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July 12, 2002

Dear Subscribers:

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

• Family Tech: Net music & cell phone smarts
  
• Web News Briefs: Anti-piracy 'curriculum'; Terrorism on Web; Still a digital divide; 'Cam girls' vulnerable?; Crackdown on 'model' sites; Singapore parents want tougher laws; Blow to e-gambling; Global Iranian village; CIO-sharing....

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Family Tech: Net music & cell phone smarts

1. A little Net music

   Chances are, if you have an online teenager at your house, s/he at least occasionally downloads music from the Internet. Chances are also good that s/he knows quite a bit more about MP3s and file-sharing than you do. SafeKids.com's Larry Magid provides help for parents seeking Net-music clues in his latest column for the San Jose Mercury News.

   "For the sake of this column, let's assume - for the moment, at least - that what they [our kids] are doing is both legal and ethical," Larry writes, "which is quite possible (though not always likely), thanks to download sites operated or sanctioned by record labels or unsigned artists." He lists five such sites and the five basic ways to listen to Internet audio - including low-cost ways to hook up a Net-connected PC to a home stereo system. He provides product names, prices, and links to the companies' Web sites.

   In related news, it seems a fundamental shift in music consumption is under way. See "Forget the CD: consumers now buy music online" at the Christian Science Monitor, and a CNET piece about a law in the works that would limit Americans' right to copy music, tape TV shows, and transfer files through the Internet.

2. Cell phone smarts

   You've probably already figured out that choosing which mobile phone service to use is a lot more important than picking out a phone. In his syndicated column this week, Larry describes what works for his family and what any family needs to consider in its search for the right service: e.g., whether a family plan makes sense, roaming charges and how much family members travel, and what the various services mean by "night" in their "nights and weekends" features. He also looks at the phones themselves and the "3G" (third-generation) technologies just now coming into use.

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Web News Briefs

1. Anti-piracy 'curriculum' for US students

   Judging by its source, the new "curriculum" to be distributed to 25,000 US schools next month is actually an anti-piracy campaign. In this case the piracy concerns software, not music. The source of the campaign: the Business Software Alliance, representing software companies worldwide. The Alliance says nearly half of all Internet users have downloaded software on the Internet, and 81% of those haven't paid for it, according to eSchoolNews. Software piracy accounted for $10.7 billion in worldwide software industry losses in 2001, NewsFactor reported this week. The new anti-piracy campaign, "Play It Safe in Cyberspace," was developed for grades 3-8 with the Weekly Reader (classroom newspaper publishers). It includes "a short teacher's guide, activity sheets, and a classroom poster," eSchoolNews reports. This year's follows a similar one developed in 1998 with Scholastic, Inc.

   The story that might be called "The Two Lives of John Sankus, Software Pirate," as told in the New York Times this week, is an interesting sidebar to any piracy-ed campaign (and would probably do a much better job of making young techies think twice about downloading free software that isn't meant to be free). In about the same breath, 29-year-old Sankus is described as "a soft-spoken, churchgoing computer technician who still has the plush stuffed whales from his childhood" and "ringleader of an international gang of software pirates that deprived companies of millions of dollars through the illegal distribution of copyrighted software, games and movies on the Internet."

2. Terrorism on the Net

   Terrorism is a rapidly growing area of online hate for children to stumble upon. Of some 3,300 "problematic" Web sites the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has analyzed (up from 2,600 a year ago), the number supporting suicide bombers has grown to about 100 in the last six to nine months. And many more "validate or encourage terrorism," the BBC reports, often using games and music. One such game, "Kaboom!", is about a suicide bomber trying to cause maximum casualties.

   Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other terrorist groups are increasingly fighting their jihad on the Net, USAToday reported this week. "One Web site urges Muslims to travel to Pakistan to 'slaughter American soldiers.' Another solicits donations to buy dynamite to 'blow up Israeli Jews.' A third shows previously unaired videotape of Osama bin Laden and promises film clips of American casualties in Afghanistan," with little chance of reprisal, the article says. The article lists some of the most prominent terrorist Web sites. It also explains "steganography" - encrypted messages hidden in digital photos - how it's used at terrorists' own Web sites and in popular ones like eBay for planning attacks.

3. Digital divide still exists in US

   Though 95% of children in the US's highest income bracket have access to a computer, only 33% in the lowest do, the BBC reports. It cites figures from a study just released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, showing that, as wired as the US is relative to other countries, its gap between underage digital haves and have-nots is still significant. Other key findings include:

   • 63% of children living in families earning $75,000+ have Net access, compared with 14% in the $15,000 or below bracket.
   • While well-off kids use PCs for word-processing and homework, their poorer counterparts are more likely to use PCs to play games.
   • 73% of all suburban children have access to a home computer, compared with 61% of their rural and 53% of their urban counterparts.
   • Black and Hispanic children are gaining on their white counterparts: In 2001 46% of black children had a computer at home, compared with 22% in '97; and "the rate of home computer access for Hispanic children has more than doubled over the same period," the BBC reports.
   
   Here is the Annie E. Casey Foundation's "snapshot" of the report in pdf format.

4. UK: 'Cam girls' vulnerable?

   British law enforcement officers think so, reportedly. They're investigating possible pedophile interest in teen girls' (called "cam girls") personal Web sites, The Observer reports. "British girls as young as 14 are inviting strangers to send them presents through their Web sites, sometimes offering intimate pictures in return," the Observer adds, referring to the phenomenon as a "teen craze." The cam girls link their Web sites to wish lists at sites like Amazon.com and Playboy.com, through which they receive gifts from strangers. "A number of schoolgirls contacted by The Observer admitted to receiving hundreds of pounds worth of lingerie and CDs, and in some cases commission for advertising porn sites."

5. 'Model sites' crackdown in the US

   In the US, prosecutors in three states are going after operators of "model" sites that show photos of underage girls "in various states of undress," MSNBC reports. In all three cases - in Arkansas, Missouri, and Colorado - the site publishers, reportedly have "crossed the legal line, either by possessing child pornography - a violation of federal law - or photos or videos [of minors] that ran afoul of state laws against sexual exploitation of children, according to authorities." Two members of Congress Reps. Mark Foley (R) of Florida and Nick Lampson (D) of Texas are working on new legislation to make such sites illegal - sites that they say "appeal to and are likely to encourage pedophiles," MSNBC adds.

6. Singapore parents call for crackdown

   The Parents Advisory Group for the Internet (PAGi) says it's time to "get tough on Internet chatroom users who lure children to meet them with the intention of abusing them sexually," Singapore's Straits Times reports. PAGi is calling for a review of Singapore laws against sexual predators, saying they should follow the lead of British and Canadian law thereto. "In Britain, anyone who uses email, text messages, or Internet chatrooms to pick up minors for sex may face jail terms if a new law is passed," according to the Straits Times. "The proposed law which seeks to make an offence of 'grooming', or enticing children into sexual activity, is set to be part of a wider Bill reviewing legislation against sexual offences."

7. US child porn arrests

   Among the 10 child-porn suspects arrested this week were a United States Army sergeant stationed at West Point and two former New York City police officers, the New York Times reports. The arrests were part of "Operation Candyman," first announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft last March. More than 100 arrests have been made in the US so far.

8. Blow to e-gambling

   EBay, which plans to acquire Web payment service PayPal, says gamblers will no longer be able to use PayPal for their online transactions, Wired News reports. Already, most online gamblers can no longer use US credit cards for their transactions. "Many large credit card issuers, such as Bank of America, Fleet, Direct Merchants Bank, MBNA, and Chase Manhattan Bank have already started to block online gaming transactions," Wired News adds. "More recently, Citibank, which controls approximately 12% of the US credit card industry." Online gambling transactions reportedly are being viewed as increasingly risky to payment providers, one reason being that legislation to prohibit online gambling is working its way through Congress.

9. Small Iranian village, global goals

   An otherwise sleepy Iranian hamlet with no elementary school and one central outhouse has become a model for connectedness to the world. Shahkooh, 240 miles northeast of Tehran, has a computer center in its mosque. Classes are free, and the teachers - anyone in the village who knows something about computers - volunteer their time. "The village even has its own Farsi-language Web site, Shahkooh.com," according to the Associated Press (via the Nando Times). The goal is to teach computer skills to any comers among Shahkooh's 6,000 residents. Because in this village, AP reports, the Web is "seen as an essential tool to promote knowledge and prepare for jobs in a country choking from unemployment, which some analysts place at more than 30%. Since Shahkooh.com was launched, more than two dozen villagers have become entrepreneurs, moving to the provincial capital of Gorgan to sell spare computer parts and offer computer services." About 3% of Iranians - 2 million out of 70 million - have Internet access, AP adds.

10. Tech talent-sharing service for schools

    This is a great idea for schools that can't afford high-priced tech talent: "CIO Time Share" is a consulting service that connects small school districts with 25 experienced chief information officers, eSchoolNews reports. "Instead of hiring their own CIO, these school districts can borrow a CIO working in another district when they need to perform large tasks, such as auditing their hardware and software systems, drafting a technology plan, finding sources of funding, writing requests for proposals, or tackling any other management problem they might have."

11. Have dog, will travel

    For some time there have been travel guides for families. Now there's DogFriendly.com for travelers who like to take their dogs along. It includes city and state guides with dog-friendly locations and information on proper traveling-dog etiquette, customs, quarantine, air and ship travel, and much more. Of course there's a Dog Store, too. Our thanks to "Neat New Stuff I Found This Week" for pointing this site out.

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

Sincerely,

Anne Collier, Editor

Net Family News

 

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