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Welcome to the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and thanks to everyone who's just subscribed! Please invite friends and colleagues to sign up and help us to help grownups stay informed about children's safe, constructive use of the Internet. Email us anytime!

 

November 7, 2003

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this first week of November:


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Family Tech

  1. Teen's-eye-view on file-sharing

    You know how, from the time they were very small, we all taught our children that it's good to share? Well, Harris Interactive, which regularly polls US 13- to-18-year-olds, has come to believe that, for that very reason, the peer-to-peer services' use of the word "sharing" has been key to young people's strong feeling that music file-sharing should be legal.

    Harris's latest survey found that 78% of teens feel that sharing (letting other people download music from their computers) should be legal and 74% feel downloading copyrighted music files from the Net without paying for it should be legal. Harris noted that the use of "sharing" in one survey question brought a higher approval rating than the word "downloading."

    Of all the questions Harris asked, though, the most interesting to us was, "Why do you download music from the Internet?" Many of the respondents obviously had several reasons: 59% said it was because "I only like one or two songs on a CD"; 48% "I want to get music quickly"; 46% "I think that music is too expensive to buy"; 44% "I want to get music for free"; 40% "I want to get songs that are not available for sale"; and 38% "I think that music should be shared."

    Other findings did not surprise: 66% of US teens (boys 69%, girls 62%) oppose the RIAA's fining of individuals who share the music files on their computers, while 13% believe file-sharers should be fined. When asked about whether other uses of music should be legal, 88% said yes to recording music off the radio; 90% to selling a used CD; 92% to copying music on to a tape or CD; 92% to borrowing a CD from a public library; 93% to buying a used CD; and 96% to listening to music on the Net without downloading it.

  2. Young musicians

    For a more anecdotal take, ConnectforKids.org talked to two young (probable) file-sharers who are musical themselves. "Kids are obviously thinking about this issue a lot - see for yourself in any Internet music chat room," says Connect for Kids. "They are sorting through all of the ethics involved at the same time as confused adults.... Music downloads may be just the beginning of a long campaign of technological guerilla warfare against control of popular entertainment."

  3. Good advice from Canada

    Connect for Kids points out some useful parent-focused advice from the Media Awareness Network in Canada (the country that once boasted 30% of all Napster users). It's a little dated, focusing on Napster (defunct as a file-sharing service, now reincarnated as a pay-per-tune one), but the advice is tried 'n' true. Also at this site: "Managing Music in the Home" - not about file-sharing, just about getting in touch with our kids and their musical interests and activities.

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Family computer security: Advice, software reviews

  1. 'Web vipers'

    The Washington Post last weekend rounded up all the little PC security "vipers" - from fraud to viruses to "wireless worries" (it is indeed a little like herding snakes!). The Post even threw in a "geek speak" glossary and the lowdown on avoiding much of this by opting for an Apple. Either click on the vipers below or in the "Online Safety" sidebar to the right of each piece.


    Parents will also find a whole lot of good, more detailed security information in GetNetWise.org's new "Security" section, including general PC security tips, file-sharing, and Wi-Fi Security for homes with wireless connections (it's top-of-mind: Rep. Michael Honda, D-Calif., announced some wi-fi security tips for home users from Capitol Hill this week).

  2. Computer security software review

    Anti-virus software or services are no longer enough. Associated Press tech writer Anick Jesdanun looks at three new PC security products that try to do it all (parents of teens pls note that all three catch viruses sent through instant-messaging): Norton Internet Security 2004 and McAfee Internet Security Suite 2004, released in September, PC-cillin Internet Security 2004, released last week.

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Web News Briefs

  1. FTC fights stealth pop-ups

    The US Federal Trade Commission took its first step this week to stop Windows Messenger Service pop-ups - those annoying, plain, non-graphical ads that pop up any old time you use your PC, whether or not your Web browser's open. It's really a scam - small businesses figured out how to exploit a little-known feature in the Windows operating system to run unpaid ads. Ironically, the ads basically say, "Buy our software to block these ads!" In its second paragraph, USAToday's article on this has a link to a graphic showing what the pop-ups look like. The FTC Thursday issued a restraining order against the scammers, a company called D Squared. We ran a short item 10/17 on what to do about these pop-ups (what worked for us). According to the FTC, "the defendants allegedly either sold or licensed their pop-up-sending software to other people, allowing them to engage in the same conduct. The defendants' Web site allegedly offered software that would allow buyers to send pop-ups to 135,000 Internet addresses per hour, along with a database of more than 2 billion unique addresses."

  2. Friendster, 'social-networking,' etc.

    Online matchmaking is hot (U.S. consumers spent $214.3 million on online dating in the first half of this year); its only damper might be human nature itself, Business Week reports. Parents probably want to know a bit about Friendster and other "social networking" sites and services as part of the online-dating phenomenon. Business Week explains how it works this way: "To join the online community, someone either has to be invited by an existing Friendster member or form a new Friendster group and ask people to join. Friendster members have to post profiles full of personal information plus their rationale for using the network." The personal information part should send warning signals - it might be good to ask kids what they put into online profiles anywhere (from online dating sites to instant-messaging services) and make sure it doesn't make their screen name or email address personally identifiable.

    As for the human nature problem, Business Week goes on to say that "Friendster assumes that friends are a good screening mechanism for quality dating partners: You like your friend, so you will like your friends' friends." Not a new concept, but friends don't always know one well enough to find one the perfect sweetheart. The Register, too, challenged the concept this week, but with a different argument. It suggests that people don't really socialize online. Once the novelty wears off, they'll just communicate directly via phone, email, and IM. Some shy people might join up thinking the service could do their socializing (or expand their social circle) for them, but they soon find it can't, the logic goes. Online social networking sites are glorified directories. A more established version The Register points to is FriendFinder.com, with 20 million+ users "and typically 5,000 users in its chat rooms at any one time." The key to this service's success might be its affiliate program, which capitalizes on the extremely popular matchmaking/personals part of the Web and users by interest - from sexual preference to nationality to religion.

  3. He got scammed on purpose

    Well, the New York Times reporter went to the brink (with one of those Nigerian email scammers), then called it quits. But he does us all the service of printing his complete "conversation" with scammer, who shows his real colors in the end. It makes for amusing reading, but we hope none of the children of anyone on our subscriber list has even replied to one of these get- rich-quick spams. [Here's the story in the Winchester (Va.) Star of a man who was cheated out of almost $3,000 by a so-called Nigerian scam.] The good news this week is that this particular fraud syndicate (or part of it) has been busted. Australian IT reports that New South Wales police "have cracked what they allege was a multi- million-dollar international 'Nigerian fraud' syndicate operating out of Sydney. Officers seized nine houses in two countries, five cars, several bank accounts and arrested a 39-year-old man suspected of tricking hundreds of people from Australia and overseas out of millions." Another email scammer ("phisher") was netted when she "unwittingly spammed an off-duty FBI computer crime agent," The Register reports.

  4. MIT music service challenged

    It got kudos from legal experts for delivering essentially free music to university students without violating copyright laws. We're referring to LAMP (Library Access to Music Project), invented by two MIT students (see our coverage last week). "There was just one problem," the Los Angeles Times reports. "Music industry executives say Loudeye Corp., the company supplying the students' service with songs, didn't have the right to do so. As a consequence, the service launched ... without some of the clearances from the copyright holders." MIT agreed to reconfigure LAMP "and remove songs from at least one of the major record companies while it negotiates directly with the labels and publishers."

  5. Penn State-Napster deal for students

    Pennsylvania State University did an end run around the music copyright issue by striking a deal directly with one of the big music services, the just launched pay-per-tune Napster, CNET reports (Napster, iTunes, etc. take care of licensing issues before they sell the songs). The deal reportedly means free downloads from Napster for tens of thousands of Penn State students (some of those students are protesting against the deal, CNET reported today. [The New York Times's David Pogue recently wrote a typically readable review of the new music services. And Reuters reports that MTV will soon join the online-music-service fray.]

  6. Are ratings working?

    Common Sense Media, the nonprofit children's media watchdog, told member of the US Congress "no" - not in their current form. The organization's movie specialist Nell Minnow said "the ratings can be too simplistic and lead to mislabeled movies that expose children to grisly images," reports the Associated Press. The video game industry, too, was harshly criticized in the conference sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission. Common Sense Media's Minow said government should have a more limited role. Some critics called for more government intervention. Common Sense Media called for "a single, uniform rating system for all media products that would be overseen by an independent group of parents, educators, and child development experts."

  7. Inside a virus writer's mind

    Getting a virus on her machine got computer security researcher Sarah curious about "who would write such pernicious programs and why they would send them out on to the Internet," the BBC reports. She was just the one to get virus writers to talk with her because she wasn't from law enforcement and they liked talking about their exploits to someone genuinely curious. She started her exploration 20 years ago. Here are just a few of her findings: 1) Often "teenagers became virus writers because they saw creating such programs as a technical challenge. 2) Some write viruses "because their friends tinker with technology and it is just another way of exploring what can be done with computers." 3) For others it's an act of protest. 4) "All these groups share a common blindspot: ...they have no conception that what they are doing can affect the wider world."

    While we're on the subject, the big news from Microsoft this week was that it "would offer cash bounties for information on the authors of the crippling MSBlast and SoBig computer bugs" - to the tune of $250,000 apiece, Reuters reports.

  8. Information overload indeed!

    If you've felt a bit awash in information of late, you have good instincts. The worldwide production of information increased 30% each year between 1999 and '02, according to a study at University of California, Berkeley. The statistics, as reported in the Toronto Globe and Mail are pretty staggering: "The amount of new information stored on paper, film, optical and magnetic media has doubled in the past three years alone. And new information produced in those forms during 2002 was equal in size to half a-million new libraries, each containing a digitized version of the print collections of the entire US Library of Congress." The researchers were right on top of the technology. Zooming in on file-sharing, they found that "MP3 music files and digital video accounted for 70% of the files on the hard disks of users who participate in such exchanges. As for how much the Net itself is used: "Globally, the average Internet user spends 11.5 hours online per month, but the average Internet user in the United States spends more than twice that amount."

  9. Video game injuries

    How 'bout Nintendonitis? "Finger tendons and neck muscles can suffer when your game of choice involves efforts to overtake a craft traveling at 1,400kph," suggests the BBC's game column. It points to medical- community concerns about repetitive strain injuries and over-development of muscles in the arm, shoulder and neck on one side of the body. "Possibly the most bizarre games-related condition that has been reported is Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (Havs), something previously recognised in operators of jackhammers, but now increasingly associated with joypad vibration." Then there are those injuries from tripping over console cables! But wait, at least there are cable-free consoles, like Nintendo's Game Boy, which - the Washington Post reports - has two new rivals, one that "began life as a cell phone [Nokia's N-Gage], the other as a handheld organizer [Tapwave's Zodiac]." The Post reviews them.

    This week the Wall Street Journal asked the question, "Will video games ever be taken seriously?" (paid subscription unfortunately required for access to this piece). The article's lead suggests the answer might be "yes": "The US videogame industry today is larger than Hollywood's US box-office receipts and is closing in on music sales." Academics in many countries, who the Journal reports have themselves begun serious research on video games, are calling for game criticism to move beyond jargon-filled reviews and advertorials. More than 400 such researchers were expected in Utrecht, Netherlands, this week at a conference of the Tampere, Finland-based Digital Games Research Association.

  10. Online travelers beware

    Two bits of recent news should put online travel site users on the alert. According to the Washington Post, Orbitz.com "announced that spammers had broken into one of its databases and copied some customers' email addresses." The site, which was founded by a group of major US airlines, said fewer than 50 customers were affected, though. The second item concerned phony travel sites using established names in the travel business. The World Intellectual Property Origanization issued a list of Web addresses to watch out for, including holidayinnhotels.org, hilton-hotel-reservation.com, marriot-hotels.com, us- airways.net, lufthansa-airlines.net, british-air-ways.com, and airfranceairlines.com.

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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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