowing the option to
block unlabeled sites is available to parents is incentive for more
sites to jump on the labeling bandwagon.
Here is ICRA's press kit
for the week's developments (all links in pdf format).
- Revised virtual-child-porn law
By a 413-to-8 vote, the US House of Representatives
passed a new law against virtual child pornography. Similar legislation
has already been introduced in the Senate, and "with the enthusiastic
backing of both Democrats and Republicans, final passage of a bill this
year is all but certain," CNET
reports. The Supreme Court struck down the first anti-child-porn law
in April on constitutional grounds. Congress moved fast to come up with
a replacement that would pass First Amendment restrictions, because, CNET
says, "law enforcement considers restrictions on computer-generated images
a key tool in fighting child pornography." Here's the Washington
Post and our April coverage
of the Supreme Court's decision.
- CIPA to US Supreme Court
Web filtering in US public libraries is back in
court. It was no surprise, reports Wired
News, that the Justice Department plans to take a May US Court of
Appeals ruling against the Children's Internet Protection Act to the Supreme
Court. CIPA requires schools and public libraries receiving federal connectivity
funding to install filters or blocking software on computers children
use. The May federal court decision concerned libraries only. The American
Library Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case against CIPA, "believes
that decisions on how to protect children from unsavory material online
is best left in the hands of individual libraries, as is currently the
case," Wired News adds. Here's the Washington
Post on this week's news (see also "CIPA overturned" in our
May 31 issue).
- Online child protection laws: Very useful primer
If all those acronyms - CIPA, COPA, COPPA, et
al. - have gotten the best of you, you are not alone! Here's help from
the Washington
Post, a primer listing each law with a quick summary of its intent,
highlights, sponsor, date signed, and current status.
- Microsoft listens to CARU
In its capacity as protector of online kids' privacy,
the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU , of the
Better Business Bureau) took on Microsoft and got some action. This week
Microsoft agreed to make changes to the children's part of its Passport
authorization service, the New
York Times reports - changes requested by CARU after investigating
Kids Passport's privacy practices since early this year. CARU, in its
press release, explains
that Kids Passport is "a mechanism used to obtain parental consent for
... participating sites, and [Microsoft] promoted Passport as a convenience
feature that would permit computer users to sign on only once to use multiple
Web sites and online services." CARU's two problems with the service were
that...
- It "inadvertently gave the impression" that
its participating sites were all kids' sites, while in fact "none of
the 12 sites that were then [in the service] was designed specifically
for children." They were general-audience sites, many of which "offered
chat rooms and other public forums that enable users to communicate
with and disclose PII [personally identifiable information] (such as
full name, address, email address, phone number, etc.) to users of all
ages, which would allow them to be contacted online or offline."
- The child-related privacy practices of both
the service itself and participating sites were not compliant with the
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and were "either non-existent
or presented in a confusing manner," said CARU, which - by appointment
of the FTC - helps enforce COPPA.
- Broadband changes Net use
About 24 million Americans (21% of all Internet
users) have high-speed connections at home, according to a just-released
study of the Pew
Internet & American Life Project. These broadband users "spend more
time online, do more things, and do them more often than dial-up Internet
users," the study found. Broadband users surveyed said they spend more
time online than they did with dial-up (50% more, in one case cited by
the Washington
Post), but 37% said they also watch less TV, 31% said they spend less
time shopping, and 18% said they spend less time reading newspapers because
of this additional online time. Here are a couple of interesting distinctions
Pew drew between broadband users and their dial-up counterparts:
- "For many broadband users, images and data on
the Internet are not just things to be viewed passively, but things
that these users download, recombine, manipulate, and share with others."
- "The average Internet user with high-speed home
access does 7 things online on a typical day, such as getting news,
health care information, taking an online course, listening to music,
or downloading files. By contrast, a dial-up user does about 3 things
online during a typical day online."
Here's coverage of the study from the New
York Times and SiliconValley.com.
- Italian child-porn sting
No arrests have been made, but 1,146 people have
been implicated in a child-porn ring, as of this report in VNUNET
- "among them police officers, businessmen, and members of [Italy's] armed
forces." Police conducted raids in some 80 towns throughout Italy, seized
more than 4,000 videotapes and 280 computers with more than 5,000 floppy
disks and 4,000 digital images, most of them images "of minors, particularly
from Asia and Eastern Europe," reports VNUNET, adding that the material
was being accessed through four US-based Internet service providers.
- FTC: Gambling sites targeting kids
The US Federal Trade Commission has found that
about 20% of child-oriented game Web sites have Internet gambling ads.
According to the Washington
Post, this was one of the findings in a survey of both gambling and
kids' non-gambling game sites which the FTC conducted with the American
Psychiatric Association. The gambling sites "had inadequate or hard-to-find
warnings about underage gambling prohibitions, and ... some 20% had no
warning at all," says the
FTC's press release, adding that its survey also found that "these
gambling sites had no effective mechanism to block minors from entering."
Here's some very helpful FTC and APA advice -
for kids as well as adults - about online gambling:
- "You can lose your money. Online gambling
operations are in business to make a profit. They take in more money
than they pay out.
- "You can ruin a good credit rating. Online
gambling generally requires the use of a credit card. If kids rack up
debt online, they could ruin their credit rating - or their parent's.
- "Online gambling can be addictive. Because
Internet gambling is a solitary activity, people can gamble uninterrupted
and undetected for hours at a time. Gambling in social isolation and
using credit to gamble may be risk factors for developing gambling problems.
- "Gambling is illegal for kids. Every
state prohibits gambling by minors. That's why gambling sites don't
pay out to kids and go to great lengths to verify the identity of any
winner."
Our thanks to BNA Internet Law for
pointing this piece out.
- Online game site spread virus
It hasn't happened at GameSpy.com before, but
kids who play online games and their parents should know that it can happen:
While GameSpy's unsuspecting techies were working on one of the site's
download servers this week, a virus infected the computer, and 3,100 infected
game files were downloaded by site visitors, reports Reuters (via the
New
York Times). That means gamers downloaded games that infected their
own computers - something anyone who downloads files from the Net should
be alert to.
- Ed-tech conference: 'Teachers want handhelds'
At least that's the conclusion of one reporter
covering one of the US's biggest educational technology conferences of
the year. "Schools are inching closer to putting a computer in the hands
of every student, and a number of educators believe that handheld computers
are the best and quickest way to make it happen," writes Katie Dean of
Wired
News. Another article of Katie's
looks at other technologies on display at this year's National Educational
Computing Conference in San Antonio - as well as individual teachers'
reactions. For a very comprehensive, bird's-eye view, check out eSchoolNews's
coverage, with info on hardware, software, filtering, grants and contests,
and cold, hard numbers: "By organizer reckoning, more than 17,000 were
on hand for the conference and exposition - some 5,500 exhibitors staffing
approximately 450 booths and more than 12,000 teachers, administrators,
and professors cramming into session rooms."
- YouWillBeCaught.com
launched
It's a Web site in eight languages aimed at combating
the international child sex trade. Along with information on extraterritorial
law, health risks, and convicted offenders, the site can be used to submit
tips on suspected offenders. "Submissions are forwarded to appropriate
local and international law enforcement agencies for investigation," the
site says. The site is a project of Calgary-based nonprofit organization
The Future Group and built
in consultation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, and the Australian Federal Police, according to The
Future Group's press release. The release also says The Future Group "singled
out Cambodia as a destination of choice for foreign paedophiles, saying
80% of Phnom Penh's 5,000 street children had been sexually abused by
foreigners," and "until now there has been no international mechanism
in place to combat this crisis."
- Change those passwords, study says
It's quite likely you've heard this before: Don't
make every Web and computer password you establish your dog's name or
your birthday, and don't keep the same password forever. "Passwords used
to log on to the Internet and access confidential information such as
bank details should be altered at least once a month, both at home and
at work, the BBC
quotes experts as saying. The article cites a recent survey by UK online
bank Egg, which found that "more than half of computer users never change
their passwords, and many use words that can be easily guessed."
Here, says the study, is proper password behavior:
Make passwords at least eight digits long; don't write passwords down;
use more than one password for different Web sites; and avoid common themes.
- SEC sues teen
Here's a Net ethics story of interest to parents
whose teens are using the Web to learn about financial markets: US regulators
sued a 17-year-old who put false information in Web sites about a company
in which he'd invested. According to Reuters (via CNET),
he posted the information using someone else's name - that of a Bloomberg
reporter. The teenager didn't make any profits, but the Securities and
Exchange Commission sued anyway for his "outrageous behavior." The SEC
"issued a cease-and-desist order, prohibiting the teenager from a repeat
performance." It did not fine him "because he had confessed to his misdemeanors
and no investors had been involved."
- Internet as ecosystem
Fascinated by the structure of the Internet, Prof.
Elbert-Laszlo Barabasi at the University of Notre Dame began comparing
the Internet with other networks in 1998. According to the New
York Times, first he found that the Net had "taken on characteristics
of a living ecosystem." Next, when he analyzed the genetic networks of
various living organisms, he found that "their genes and proteins interacted
in much the same networked way as the Internet." Thinking along these
lines, Professor Barabasi and the Times article suggest, could change
the way we think about all the networks that affect human life, past and
present - e.g., Hollywood power brokers, Vernon E. Jordan Jr.'s corporate
board directorships, Al Qaeda terrorists, or the Apostle Paul's network
of churches around the Mediterranean. In other words, it seems, the Internet
is simply another example that has emerged of the way networked life functions,
as described in Barabasi's new book, "Linked: The New Science of Networks"
(Perseus Publishing, $26). Networks, he says, do not operate at random
- there are laws that govern their behavior. The Times adds that the book
"puts more flesh on the relatively primitive concept of the network effect."
