US high court looks at P2P

Judging by the media coverage, the Supreme Court justices know a lot more about file-sharing than the average American parent. As they listened to arguments in the landmark MGM vs. Grokster case yesterday, they peppered both sides with questions about "deep house mashups" (I think this means grabbing tracks from various songs and mashing them up to compose something new with sound-editing software), SiliconValley.com reports. They were looking at whether the P2P networks were a "gigantic [copyright] infringement machine" and should be outlawed as such, as Hollywood argues, or whether - like photocopiers - they could indeed be used for infringement, but that fact alone "would not have allowed book publishers to sue Xerox for violating the copyright laws," as was ruled in the '70s, the Los Angeles Times reports. The placards of little protest groups circling outside the Supreme Court yesterday said a lot: One sign read, "Feed a Musician: Download Legally." Signs for the other side said, "Fight for the Right to Innovate" and "Hands Off My IPOD." Here's CNET's coverage. The Court's decision is expected in June.

AOL's new blog service for teens

I'm wondering why someone hasn't come up with this before - maybe because blogging's phenomenal growth among teenagers took us all by surprise. Anyway, AOL just unveiled its new "RED Blogs" (parts of its "RED" for teens). Even though teenagers often reveal their most intimate thoughts in blogs, they're smart, AOL's research found: 84% of them "said they would not like to share their blog with just anyone on the Web," CNET reports. RED blogs "allows teenagers and parents to select the level of privacy they want for their online diaries; a private blog can be kept locked. A semiprivate blog is locked to all but those who are invited to read it. And a public blog allows access to anybody on the Net." Another interesting factoid: "When AOL asked teenagers in a survey who they were more likely to share their feelings with--parents or a blog - parents narrowly won out, 51% to 49%." For the latest on teens 'n' blogs, see "Parents'-eye-view of blogging kids" and "A dad on kids' blogs."

Desktop search tools compared

A gaggle of search engines compete with Google now to help you search for that elusive email message you just *know* you didn't delete. Some are well-known, such as "Ask Jeeves, Google and Yahoo, reports Washington Post tech writer Rob Pegoraro. "Some are small, obscure developers - Copernic and Blinkx. One's a division of Microsoft itself, its MSN Internet service." All six browser add-ons are free and can search your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and audio and image files, and all but Ask can search PDF files and Outlook Express email, Rob writes. "But if you use a non-Microsoft mail program, only Blinkx and Google welcome you: The former works with Eudora, the latter with Netscape, Mozilla and Thunderbird. Thanks, Rob - it's great to have these little apps compared. I don't use desktop search a *whole* lot, but when I do I'm glad I have one of these add-ons - it makes searching my computer so much easier. In fact, it just makes it possible in most cases!

Why do teens blog?

For some it's a kind of therapy, the Baltimore Sun reports in a thorough look at the state of teen blogging today. It cites the view of one psychology professor that "blogs may have become popular vehicles of self-expression for the same reasons that some people prefer undergoing therapy via computer: They can have intimate exchanges without being face to face." One 17-year-old cited says it's cleansing to put "love-hate" lists in her blog. Then there's the adolescent "quest for attention," which causes bloggers to exaggerate their moodes and feelings in their online journals. The Sun also looks at whether parents check their kids' blogs. Some do, some don't, the latter from either "lack of vigilance" to a concern about privacy. The latter just doesn't make sense, though, when journal entries are typed before an international public audience! Lots of interesting anecdotes in this article about how teens and parents are handling this new phenomenon in their lives.

Cellphones: Getting 'bluejacked'

I can see US teen cellphone users jumping on this one. The New York Times calls it "bluejacking," and I've seen it called "toothing" in the UK media, but The Register reports all the coverage grew out of a little hoax. It seems not to be in the US, however, though still at the early-adopter stage. And you can bet that the adopters are young. What I'm talking about is a new way of flirting (or pulling pranks) with text on cellphones - "the act of sending random strangers unsolicited messages using Bluetooth, the radio-based technology standard in many cellphones and palmtops that enables people to swap digital business cards and photographs," according to the Times. The message is composed as a digital business card file and sent as such (a message like "SittingNearU" or "Hello stranger" goes in the name field and so on). But market size limits the fad in the US so far: The Times cites Gartner Group figures showing that, whereas 39% of phones sold in Europe last year were Bluetooth-equipped, only 4% in the US are. There are Web sites already, though: e.g., bluejackq.com and bluejackaddicts.com. It's mostly fun, but it's also certain that kids with bluetooth-enabled phones will be bluejacked by strangers.

Parents'-eye-view on blogs

Parents are getting smart about the privacy and, potentially, safety risks to children in blogs - one of kids' Top 5 online activities. Just since the year began, I've gotten a flurry of email from parents and teachers about this. You'll find some highlights in this week's issue of my newsletter: Patrick in Massachusetts on how he feels about his 12-year-old using Xanga.com; Cathy in Illinois on "name-calling" in the blogging of her 12-year-old's peer group; and Michele in Massachusetts on all the evidence in blogs of kids feeling pressure to grow up too fast. Plus, there's an item on "Nudity in teen blogs," with advice from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on what's being prosecuted as a crime under federal child-porn law.

Yahoo's new blog service

Teenagers will probably like it a lot. To be unveiled next week, the new service Yahoo will be providing its some 165 million registered users blends blogging and the "social networking" of sites like Friendster.com, according to Singapore's Asia1.com. Teenagers are already virtually doing this (sharing common interests and introducing friends online) at sites like MySpace, Xanga, and LiveJournal, but Yahoo will emphasize the networking part more. There's no real downside beyond what's currently happening in teen blogging. The good news is that Yahoo bloggers will be able to choose between public and private blogging - they will be able to "restrict access to people invited through email."

UK: No. 1 in family 'zombie' PCs

The UK leads the world in number of home PCs that are actually "zombies" (under the control of malicious hackers), the BBC reports. Computer security firm Symantec issued a report saying that "25.2% of the world's remotely controlled PCs are found in Britain." The US is close behind, at 24.6%. Reasons cited? The rise of high-speed, or broadband, connections to the Net and families' ignorance about PC security for broadband connecting. Here's a separate BBC piece on how the zombie PCs are manipulated (for distributing spam, manipulating online advertising services, identity theft, and denial-of-service attacks). For help, see my "What if our PC's a zombie?!" and "The 10 Commandments of PC Security" and "Caught a virus?" at PC World.

Restricted tunes

Ok, parents may ask, just what is the difference between iTunes and KaAaA (the pay-per-tune vs. the file-sharing services)? At sites like iTunes, Napster, etc., USATODAY's Andrew Kantor ably explains, "when you pay for and download a song, it comes with various built-in restrictions. Maybe you can only pay it while you're subscribed to the service. Maybe you're limited to playing it on certain machines. Maybe you can't copy it to other media (say, a CD to play in your car)." Kantor goes on to explain that, if you add those restrictions to the media companies' business model ($15 for a CD with one or two good songs on it), you get a lot of music fans grabbing at the nearest alternative: the P2P services. That the music is free isn't the only reason - it just helps. Kantor argues that if they'd just make the paid services as easy as the P2P services *and* restriction-free, people would flock to them. Well, maybe not teenagers short on cash, but it would help. All the lawsuits seem to have helped a bit too - the latest Pew Internet & American Life figures hint that file-sharers are at least less willing to admit to their P2P activities. We may be seeing the tide turning, but parents need to be in the decisionmaking process too - for everybody's legal protection and to help kids think through the ethical issues, even if you're all copy-leftists. Here are some discussion points: "A tech-literate dad on file-sharing" and "Bigger picture on file-sharing."

US: File-sharing differently

Americans are sharing digital music as much as ever, but less on the P2P services, according to the latest Pew Internet & American Life study. The percentage of Net users who swap tunes online is holding steady at about 24%. The change is here: "Twenty-one percent of current music downloaders say they still [actively] use P2P systems, compared with 31% in February 2004," while use of paid music services like iTunes and Napster has gone from 17% a year ago to 34% now, the Associated Press reports. But other alternatives are being used, too: About half of music and video downloaders say they're using email and instant messaging to share files (but see below about safe IM-ing), as well as transferring them from friends' iPods and other MP3 players. CNN Money puts it a little more negatively (also mentioning next week's arguments on file-sharing before the US Supreme Court): "7 million Americans - or about 9% of Internet users - are currently making unlicensed copies of music from someone else's iPod or similar MP3 device. About 10 million are getting bootlegged music and movies through email and instant messages." Meanwhile, the Consumer Federation of American released an 80-page report that represents a "full-scale assault" on the media companies' legal strategy, CNET reports. "Record companies and movie studios have tried to make this a debate about privacy and theft," said the Federation's research director, Mark Cooper. "It is not. It is about progress and freedom of expression."

MN tragedy: Whither the Net?

As with Columbine High, the Internet is being looked at as having a possible role in Jeff Weise's tragic shooting spree in a Minnesota high school this week. But it might help parents to consider that the reasons for this tragedy have more to do with people than with technology - people online and offline. A number of posts associated with Jeff, in blogs and discussion boards, indicate the mental state he was in. According to the New York Times today, he "wrote that his mother [before an accident that left her brain-damaged] 'would hit me with anything she could get her hands on,' and 'would tell me I was a mistake, and she would say so many things that its hard to deal with them or think of them without crying." One of his screennames was "verlassen4_20," "which means 'abandoned' in German and refers to Hitler's April 20 birthday," the Associated Press reports. And then there's time's role: Jeff apparently had plenty of it on his hands to create and post a violent animated video called "Target Practice," write stories about and death and destruction, and post despairing comments and suicide threats.

Here's where the Internet does have a role: It enables anonymous strangers to be sounding boards for and supporters of destructive behavior, from eating disorders to racism to suicide. It makes information and encouragement (both negative and positive) more accessible (see "Secret Society of Starving" in the NYT in '02 and "Japan's Net suicide tragedy" in my newsletter). This is why parents and caregivers need to be engaged in kids' online lives. Besides a child's own mental state and behavior, one tip-off is large amounts of time spent online. That time can of course be creative, academic, social - the online version of normal teenage activity and interaction - but when combined with depression or loneliness, it's a call for care and attention. I hope all of us, kids' peers and caregivers, will get better at recognizing the online signs better *before* they lead to tragedy. Here's more coverage at Salon.com and the Minneapolis Star Tribune (among nearly 3,000 results on the story in Google News).

Latest on viruses

"The majority are written to steal money and identities from people," not mess up their computers, ZDNET reports. Those would be Trojan-type viruses that install spyware that captures passwords or credit card numbers or phishers' email that trick people into giving out financial information. For more on phishing, see my "To foil phishers" and the Seattle Times on this "new face of fraud."

Mac attacks?

Because more and more people are buying Apple computers, their OS X operating system is "increasingly at risk of attack" by hackers, says Symantec (as reported by many news outlets, including ZDNET. But take that with a grain of salt, suggests a San Jose Mercury News column: "This according to astonishingly self-serving Symantec Internet Security Threat Reports, a document that says far more about the looming vulnerabilities in Symantec's business model than it does about those in Apple's operating system," says Good Morning Silicon Valley. What's useful for family PC owners to know is that it's not just the smaller number of Macintoshes out there (vs. the huge number of Windows computers) that makes Macs more secure. Yes, "generally speaking, as an operating system's market share grows, it garners a bit more attention from malware authors.... But let's be honest, it's going to be years before OS X can reach the standard set by Windows in this category. There have been 37 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X in the past year, all of which were quickly and efficiently patched (none were exploited because OS X requires a root password before it will install new software)" - including viruses. This week Apple released its latest patch, which prevents phishers from fooling users of the Safari Web browser, ZDNET reports in another article.

New 'toy': All IMs, all the time

There's a new device you may soon be seeing on your child's wish list: the Zipit, just for instant messaging. With it, the communicators at your house will be able to participate in up to 99 simultaneous conversations! Just what you wanted. But its real upside is that it's a lot cheaper than texting on cell phones, which kids love and with which they're running up huge phone bills. The Zipit costs $100, with no service fees. It just requires its users to have the free IM accounts (via Yahoo, MSN, or AOL's AIM) that so many kids have and a wireless broadband connection at home, the library, a cybercafe, or anywhere (it's a cross between a texting-enabled cell phone and a laptop with a wireless connection). Another potential upside, cited by the Chicago Tribune, is the way it would free up the family PC for parents in households where the PC's monopolized by young communicators. But that's a downside too: They'll have even more opportunity to chat with friends 24x7 and not get to their homework! It also doesn't have any parental controls on it. But as far as I can tell from the Zipit Web site, because it connects IM-ers via their MSN, Yahoo, or AIM accounts, those services' options or preferences will apply. So, if you've configured the preferences with your child (such as blocking anyone not on their buddy list or logging their messages so you can check them later), they'll most likely apply on Zipit. For more on this, see "IM risks & tips."

Utah's new anti-porn law

Utah's trying something Pennsylvania has tried and failed to do: make Internet providers block access to porn for customers. A federal court struck down Pennsylvania's law as unconstitutional, but Utah is forging ahead, CNET reports. Critics are cited as saying state anti-Net porn laws are routinely struck down, and Utah's legislation is "worded so vaguely its full impact is still unclear" - Internet providers could be anything from "cable companies to universities, coffee shops, and homes with open 802.11 wireless connections." The law also requires the state attorney general to maintain a database of adult-content sites that providers will have to block. CNET adds that "supporters of the Utah bill, such as advocacy group Citizens Against Pornography, had pressed for the measure as a way to give parents more control of their home Internet connections." I suspect that, for First Amendment reasons, any court to hear a challenge to this bill will find that filtering software and services are a better support to parents. (CNET has links to the text of the law, the Pennsylvania story, and a law professor's critique of the bill.)

For safe, smart IM-ing

Especially from a parent's perspective, "IM" could stand for "insecure messaging" instead of "instant messaging." That's because of 1) how many tweens and teens love this form of communication, and 2) the ever-increasing number of IM-borne threats to the family PC. ZDNET writes about a dad and computer security expert who told his 13-year-old daughter that she could use AIM (AOL's instant messaging service), but if she ever downloaded a virus, "the result would be no IM for a long, long time." He and other security specialists are saying the best protection is education, which falls on parents' shoulders, because kids are the computer users most likely to click on images and other IM attachments they think their friends are sending (corporate IM users have more safeguards). The problem is, hackers are posing as our kids' friends - screennames on their buddy lists - saying, "click here to see this cool image" or "hear this great tune." So here's the very simple education part: Tell your kids that, if they get a message like that, start a new IM conversation with that screenname/buddy (don't reply to the msg telling them to click), and ask that buddy if s/he just sent that file, image, or tune (or just call the friend on the phone and ask about the message). If they're online and reply saying "no," don't click! Someone's posing as them. If the buddy is offline and can't reply, just don't click. The safest thing is not to get into the habit of sending each other files and links (unfortunately), because then kids get into the habit of clicking. Nothing really malicious has been attacking family PCs via IM yet, but the potential is there. "Trojan horses" that install software on family PCs have been going around, and that software could eventually be worms, viruses, and code that turns a computer into a "zombie" that other people can control.

Sony's PSP: Kids' must-have?

If they're gamers, they'll probably think so. The games part of Sony's new PSP is fabulous, I'm hearing. "As a portable game machine, it's a peerless piece of work," says the Washington Post's tech writer Rob Pegoraro. They'll love the multiplayer capability - its "breakthrough feature" - because "it's just more fun to compete against other people. You don't get the same sublime sense of satisfaction when the car you incinerate with a hail of missiles is driven by the computer" instead of another player, Rob says. Arriving on store shelves this week, "this $250 device is Sony's answer to Nintendo's Game Boy and DS handhelds. It also represents yet another try by Sony to get into the portable-media market Apple's iPod owns." That's where it fails, both Rob and USATODAY's Ed Baig say - the media features. Movies, at $20 a pop, can't be played on any other device, and the UMD disks they come on aren't rewriteable; i.e., you can't put tunes or photos on them once you've seen the movie. Rob suggests that if you want to listen to music and view your pictures, just get an iPod Photo. Here's CNET's similar take.

Gizmondo: The hype & the downside

Great. Just what any parent wants: A portable game device that allows gamers to get a fix on each other's exact physical location. And judging by the news coverage, the Gizmondo is going to be one very popular item. It's now available in the UK. For 229 pounds ($440), "the most tricked-out handheld device yet created ... plays games, music and videos; takes digital pictures; and sends and receives text messages to and from mobile phones. It includes Bluetooth for multiplayer games [over the Net] and can be a tracking device via its GPS satellite navigation," MarketWatch reports. Parental controls just aren't keeping up with the increasingly mobile Internet! Gizmondo's makers suggest that GPS tracking won't be just a minor add-on but rather a "game element" - which could land the device on every gamer's holiday wish list next fall. Here's what they say: "One of the many things that make this pocket-sized device unique is the GPS functionality. As well as offering location-based services, the Gizmondo will be able to perform satellite navigation, permissions-based tracking [if that means *user* permission, parents and kids will need to configure them together], geofencing, and location broadcasting to mobile telephones. But one of the most significant advances affects the mobile gaming genre; GPS functionality is already being developed into games to make the users' location in relation to other gamers and their environment an actual game element." Here's picture of Gizmondo at Geekzone in New Zealand.

'IM confused': Online social mishaps

Has something like this happened to you?: On a recent Saturday evening, our 13-year-old wanted to ski with a friend the next day (we'll call the friend "Bob"). We were out, so he called me on my cell phone for permission. I asked him if the get-together complied with the usual rule (if we drive you 40 minutes up the canyon, you get a ride home).

"Yeah, we're all set, Mom," was the reply. He's an organized boy, so I accepted this in good faith and drove him up to meet Bob at the bottom of the chairlift the next day, then turned around. Fifteen minutes later, the cell phone rings.... Please click to my newsletter this week for the rest of this story (and lesson learned).

Real-live parental controls: Study

More than half (54%) of US households with 12-to-17-year-olds in them filter Internet access - a 65% increase over 2000, according to a Pew Internet & American Life study released today. Even so, "big majorities of both teens [64%] and parents [65%] believe that teens do things on the Internet that their parents would not approve of," Pew adds. The challenge is that a centrally located, filtered family PC is becoming a thing of the past in the US (see the recent Kaiser study on media in the lives of US teens). Children are increasingly accessing the Net via laptops, mobile phones, and fixed and mobile game consoles (e.g., the new PlayStation Portable, or PSP), not to mention other locations beyond parental control (friends' houses, school, libraries, coffee shops, etc.). Amanda Lenhart, the study's author, said that kids who have Internet rules at home "are also more likely to access the Internet from school, possibly negating the impact of any rules," CBS News reports. Here are some more key Pew findings:

* 87% of US 12-to-17-year-olds have access to the Net at home.
* 13% of teens don't use the Net; 47% of these say they did at one time but stopped, and 10% of non-online teens say they aren't online because of a bad experience they had online, parental restrictions, or they don't feel safe online.
* 67% of parents believe the Internet is "a good thing for their child," up from 55% in 2000 (a 53% increase); 5% believe the Net is "a bad thing" for their child.
* 65% of parents and 64% of teens say that "teens do things online that they wouldn't want their parents to know about."
* 81% of parents of online teens say teens aren't careful enough when giving out information personal info online, and 79% of online teens agree.
* 73% of teens say the connected computer is in a public place in the house.
* 64% of parents say they've set rules about teens' online activities.
* 62% of parents say they check on teen's Net activity after they've been online, but only 33% of teens say they believe their parents monitor their activity.

Here's coverage by the Associated Press and MSNBC.

Filtering phones

The cell-phone industry association (CTIA) is pushing its members to adopt controls that prevent children from accessing adult content on phones, Reuters reports. The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, representing Cingular, Nextel, and other companies, said it's developing an education campaign and "guidelines that would also call on carriers to classify content either as available to users of all ages or restricted to those at least 18 years old." And not a moment too soon, since many of the latest generation of phones can access the Internet. For an early look at parental controls on cell phones, see my feature on this a year ago. About 21 million 5-to-19-year-olds in the US had cell phones by the end of last year, according to Reuters. The overall figure is 180.5 million (wireless subscribers in the US), up from 21.7 million in 2003, USATODAY reports. That's small compared to Europe, of course: "Eight of 10 European Union residents have mobile phone numbers while only six of 10 Americans do," Reuters reports separately.

Drugs in games

Substance abuse can now be added to parents' list of concerns about video games. In "Narc," to be released next week for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox, players "will - as part of the gameplay - be able to take drugs," the New York Times reports. "Taking an Ecstasy tablet creates a mellow atmosphere that can pacify aggressive foes," according to the Times. And there's a downside too: "Using each drug also leads to addiction, which can lead to blackouts that cost the player inventory and to demotions or even expulsion from the police force, which halts progress in the game. In measured doses, the substances can make a tough challenge easier, but the makers of the game say it is possible to play without using the drugs at all." Narc is rated M (for Mature), but so far nothing is stopping kids under 17 from buying the game, despite efforts in a number of states (see "Anti-violent games momentum grows" and "Video games: The bad & the good").

Net pedophiles 'getting smarter'

Though posing as such in chatrooms, Angie Wilson is not 14 years old. She's a special agent with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation whose job it is to catch sexual predators harassing young people online. At a recent conference of state attorneys general, she helped Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline illustrate how fast children get solicited in a chatroom (in a recorded version of Wilson's chat session it took about 2 minutes). Kline told the group that the "grotesque visuals" kids get sent by pedophiles are bad enough but what he finds "truly frightening" is "the sophisticated nature of these sexual predators and how organized they are," the Associated Press reports. "Kline singled out one Web site that he said explains the age of consent for sex in every state, describes the state-by-state penalties for sexual offenses, and even provides links to attorneys who specialize in defending those caught soliciting sex from children. Articles on the site also discuss how to target children who seem to be loners, frightened, or looking for friends and explain how to establish a pen-pal relationship." He described the site as something like a "pedophile college" for learning how to meet children online. *How* do we help kids who are lonely or looking for friends to understand that online chat is the last place they should go?! Send comments (or post a comment here)!

Griefers: Cyberbullies in games

"Cyberbullying" has been in the news a lot lately, but not yet its subset in online games. Bullies called "griefers" harass fellow players in multiplayer games. For an eye-opener, check out "Confessions of a Gr1epheR" at the Xbox site. In a recent overview on cyberbullying, USATODAY described an experience an 11-year-old had with a griefer: "A fifth-grader in the Los Angeles area, [Michael] stopped using his computer for six months after a brush with a griefer. After he beat another boy in an online game, several of the boy's friends threatened Michael in a chat room. 'If I find you, I will beat you up,' one message read. Frightened, Michael blocked their IM addresses but didn't tell his parents for two weeks." He told USATODAY it was the first time he'd been bullied. Microsoft, which markets multiplayer games for its Xbox console, offers 10 tips for dealing with griefers, also known as "snerts, cheese players, twinks, or just plain cyberbullies." They lurk in games as disparate as Halo 2, EverQuest, The Sims Online, SOCOM, and Star Wars Galaxies, Microsoft says. Of course, Net-based bullying involves girls every bit as much as boys. Instant-messaging and blogs are also venues for all kinds of psychological warfare, regardless of gender (for more, see my series, "The IM life of middle-schoolers," and "A mom writes: Trash talk in online games," and another mom's response). Also, Cyberbully.org has "A Parents' Guide to Cyberbullying."

P2P: Family PC security flaw

It has been fixed, but this PC security flaw alerts parents of file-sharers to a key potential risk of P2P activity to the family PC: the privacy one. Researchers at Cornell University found that the flaw in the very popular LimeWire P2P service "could allow an intruder to read any file on the hard drive of a person running LimeWire, whether or not it has been deliberately shared with others using the software," CNET reports. (File-sharers do have to download LimeWire's latest version to get the fix.) This is just the latest heads-up on the PC security issue. A 2002 study of Kazaa at HP Labs in California found "the majority of the users in our study were unable to tell what files they were sharing, and sometimes incorrectly assumed they were not sharing any files when in fact they were sharing *all* files on their hard drive." After that study was released, the US Congress held hearings on this problem to get the word out (see "Overexposed: The Threats to Privacy and Security on the File-Sharing Networks"). The bottom line is, if kids' file-sharing is allowed, parents need to be involved and at the very least need to configure the software's preferences with their children after it's installed on the family PC. Other P2P issues are the widely reported legal risks, the spyware that comes bundled with some of the services (not LimeWire, incidentally), viruses that can be downloaded, and the pornography (both legal adult content and illegal child pornography) that's all over the networks. Some files on the networks with descriptors, or labels, as innocuous as "Winnie the Pooh" turn out to be pornographic, so children can download them inadvertently. For more, see "File-sharing realities for families" and "A tech-literate dad on file-sharing."

When music's like fanfiction

This is a fascinating example of the upside of file-sharing: Chuck D and the Fine Arts Militia release a 3-minute song and invite everyone to pass it around the Net and "view, copy, mix, remix, sample, imitate, parody and even criticize it," the Washington Post reports. The result - as with fanfiction, where people write their own stories about famous authors' characters - "has been the creation of a flood of derivative work ranging from classical twists on the hip-hop piece to video interpretations of the song. The musicians reveled in the instant fan base. They were so pleased that they recently decided to publish their next entire album, due later this spring, the same way, becoming the first major artists to do so." This is a great illustration of why, just on this one case pitting media companies against P2P services, the US Supreme Court has its work cut out for it this month (see "P2P Update"). It's not black and white; P2P services are used by both seasoned copyright "pirates" and innocent fans who just want to experiment with music - sometimes embodied in the same individual viewed from different perspectives. BitTorrent itself is a fascinating test case, Washington Post tech writer Rob Pegoraro points out in a separate piece. He explains how this extremely popular, newest-generation P2P tech works.

Meanwhile, the litigation beat goes on worldwide. Several major Dutch ISPs agreed to help in a crackdown on customers suspected of file-sharing, the Associated Press reports. And France is sending mixed signals: While a French teacher accused of sharing 300GB of music files has been fined $13,200, The Register reports, a French court of appeals released a 22-year-old file-sharer "after he was sued for copying nearly 500 movies ... burning them on CDs and sharing them with friends." "Sharing with friends" (for non-commercial use) was the reason cited for his release, the Audionautes.netblog reported. [Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing these cases out.]

Your child's personal info in Google

A mom emailed me recently saying she was amazed that people could "Google" her family members' names and turn up their home address in the search results. She's not alone - a lot of people are dismayed by this, but no doubt even more have no idea what Google searchers can find out about them. No need to panic, but that's why parents need to know what their kids are posting in their blogs, Web sites, and online journals (see "A dad on kids' blogs," 3/4/05). I sent her the URL to brief article I wrote on this back in April 2003, including how to remove information from Google (here again is Google's Phonebook Name Removal page. Google has this caveat, though: "Removing your phonebook listing will not remove your personal information from other pages on the web or from other reverse phone listing lookup services." It lists and links to six such services. And that's only the beginning of what people can find out about other people with a little "Google hacking," which - Reuters reports in the latest coverage of this phenomenon - "doesn't require special software or an extensive knowledge of computer code."

'Chanslash': The other Net porn kids access

"Chanslash" is probably not a word in most parents' vocabularies. But because of all the young Harry Potter fans out there - and how easily one mom and fanfiction writer says they can access chanslash in their search for ever-more Harry Potter material - it probably should be. "Beth" in Texas is the mom I'm referring to (she asked me to use a different name in deference to the fanfiction community). She emailed me about chanslash the other day. She loves writing historical fiction, as well as "fanfic" stories about Tolkien-esque elves, so there is nothing negative here about the genre or even erotica ("I'm no prude," she said), just about two things:

1. Its accessibility to children (responsible sites sometimes warn about adult-only content, but that's about the highest barrier anyone encounters, except for an occasional unenforceable requirement that registrants be 13 or 18)
2. The fact that, when they come upon sexually explicit material, they're often encouraged to read more and to try their hand at it.

For more on this phenomenon, please click to my newsletter this week.

Phone targeting tweens

Actually, kids 9-12 might prefer the "real" phones that teens use (maybe with a choice of skins and ringtones). But the Firefly is a phone some kids and a *lot* of parents will like, because - in addition to its flashing lights and big buttons - it "has lots of controls that allow parents to limit whom kids can talk to," USATODAY reports. "The phone has no keypad, so all phone numbers must be preprogrammed." Right now it's available only in the southeastern US from SunCom Wireless, but in May people will be able to get it through FireflyMobile.com "for $100, including 30 minutes of talk time." Next summer Target stores will be carrying it. But watch out, parents, USATODAY has one source saying it's a "sucker purchase for every paranoid parent"! Personally, I'd like to see cell-phone companies providing parental controls for regular phones. How 'bout you? Post below or send me an email!

New-style phish attack

Phishers (online scammers) have found a new way to relieve us of our personal information: sending us to bad Web sites. It's the early days of this new exploit, called "DNS poisoning," which automatically sends people unawares to fake sites, so not that widespread, but it never hurts to be alert. The exploit attacks what are called DNS servers, ZDNET UK reports, not family computers. They're the servers out on the Net that translate the Web addresses or URLs we type into our browsers into the IP numbers of Web sites. The numbers that get swapped in are those of fake Web sites which we go to instead of the ones we *thought* we were clicking to, and which request "updates" or "verifications" of our bank account numbers and such. Some PC security experts are calling this new exploit "pharming" instead of "phishing." Adults are more likely to fall victim than kids, because so far the attackers are going after financial info, but the technique can be used to send people to all types of sites, and experts warn that it can only get more sophisticated. One safeguard is some software I've reported on in the past - see "To foil phishers." For "traditional" phishing prevention, there's the Washington Post's little phish-detection quiz. In any case, tell your kids to be careful about what they click to from emails, instant messages, and ads in Web sites. In online communications, sometimes hackers pose as "friends" or people on one's buddy list - I'll write more about this soon.

US kids & media: New study

US children's homes are "media saturated," according to a study just released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds." That's an "upgrade" from 1999, when Kaiser's first study said young people's homes were "media rich." A typical American child 8-18 is likely to live in a home with 3 TVs, 3 VCRs, 3 CD/tape players, 2 video game consoles, and a computer, found the study, conducted at Stanford University, and "the computer probably has an Internet connection and an instant messaging program." But here's the rub: the media access in a typical child's bedroom. More than two-thirds of 8-to-18-year-olds have a TV in their own rooms, more than half a VCR, and 49% a game console that connects to a TV (83% have a game console in their homes); 31% have a desktop computer, 12% a laptop; 20% are connected to the Net in their rooms, 18% have instant-messaging; 40% have a landline phone in their rooms, 39% a cell phone, and 55% have either or both. As for rules about this media use: "Fewer 8-to-18-year-olds live in a home where an attempt is made to regulate media behavior than live in homes where no such attempt is made."

As for computer time (p. 30), on average, US kids spend more than twice as much time on the computer now than they did in 1999, and the proportion of children using the computer more than an hour a day has gone from 15% to 28% during that time. Chat and email use have remained about the same - instant-messaging, which barely existed in '99, has gone from zero to kids' second most time-consuming computer activity, at 17 minutes a day (after games, at 19 min.). Gender differences aren't great. Girls' top 3 activities are IM (20 min.), Web sites (this includes blogs/online journals - 16 min.), and games (15 min.). Boys' are games (22 min.), IM (14 min.), and Web sites (12 min.). The study covered so much more, including kids' multitasking and household "media norms" (e.g., no TV till homework's done and Web-surfing supervision). The subhead in KFF's press release reads, "Kids Say Parents Don’t Set or Enforce Rules on Media Use." Here's the Associated Press's coverage.

Oz: Proposed suicide-chat law

Maybe the rest of the world will follow suit: The Australian federal government has introduced legislation that would impose fines of up to $110,000 (about $88,000 US) on people "who use the Internet to encourage others to commit suicide," News.com.au reports. "Under the law people, discussing methods of euthanasia over the Internet could also be committing an offence." The operative word is "methods"; the discussion of euthanasia itself would not be at issue, the article adds. There are online communities focused on suicide which "support" people of all ages who are considering it - see "Japan's Net suicide tragedy" and a 2004 series about online suicide in Wired News, with Part 3 focusing on teenagers: "A Teen Dies: Who is Responsible?" (here are Parts 1 and 2).

Net-enabled run-away

It's one of those nightmare stories: A girl runs away with a man she "meets" online. The 14-year-old was "discovered Saturday morning in a McLean [Va.] home, and the 22-year-old man who allegedly took her there is now on the run," the Washington Post reports. After having been sexually assaulted "without force," she is now safe, back in her grandparents' home in another Virginia town. The part that parents need to hear (and which bears out recent research) is that the police reported that she "was not abducted and was not held against her will for five days." We somehow think that telling our children "don't talk - or communicate online - with strangers" is good advice. The problem is, teenagers who do talk to people online, people who are in fact strangers, don't *think* of them as strangers. The research, published by the American Psychological Association, was done by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center (see my 8/27/04 issue). For more insights from one of the study's authors, Janis Wolak, see my series, "Rethinking 'stranger danger' for teens."

Teen convicted in P2P case

It's believed to be the first criminal conviction under state law for illegally downloading music and movies. Parvin Dhaliwal, a University of Arizona student, pleaded guilty to possession of unauthorized copies of intellectual property, the Associated Press reports. He was sentenced to "a three-month deferred jail sentence, three years of probation, 200 hours of community service, and a $5,400 fine," according to the AP, and the judge also ordered him to take a copyright class at his university and to avoid using file-sharing services. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization, commented on how unusual it was for state courts to be involved in a case about copyright, which is usually a federal-level issue. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office said the young man's case was referred to them because he was a minor at the time. What led up to this? A federal task force that "monitors the Internet caught on to the student and got a warrant," then found "illegal copies of music and movies on Dhaliwal's computer, including films that, at the time of the theft, were available only in theaters. They included 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,' 'Matrix Revolutions,' 'The Cat In The Hat,' and 'Mona Lisa Smile'," the AP added. Parvin *may* have been part of what Wired magazine calls "the shadow Internet." Other examples may be three young men described as "Robin Hoods of cyberspace" who just pleaded guilty to putting copyrighted games, movies, and software on the Internet "so that people around the world could make copies for free," according to the Associated Press.

In other music news, Russian prosecutors decided not to take legal action against AllofMP3.com, a cheap online music provider, "because Russian copyright laws do not cover digital media," the BBC reports . But record industry organizations in the US and Europe aren't finished trying to shut the site down, CNET reports. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission has been asked to investigate two other, US-based, cheap-music sites, Mp3DownloadCity.com and MyMusicInc.com, the Associated Press reports.

New game rating

"E10+" spells better guidance for parents on children's games. Now there's an older-child part of the E-for-Everybody rating in the categories at the US's Entertainment Software Rating Board, Reuters reports. E10+ games will have "moderate amounts of cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes," according to the descriptor the ESRB will apply to this category. "The ESRB said it expects that most top sports, racing and adventure games would continue to take an E rating, while racing games with graphic crashes and fighting games with superheroes would likely take an E10+." The ESRB rates just about every game published in the US.

IM worm: Don't click!

Now here's encouraging news for parents of IMers (stated with a touch of sarcasm): The headline reads, "MSN Messenger used for viral gang warfare." ZDNET UK reports that MSN and its Messenger users are again being victimized by a "gang" of worm writers who are "not only attacking end users, they are also verbally insulting each other." They are sending around worms (like viruses) that take control of people's computers. They spread by "sending [instant] messages that contain Internet links to malicious bots." Once the IMer clicks on the link, s/he automatically downloads the bot, which "allows an attacker to take full control of the infected computer." The worms also send that message to everyone on the recipient's buddy list or list of contacts that are then online. So tell your children not to click on links their IMing buddies *seem* to be sending them! They could well be this worm-message inviting them to click to something their friends would never send. Parents, this advice may really need to be burned into their memories, because it can be awfully easy to click away when one is caught up in the lively give-and-take of instant-messaging.

UK file-sharers sued

It has begun in Britain now too. Twenty-three file-sharers paid an average 2,200 pounds ($4,232) each to settle out of court with the British Phonographic Industry, which sued them for copyright infringment, the BBC reports. "The UK Internet users, ranging from a student to a local councillor [17 men and 6 women between 22 and 58 years of age], have admitted putting out up to 9,000 songs each for other fans to download." Three more cases may actually go to court. Some of those who settled were parents acting on behalf of their children, the BBC adds. Fifteen used the Kazaa peer-to-peer network, four used Imesh, two used Grokster, one used WinMX and one was on BearShare.

Over in East Asia, some 100 Chinese music celebrities appeared before a near-capacity crowd at Beijing's Capital Stadium Saturday night, asking for public support in China's "fight against rampant music piracy," the official People's Daily reports. "Organizers said 150 million more [fans] watched on television." In Korea, Bugs Music, the country's online music provider agreed to "sell 60% of the company to local record companies to settle its lengthy copyright dispute with the music industry," the Korea Herald reports. [Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing the Asia stories out.]

A dad on kids & blogs

Dan in southern California emailed me recently about his 12-year-old's blogging. "I was shocked to see a picture of her, a profile, a Yahoo email address I did not know about, and profiles of all her friends that are hooked up on this site," Dan wrote. "A simple click on their pictures and you have public email correspondence for all to read." He and his wife weren't sure yet what to do about this - they didn't want to overreact - so for starters he wanted to learn a little about these sites (MySpace, LiveJournal, DeadJournal, Xanga, Blurty, etc.). I told him he'd stumbled upon a pretty big phenomenon of teen life these days....

52% of the blogs out there are being developed and maintained by teens 13-19, reports a just-released study of "Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teenage Blogs" at Georgetown University.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project puts the overall number of US-based blogs at about 8 million late last year.

A new blog is created somewhere in the world about every 5.8 seconds, The Register reported last summer.

Dan said there were a lot of pieces to this that concerned him. He spelled them out. Then, a few weeks later, he kindly told me how he and Jamie (not her real name) worked through the issues and checked out her circle of friends' blogs from both caring and ill-intentioned adults' perspectives. Click here to read his account in this week's newsletter.

Teddy-bear baby monitor?

A slightly chilling sign of things to come or just a concept teddy bear? That's the question raised by this scenario from the Associated Press: The toy bear "sitting in the corner of the child's room might look normal, until his head starts following the kid around using a face recognition program, perhaps also allowing a parent to talk to the child through a special phone, or monitor the child via a camera and wireless Internet connection." AP reports that there are already toys for sale that "know a child's name or can incorporate other personal information." The problem is, what if that toy gets into the hands of someone with bad intentions? More and more I think parents need to be part of design teams because techies can get understandably excited about the capabilities they're developing; the downside just leaves their radar screens.

Newest kids' online safety site

IKeepSafe.org - endorsed by the First Ladies of nearly every state as well as the very animated Faux Paw the Techno Cat and McGruff the Crime Dog - plans to educate children and parents nationwide about safe use of the Internet. Founded by Utah's former First Lady Jacalyn Leavitt, the nonprofit organization behind the public-awareness site aims to be an umbrella for online-safety projects throughout the US. The site contains messages from first ladies, a little movie starring McGruff, a comic book featuring Faux Paw, and online-safety tips for parents and kids. Eventually, the site will have online-safety games for young visitors to play - to help them develop their own Net-safety savvy. Here's coverage at WFIE in Indiana, KFSN in San Francisco, and the Salt Lake Tribune.

Teens' exposure to sex online: Study

For this study, the professor decided to see for herself what teenagers encounter in online chat. UCLA psychology professor Patricia Greenfield "entered a Web area devoted to teenagers - whose motto was 'Be seen, be heard, be you' - and was 'shocked' by what she found there, including unsolicited sexual advances from strangers," according to the press release of UCLA's Children's Digital Media Center, of which Greenfield is director. She writes, "The sexuality expressed in a teen chat room was public, linked to strangers and had nothing to do with relationships. It was very explicit and focused on physical acts, and often associated with the degradation of women. I started to receive private instant messages, including a crude sexual advance, just by hanging out at the chat room, even though I had not participated in any of the ongoing conversations." One of the study's conclusions: "Not only will children seeking pornography 'find it all over the Internet,' but children who are not seeking pornography are often inadvertently exposed to it when they conduct Internet searches on perfectly appropriate subjects." Here's a report on the study from Child Health News and here's the Children's Digital Media Center page at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Video games: the bad & the good

The state of Illinois is stepping up its anti-violent games effort. Two state legislators introduced a law that would ban sales of violent and sexually explicit games to minors, CNET reports. "California, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Michigan all have similar proposals working their way through the legislative process." Internationally, Kanagawa Prefecture outside Tokyo "plans Japan's first ban on selling violent videogames to children," Australian IT reports. US courts have overturned similar efforts in St. Louis County, Mo., Indianapolis, and the state of Washington. Language in Illinois's proposed law could be a problem for passage, CNET adds, because "it doesn't rely on ESRB [Entertainment Software Rating Board] ratings but instead sets its own definition of objectionable content." In the UK, advertising has been the focus recently: television ads for the M-rated game Grand Theft Auto: Andreas have been banned during hours the children typically watch TV, the BBC reports. As for the *upside*: Surgeons are saying video games are good for developing skill in laparoscopic surgery, the New York Times reports. "The complex manual dexterity required to be a stellar video gamer and minimally invasive surgeon are strikingly similar."

For more on games, see NFN's "Kids & video game violence," "Trash talk in online games," "10 worst video games," "Kid-tested, parent-approved video games," and "Check out the game ratings!".

Takeout from inside the game

This takes the (pizza) pie, not the cake! Gamers at your house may soon be ordering dinner during play. Sony has built a pizza-ordering function into its latest multiplayer game, the Associated Press reports. "Type the command '/pizza' while playing Everquest II, a fantasy game with 330,000 active players, and get the Pizza Hut Web site, where you can place orders for delivery." Oh no, but what if you're playing in a non-Pizza Hut city?! USATODAY picked this piece up and, in its e-newsletter, headed it "Evercrust." So corny.

Monitoring young drivers

Parents are beginning to employ technology used by trucking companies to monitor their young drivers. "Figuring their children are better off annoyed than dead ... families are spending as much as $2,500 for microcomputers and 'black boxes' that feed speed and braking data into a home computer; cockpit video cameras; [and] Global Positioning System devices that track teenagers," the Washington Post reports. The Post leads with the example of soon-to-be driver's-license-holder Ben Ellison, whose new Mazda now has "a matchbook-size device plugged into the steering column near the knees of his cargo pants." But that's about half the battle - do these things monitor cell-phone texting and talking? In a story about whether laws against using handheld phones while driving do a bit of good, the New York Times has it that "no one doubts that using a cellphone can cause lapses in attention.... The question, at one time, was whether that was any worse than, say, unwrapping a cheeseburger or lighting a cigarette. Now it's also a question of whether a cellphone is more of a hazard than playing a DVD, using the calendar or email functions on a wireless hand-held device, or picking out a playlist on an iPod." My guess is, texting and MP3 players have just as much impact on driver safety as velocity. Studies are showing, the Times adds, that - even where just talking on the phone is concerned - it's the distraction of the conversation itself, not the act of dialing or holding the phone, that accounts for increased risk. I am *really* not suggesting we should monitor every move our children make - only that driver safety solutions, like online safety ones, are as individual as children are.

P2P update: New lawsuits, etc.

Seven hundred fifty-three more Americans will soon be hearing from the RIAA. The total number of lawsuits to date differs from report to report. P2PNet and MTV say around 9,100 people have been sued (the former makes a number of interesting anti-RIAA points), Australian Financial Review puts the number at 6,500. Meanwhile, one very popular P2P service, iMesh (an Israel-based service whose software was downloaded 715,000 times in just one week in Feb.), is currently enjoying approval by media companies. Why? Because it's working on using its file-sharing technology to sell music, CNET reports. So is a soon-to-be-unveiled service called Mashboxx. So, for now anyway, users of these services won't get sued. But if they're also buying cheap music from a Russian site called AllofMP3.com, they might want to know it's under criminal investigation, according to another CNET report (for more, see "Cheaper online tunes"). In related news, the UK is the No. 1 country in the world in downloading TV shows, the BBC reports. The Washington Post recently ran a great big-picture piece about pro- and anti-P2P arguments the US Supreme Court will be hearing later this month, including those about other technologies file-sharers use (e.g., turning radio broadcasts into computer files that can be burned onto CDs). A lot of companies, technologies, and consumers will be affected by this decision. "Hundreds of existing products could be threatened, [these communities] say. And they fear that new products, and early funding, will die in the crib," the Post reports.

Garret the Ferret teaches digital ethics

Kids themselves have named a new comic-book hero, Garret the Ferret, who the Business Software Alliance hopes will teach them digital copyright ethics. "That software you're copying is protected by copyright laws. What you are doing is wrong," Garret tells Shawn, a comic-book kid who's installing a friend's graphics program on his home computer late one night. They're the stars of "Copyright Crusader to the Rescue," a four-page comic/"curriculum" that the BSA is mailing to 30,000 fourth-grade teachers who subscribe to the children's publication Weekly Reader. So parents may soon receive a letter that comes with the companion teacher's guide. Both can be downloaded at the BSA's Play it Cyber Safe site. Here's the BSA's press release about the program.

P2P update: New lawsuits, etc.

Seven hundred fifty-three more Americans will soon be hearing from the RIAA. The total number of lawsuits to date differs from report to report. P2PNet and MTV say around 9,100 people have been sued (the former makes a number of interesting anti-RIAA points), Australian Financial Review puts the number at 6,500. Meanwhile, one very popular P2P service, iMesh (an Israel-based service whose software was downloaded 715,000 times in just one week in Feb.), is currently enjoying approval by media companies. Why? Because it's working on using its file-sharing technology to sell music, CNET reports. So is a soon-to-be-unveiled service called Mashboxx. So, for now anyway, users of these services won't get sued. But if they're also buying cheap music from a Russian site called AllofMP3.com, they might want to know it's under criminal investigation, according to another CNET report (for more, see "Cheaper online tunes"). In related news, the UK is the No. 1 country in the world in downloading TV shows, the BBC reports. The Washington Post recently ran a great big-picture piece about pro- and anti-P2P arguments the US Supreme Court will be hearing later this month, including those about other technologies file-sharers use (e.g., turning radio broadcasts into computer files that can be burned onto CDs). A lot of companies, technologies, and consumers will be affected by this decision. "Hundreds of existing products could be threatened, [these communities] say. And they fear that new products, and early funding, will die in the crib," the Post reports.

Beware the new 'Bagle'

This is a good time to remind your kids not to click on any email attachments. Moving fast, the new Bagle has already been sent to millions of email addresses around the world. It's a trojan virus that, when opened, attacks PC security programs like anti-virus software and firewalls (which of course leaves your computer vulnerable to further attacks and outside control), CNET reports. It also automatically connects your computer to a number of Web sites your family doesn't want to go to. Here's ZDNET UK's coverage.

P2P: Musicians weigh in

The discussion about file-sharing is definitely heating up - especially in the US, where the Supreme Court will soon hear arguments on this. Today a group of prominent musicians and artists broke ranks with their industry in "urging the Supreme Court not to hold online file-sharing services responsible for the acts of users who illegally trade songs, movies and software," the Washington Post reports. While (in court documents filed today) they condemn the stealing of copyrighted works, they also argue that that P2P services such as Grokster, Kazaa, and BitTorrent, "provide a legal and critical alternative for artists to distribute their material." To many musicians, they add, the benefits of file-sharing far outweigh the risks of copyright infringement. Legal docs on the P2P issue (Supreme and lower courts) can be found on this page at FindLaw . Earlier this week, the Post had a fulsome update on the file-sharing scene. For a parent's-eye-view, see my "File-sharing realities for families."

Cell-phone digital divide?

Maybe not. Here, too, are work-arounds that may not be good for teenagers. Sometimes 17-year-old J.J. Payne in San Francisco goes without lunch so he can pay his $100+ monthly mobile phone bill, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Regardless of income level, cell phones are a hot ticket for teens. "Kevin Truitt, the principal of [J.J.'s high school], has struggled for years with students talking on their cell phones in class or text messaging under their desks. But now, it's the debt his students are racking up with their phones that has him concerned," according to the Chronicle. One student told Truitt he had a $2,000 debt. The scary thing is, one cell-phone service in the SF Bay Area allows minors to sign its contracts without a parent co-signing. For more on this issue, see "Young phoners in debt." [A 2004 Yankee Group survey found that half of US teenagers have their own cell phones, up from one-third the year before.] In the UK, the BBC reports on questionable financial tactics used by phone ringtone sellers - and some tough new rules they face. Looks like US providers could use some new rules, at least where minors are concerned. As for the earlier digital divide - the *computer*-based one - the World Bank says it's closing, Reuters reports.

ID thieves targeting kids

The latest surprise about identity theft is that it's now victimizing children of all ages. Some have bad credit records even before they get their driver's licenses. The Seattle Times led with the story of one 3-year-old whose mother tried to start a savings account for her, only to find someone had "beaten her to it," using the child's social security number in what the FBI is calling "one of the fastest-growing crimes in America." This is not just an Internet story, since in many cases parents don't know how the tiniest children's personal data are being stolen. But it's good Congress is taking notice of the problem, zooming in on one source: huge databases of personal info like those of ChoicePoint (from whom personal data of 145,000-500,000 people were stolen) and Westlaw, which one lawmaker said makes ChoicePoint look like "child's play." The Washington Post, New York Times, and CNET report (CNET's today).

New game consoles & kid safety

If they aren't already, parents will soon be bracing themselves for the kid-targeted marketing blitz that's coming. A three-page "FAQ" at CNET today is itself probably part of gamers' cyberspace-based speculations (aka "viral marketing") about what the consoles will look like and what they'll do - gamers are checking out CNET's little companion lideshow of "Nintendo insider" sketches and "Photoshop jockey" renderings. Buried on the FAQ's third page is a question a lot of parents will have: "What kind of online capabilities will it have?" CNET says that Sony's PS3 will only expand the Net-connected gaming opportunities PlayStation 2 provided. Nintendo executives "have vowed to steer clear of online games until they see a viable business model in it," CNET reports, adding, though, that they're bound to feel pressure to jump in. Xbox Live online gaming is central to Microsoft's strategy, and Bill Gates has talked about adding instant messaging to the service," CNET adds. The bottom line for parents is that the old days of merely filtering the family PC are over. Families need a multi-tech, multi-platform online-safety strategy that, ideally, involves thinking together on how to develop it (thinking together will actually make it a *lot* easier and a great opportunity to swap kid tech literacy and parent life literacy.