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September 20, 2002

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this third week of September:


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Teen-aged child pornographer

Most parents know that teen tech literacy is a mixed blessing. It can inform, connect, entertain, possibly even be good for future careers, but it can also get teenagers in trouble - if another kind of literacy isn't part of the picture. The snapshot of one teenager's bad decision below illustrates how important parent-style' "life literacy" - or basic good judgment - is to children's online experiences. Study after study, including the latest one from the US National Research Council, shows that laws and filtering tech cannot replace engaged parenting if we want our children's Net use to be safe and constructive. [Even teenagers themselves are acknowledging that peers can be part of the problem - see "Teen online-safety experts..." last week.]

Here's a case in point from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, whose CyberTipline handles cases like this:

Last January 16th the NCMEC received a CyberTipline report from registered Internet Service Provider Microsoft Network about someone posting images of child pornography to an MSN community. NCMEC analysts ran Internet searches on the suspect's email address and found his Hotmail profile. In it, he said he lived in San Francisco. With that, the NCMEC contacted law enforcement, forwarding the info to the San Francisco Police Department. Between February and July a series of search warrants were executed to gather the suspect's subscriber information as well as the images he'd posted on MSN. Police confirmed he was posting child pornography and verified his location. He was 16 years old.

In July the San Francisco Police Department called and asked the boy and his mother to come to the station for questioning. After first denying that he'd posted the images, he confessed, saying, according to the National Center's report, "he knew it was wrong but figured since he was under the age of 18, it was not illegal for him to post these images."

The boy was arrested for distributing child pornography. Further analysis of his computer was not possible because he had wiped it clean. Prosecutors are currently reviewing the case, as of this writing fairly certain they'll go with counseling intervention rather than criminal charges; but the decision isn't yet final.

Meanwhile, here's an in-depth profile at Wired magazine of an adult child pornographer - former US Marine, police officer, and "local hero" Adam Vaughn. "Last spring, he and 88 others were arrested in a child pornography dragnet called Operation Candyman [see "US child porn arrests" in our 7/12 issue], named after three Yahoo! groups that had been the focus of an FBI investigation. The people in these groups, the bureau reported, were members of 'an international ring of pedophiles and predators devoted to trading and propagating pornographic images of children over the Internet.' "

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Calling for kids Web sites!

...particularly public-service or educational Web sites by or for children. Our friends at Childnet International in London are accepting entries for the Cable & Wireless Childnet Awards until December 6th. Winners will receive prize money and a trip to London for the ceremony next April.

The awards spotlight "international online projects designed by children (and those working with them) which benefit other children," Childnet tells us. Winner categories are Individual, Schools, Not-for- Profit, and New to the Net (see the awards page for details on how to enter and links to past winning Web sites).

Spread the word - this is a great opportunity for hard-working public- service Web builders everywhere!

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Web News Briefs

  1. 'Cybersecurity' begins at home?

    The White House's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace" was all over the US's airwaves and front pages this week. Despite some criticism that the plan lacks muscle, it offers some practical advice for PC owners that, says SafeKids.com's Larry Magid, "is worth heeding, especially if your PC is connected to a cable modem, DSL line, or corporate or campus network. PCs with such 'always on' connections are especially vulnerable to hack attacks because of their persistent connection to the Internet." In his latest syndicated column, Larry highlights the most useful - and doable - steps for homeowners (in any country) to protect their PCs.

  2. Tech-fluent university students

    To US college students, the Internet is a utility like "water, telephones, and television," researchers at the Pew Internet & American Life project have found. Nearly 75% of them "now use the Internet more than the library, and a strong majority said the Net has been an asset to their educational experience," reports the Washington Post in its piece on the study. Eighty-six percent of college students have gone online, compared with 59% of the US's general population. As for where they started using the Internet, it's almost an even split - 49% at college, 47% at home before starting college. "The great majority (85%) of college students own their own computer, and two-thirds (66%) use at least two email addresses," Pew found. Here are a few more key findings:

    • 20% began using computers between the ages of 5 and 8, and by the time they were 16-18 all current college students had begun using computers.
    • 72% check email at least once a day.
    • 60% have downloaded music files, compared to 28% of the overall population (University of Southern California has banned music file- sharing from its campus, Wired News reports).
    • On a typical day, 26% use instant-messaging, compared to 12% of the other Internet users.

    Here's the BBC's coverage of the Pew study.

  3. Plagiarism Down Under

    In what is believed to be Australia's first comprehensive survey of Net-based plagiarism, a study of six universities in Victoria found that more than 8% of students were found "to pilfer large amounts of text from the Web." According to The Australian, researchers looked at 1,751 randomly chosen essays on 17 different subjects to reach those results. Students were not aware their work was being tested for plagiarism.

  4. Schools, parents, students against filtering

    This week both home and school representatives of school districts in Boston, San Francisco, and New York joined civil liberties organizations at press conferences protesting "Back to School Censorship." It was the US's first national-level protest against Net filtering at school, though Wired News's coverage suggests the subject is not exactly top-of-mind. The filtering opponents called for the repeal of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires public schools who have received federal "e- rate" Net-connectivity funds to install filtering or blocking software on connected computers.

    Some schools have opted out of the CIPA requirement and forgone filtering. According to InternetNews.com, the Eugene, Ore., school district decided, after discussion between its Internet Guidelines Committee and teachers, administrators, students, and parents representing all school levels, that it would be better for their district to rely on supervising school Net use and teaching students responsible use than on filtering technology. The district's tech director, Les Moore, did tell InternetNews that the district had just recently qualified for e-rate funds and only $7,000 was at stake - "less than the purchase, installation, and administration of a Web- filtering package." The Washington Post's coverage led with a vignette about the tech director for Albuquerque, N.M., public schools, Dale Alexander. He told the post he "was not exactly a fan of filtering software for blocking pornography and other Web sites deemed inappropriate for children. But when Congress required it of schools that receive certain technology grants, Alexander had no trouble deciding whether to install the software - up to $14.7 million was at stake." The money "outweighed any arguments that good adult supervision - not a filtering product - is the best solution...." A spokesperson for filtering company N2H2 told Internet News that about 75% of US public schools were already filtering (before CIPA passed) anyway.

    Among the civil liberties organizations supporting the campaign this week were the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), and the Free Expression Policy Project. Here's the EFF's press release and more coverage from CNET and TheRegister.com in the UK.

    Readers, where do you stand on filtering at school and a law requiring it? We'd love to hear your view - via feedback@netfamilynew.org.

  5. An expert on filtering

    For "Words to the wise on the Web," CNET spoke with Geoffrey Nunberg, an expert on language and filtering technology at Stanford University and former expert witness for the American Library Association in its successful case against CIPA in libraries. Nunberg is a fan of the technology, but only in specific contexts. Here's what he said about that: "If the FBI is interested in trolling for child pornography sites, it's perfectly reasonable for them to use software like this if they sift through the results to see if they come up with anything that's genuinely pornographic. That's very different from software that just says, 'You can see this, you can't see this,' and doesn't involve human review of the process. Although these (filtering) companies claim they use human review for all sites, that's just not true. And it couldn't be done, given the size of the Internet."

    The wide-ranging interview is interesting on several fronts, including the impact of technology on language and public discussion. For example, Nunberg says, the latter has become "more informal, more colloquial, more conversational, which rests more, in fact, on the norms of middle-class speaking" - a "profound development," he says, because "in one sense, it opens the discussion to a larger number of people. In another sense, it closes the discussion to people who aren't familiar with the implicit norms of that kind of interaction."

  6. Porn file-sharing at Napster?

    Spain-based adult entertainment company Private Media made an offer to buy the Napster trademark and the Napster.com Web site name. According to CNN/Money, "Private Media said it plans to use the Napster trademark to offer millions of adults worldwide the ability to swap adult-oriented content for free and at the same time gain access to "top-quality" content at a reasonable price." Fortunately, Napster.com has not functioned as a music file-sharing service since last year, so music fans who frequented the site are unlikely to stumble on any non-music content the site might serve up in future.

  7. Child models on the Web

    The debate about child-model Web sites is getting increasing media attention - a goal of US Rep. Mark Foley (R) of Florida, whose bill to outlaw these sites is now before the House Judiciary Committee. "The photos on the Web sites portray no nudity and no sex, yet men by the thousands pay to ogle them - shots of preteen girls posing in bikinis and halter tops," reports the Associated Press (via the San Jose Mercury News). While Representative Foley says the sites encourage pedophilia, opponents of his bill say it violates free-speech rights. Meanwhile, we learn more about the business itself. AP cites Florida-based Webe Web Corp., "which runs one of the largest networks of child-modeling sites." Although "co-founder Marc Greenberg says he can't vouch for the motives of his customers ... he insists that no child featured on his sites has suffered any physical harm." But Foley contends that "some sites do provide direct contacts between customers and children, and worries that models are at risk of abduction, abuse, or even murder." Though even the National Child Abuse Defense and Resource Center questions the validity of Foley's bill, saying the issue is best handled by child-protection services on a case-by-case basis, Foley is making headway in the public-awareness battle. Our thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing this item out.

  8. The future of games

    It's probably appropriate that reporters always use the epic-battle metaphor whenever they cover online video games. It is, after all, an epic multibillion-dollar industry that's all about the forces of good and evil. Now it has a new battlefront: the Internet.

    The BBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wired News, Forbes - you name the news outlet - have been all over the video-games story lately. The BBC drew a number of insights into gaming's future from the recent Game Designers Europe Conference - such as the growing market (hooray!) for more intelligent characters "capable of meaningful interaction and even conversations" (as opposed to merely capable of blowing each other up). The New York Times and Washington Post focus on the Internet and how Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are fighting for the high ground on this front, as they enable their consoles for online multiplayer games (here's a Times sidebar on the consoles themselves and how they'll work. But wait, it's actually not all about consoles - Wired News says we haven't seen the end of PC games yet. Forbes.com's view is that online gaming as a whole "faces an uphill battle." Meanwhile, MSNBC weighs in on intelligent games for girls with deep background on how they've developed. For the view from people who have been following this subject longer than MSNBC and just about anyone, check out Games4Girls.com.

  9. Cheaters banned for two weeks

    An interesting twist on the online-gaming story concerns ethics. According to Wired News, Blizzard Entertainment, creators of Warcraft - said to be the top-selling PC game - banned 14,000 players from Warcraft III for cheating. Blizzard said "the gamers were using a hack that enabled them to see into their opponents' territories, giving them a huge advantage in Internet combat," Wired reports. How did players take the news? Clearly they're stakeholders. Wired cites a poll taken at fan site WarcraftIII.net, which found that over 63% of respondents felt cheaters should be "permanently banned from playing in tournament, or 'ladder,' games on Battle.net. Only 33.3% said the two-week ban was enough." Blizzard said that the ban - though apparently the largest mass banning in the history of computer gaming - would do little to stop determined hackers. It really only affects "casual cheaters." For linking redundancy, here's a report from Britain's VNUNET.

  10. Tech toys for tots

    The hype for holiday shopping starts right about now - in news stories about what tech toy companies have in store for us all. A Wired News reporter recently took three new toys home to test on his four children (ages 2 through 6) and found them very testy about who got to play with what. FYI, the much-liked toys were Kasey the Kinderbot ($70 robot for pre- schoolers), LeapPad's $50 electronic letter-and-number-learning system for kids 4+ (books cost extra), and the Pixter, a $40 "Palm Pilot for kids."

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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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