Digital music: Just amazing

Whether you're a digital-music fan yourself or the parent of one or two, it might help to have a current snapshot of the online music scene. Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot thoughtfully presented the big picture over Thanksgiving weekend. It's an amazing scene, and not just for the music industry, scrambling to deal with the sea changes. Greg writes about how "convenience is paramount," with artists "creating music at increasingly lower costs in their own homes and distributing it over the Internet" and with consumers "listening to that music anywhere, anytime on wireless portable devices." Cellphones are becoming music-sharing and video-viewing devices the computers have been. "Record stores" and the mainstream music biz are floundering, but the digital-music numbers are astounding - e.g., "more than 251 million digital tracks have been sold, compared to 96 million last year, a 160% increase" and "digital album sales have jumped to 11 million from 3.4 million, a whopping 226% spike." Then there's Warner Music's new all-digital label, Cordless Recordings, and CDBaby.com for independent musicians, adding "35,000 new releases annually." Derek Sivers, the founder of CDBaby and a musician himself, estimates that at least 100,000 new digital albums are produced each year. Don't miss what Greg writes about the implications of all this. Meanwhile, European youth still have quite a taste for illegal music, CNET reports.

Amazon wish list: Risky for kids

I remember when my 8-year-old was really into Gundams (plastic robot-like toys), he had a lot of fun surfing through Amazon.com's toys and sending his favorites to his Wish List. I, in turn, found it very convenient later to peruse his list and do a little one-click shopping. But a new online-safety risk (especially for kids with unusual names in small towns) has come up concerning that feature and kids - because of the shipping address registered users provide Amazon and the way it can be associated with a child. "Site visitors can search wish lists by name," Internet News reports, so "it's relatively easy for a stranger to find a kid simply by searching for a common first name, then scrolling through the list to find those who have listed last names, cities and states." Other wish lists do a better job of protecting kids, Internet News reports. For example, Kaboodle, which is still being beta-tested, "lets users protect their wish lists with passwords if they choose," and Google's Froogle allows wish-list searching only by email address, so only people who already communicate with the person can find his or her wish list. Check out the article for details and advice.

Family tech shopping

Of course, retail news is everywhere right now, so I'll presume to link to the best for people with kids at heart. First the breaking news: The iPod and the Xbox 360 are Nos. 1 and 3 on this year's "top 10 list of desired gifts compiled by the Consumer Electronics Association," the New York Times reports. Last year, game consoles were in 9th place and portable music players didn't even make the list. The Cincinnati Enquirer attempts to explain the iPod phenom. As for the content on those consoles, check out FamilyFun.com's kid-tested "Video Game of the Year" winners for kids 6-9 and 10-12 and USATODAY's videogame gift guide in four categories: Kids, Preteens, Teens, and Adults. The Washington Post categorizes too, but creatively zooms in on recipients as much as products. For example, it took 4th-grader Aneya months to start playing with the Nintendo DS her dad got her last Christmas, the but now she's finally using it to play games like "Lizzie McGuire: On the Go" (have things like that happened with kid-tech at your house too)? Then there's Nicholas the teenage gamer; a "road warrior"; a cool grandmother (who's "on her 5th or 6th computer"); and a 30-something "multimedia junkie" whose daughter Gemma isn't that much bigger than his iPod. The Associated Press and Wall Street Journal both look at this widespread parental challenge of 8- and 9-year-olds preferring tech to toys. [If any of you have dealt with bad guesses on tech gifts for kids and figured out what to do when that happens, other parents would love to hear about it - email me anytime, or post just below.]

2006: Year of Mac attacks?

First things first: Mac users, if you haven't already downloaded it, be sure to check for the just-released security update from Apple (click on Software Update under System in System Preferences). It patches 13 flaws. Now for that arresting question about 2006. It may very well be time for Mac users to ditch their false sense of security, says Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs, and not just because of this security update. His reasoning, after going into his local Apple store and finding it jammed with people and 10-15 degrees warmer than any other store in the mall: "Fact: Macs are coming down in price. Fact: More people are fed up with the incessant viruses, spyware etc. on Windows that switching to a Mac is more appealing than ever. My hunch: 2006 may turn out to be the year we start seeing a significant growth in the Mac user base, and with it, if not Mac viruses or worms, then at least some automated tools for attacking various Mac vulnerabilities." BTW, if you're a Windows PC owner, do not hesitate to take advantage of Microsoft's free new service, Windows Live Safety Center, for "Protection," "Clean Up," and "Tune Up."

Our 8-to-12-year-old techies

Fortunately, marketers can no longer find them just by advertising during Saturday-morning cartoons. Unfortunately, they are an increasingly prime target of marketers (and marketers are finding them anyway, of course). Why? The Los Angeles Times reports that they are our family CTOs (chief technology officers), and marketers know that very well. They know that, "by some estimates, tweens influence $60 billion in spending annually." The simple reason why they're so darn tech-literate is that, unlike us, they grew up with technology (and the information overload that sells it and that's enabled by the technology itself!). The Times piece illustrates all this very readably, with family stories and marketers' perspectives.

Beware antivirus software (!)

In some ways, antivirus services do family PC owners a disservice: They give us a false sense of security. And the security is increasingly fragile, Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs reports. Citing a candid report from Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Lab, Brian writes, "By the time those [antivirus] products are updated to detect the latest threat, the virus writers have already released several newer versions that evade the latest antivirus signatures." Brian and a lot of experts are all saying that, though we can't give up on antivirus protection, we have to understand it's flawed (ever more so). One security blogger mentions an old joke about the most dangerous part of a car being "the nut behind the wheel" and says nothing replaces educating computer users: "Don’t open attachments, even if the message claims to be from someone you know, unless it was an attachment that you were expecting. I used to say, unless it was about something that you have discussed with that person, but realistically the varied subjects and techniques of virus writers make that too risky." That goes for attachments to emails or IM, and our kids also need to be very careful about what links the click on. Trojan software can now be downloaded just by going to malicious Web sites. For more, see "Tips from a tech-savvy dad: IM precautions." And for the latest help in PC protection and clean-up, do not hesitate to take advantage of Microsoft's free new service, Windows Live Safety Center.

The new Kazaa

To a file-sharer, Kazaa will not even be a shadow of its former self, this still-popular service that was once No. 1 but long ago overtaken by eDonkey and BitTorrent. A federal judge in Australia has ordered Kazaa's parent Sharman Networks to add to the software "filters aimed at preventing users of the software from swapping copyrighted material," the Associated Press reports. What that means, probably, the AP says, is a filtering system that "will include 3,000 so-called keywords, most likely the names of popular recording artists." Sharman is also required to urge users to download this new software. I suspect they'll also have to provide some sort of incentive for users to download software that blocks the free-though-illegal music a lot of them are looking for. Otherwise, the new Kazaa probably becomes a marketing or sampling tool for artists spreading the word about new releases and, for users, another way of seeking out indie music (competing with the likes of MySpace.com and CDBaby.com). Meanwhile, there's nothing stopping the millions of people with the old Kazaa software on their machines to keep file-sharing as usual.

Families blogging for each other

Teen blogs can actually be good for parent-child understanding, some parents will tell you. At least that's what some people of both generations told the Wall Street Journal. Writer Kevin Delaney cites one 19-year-old experienced blogger who doesn't mind that his parents read his blog - he told Kevin it may even be parents' duty. Another teenager's mom told Kevin that reading her 17-year-old's blog has helped her understand what he's dealing with and opened up communications for them. A dad in a third family has his own blog, knows his son reads it, and hopes the latter will see in it the respect his dad has for him. It's the familial twist on the blogging phenomenon. Kevin (who also talked to a mom who first contacted Net Family News about something scary she found in her 16-year-old's blogging), calls it "intra-family blog-tracking," and I'd call it another one of those helpful pointers for parenting in the Digital Age. Over the weekend, the Journal also ran an article on schools' student-blogging dilemmas. And the New York Times looked at teens' "enthusiastic self-revelation" in a shorter piece focusing on all the tools at their fingertips. Here's the WSJ piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in case you can't get it at the Journal.

Game-console parental controls

Sony's making it unanimous. It just promised that there will be parental controls on its forthcoming PlayStation 3, joining the just-released Xbox 360 and the Revolution that Nintendo announced will have controls when released next year, the Associated Press reports (Sony's handheld, the PlayStation Portable, has parental controls on it - see "Porn's new platforms"). The PS 2 limits access only to movies, not games. The Xbox 360 "lets users restrict access to video games and DVDs that carry certain ratings, such as 'T' for 'teen' or 'M' for 'mature.' It also offers parental controls on the company's Xbox Live online gaming service, limiting who their children can interact with," the AP adds. See my issue last week for lots more game news.

Nationwide filtering in Thailand

This may be the start of a trend in countries where free speech wields less power: In his weekly radio address, Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told his country that the government "plans to block more than 800,000 pornographic or violent Web sites that officials say are harming the kingdom's youth," Agence France-Presse reports. The government will order the country's Internet service providers to block the sites or they'll lose their licenses, he said. "The ban, which affects both foreign and domestic-based websites, is likely to come into force before Thailand's Children's Day on January 14." Speaking of filtering, a child's friend is another Internet user's enemy, it seems. I wonder if Thailand will soon be on Reporters without Borders's "Enemies of the Internet" list (here's the current list of 15 "countries to watch"). [Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing this news out.]

Internet Explorer risk

It was deemed "extremely critical" by one security firm, InformationWeek reports, and it "could let nasty Web sites [linked to in an email or IM, possibly] seize control over visitors' computers," Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs reports. SO Brian suggests that - until Microsoft releases the patch it has promised - the easiest thing for online families to do is switch browsers. Use Firefox, if you have it, and download it here if you don't - the Mac's Safari users have no worries. If your family absolutely has to use Explorer for everyday surfing, Brian provides simple, step-by-step directions for disabling scripting and explains the effects of that in this piece (scroll down to the paragraph beginning: "Back to the present security threat"). Thanks, Brian. Simple, straightforward help for the average PC users is a rare commodity these days!

Then there's the "FBI" and/or "Paris Hilton" virus, the BBC reports, "a Windows virus that warns users about illegal net use" an actually "claims to come from the FBI, CIA, or German BKA police agency, and warns users they have been detected visiting illegal sites." Sometimes the email promises images of Paris Hilton too. Tell your kids: do not open any questionnaire attached - it will infect your PC with a variant of the Sober virus. All attachments should be suspect - even if they're from someone they know, tell your children to email, IM, or call the friend supposedly sending the attachment to make sure s/he sent it.

Texting: (US) adults don't get it - yet

Well, we're getting there, but a fun San Francisco Chronicle column digs into why teenagers (and everybody else in other countries) seem to have adopted phone-texting faster. "For teens, it is a chance for a private conversation in a busybody world of teachers and parents. No wonder researchers have dubbed today's youth 'GenText'." For everybody else outside North America it's just commonplace (and a lot less rude and annoying in public places). The Chronicle reports that 2.9 billion text messages get sent every day, worldwide, and "only 14% are in North America. Europe, Asia and the Philippines are far ahead." It also cites a new book about mobile communication in Japan: "Personal, Portable, Pedestrian."

'Triton': AOL AIM-ing high ;-)

AOL expects its upgrade called "AIM Triton" to increase people's use of audio, video, and computer-to-phone messaging, reports New Zealand's Geekzone. AOL fully intends to keep its lead as an IM service while becoming a full-blown online-communications hub. Triton combines instant messaging, free email, text messaging (on phones), and voice and video chat "to drive more users to ads," Red Herring reports. A few other nifty features the Geekzone mentions: It "lets users talk live with AIM buddies around the world for free, "supports live, multi-party voice chat for up to 20 buddies, and enables users to add buddies to ongoing calls." According to Internet News, 41.6 million people use AIM.

A guide to (US) student blogging

"Millions of students across the country are speaking their minds in Internet blogs, and some kids are getting punished for it despite their right to free expression," writes the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties organization. So the EFF thought students and their parents might want answers to the question: "Just what are students allowed to publish about their school, their teachers, and their classmates?" You'll find them in the organization's just-released guide to student blogging - including the rights of students at public vs. private schools. [A public-school student in New Jersey was recently awarded a $117,000 by a federal judge saying the school district had violated his free-speech rights (see NFN last week), and the (N.J.) Daily Record looks at a different case involving students & tech at a private school.]

Dissecting (& creating) videogames

Now this is interesting: There are basically 4 types of characters in multiplayer online games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft, the New York Times reports: the Socializer, the Achiever, the Explorer, and the Killer - and guess who's at the top of the food chain? Reporter Seth Schiesel visited 30-year-old instructor Nick Fortugno's Thursday seminar for "14 undergraduate and master's-level students" at Parsons the New School for Design in Greenwich Village. These students will definitely find jobs, because "the burgeoning game industry is famished for new talent," Seth reports, and its market is probably increasingly hungry for greater sophistication in character development - but of course, part of what makes online games so interesting is players' role as co-creators and -writers, in a sense. The president of Parsons, former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, had something really interesting to say about that in the article, which mentions a number of programs like Parsons's. Seth writes: "According to the International Game Developers Association, fewer than a dozen North American universities offered game-related programs five years ago. Now, that figure is more than 100, with dozens more overseas."

Xbox 360's big debut & more on gaming

Standing in line last night for the arrival of the 3 police-escorted trucks containing 3,000-or-so Xbox 360s, then watching them being handed out by multiple Best Buy employees was like being at "the world's most expensive soup kitchen," reported editors at gaming news site 1UP.com, who joined "hardcore Xbox 360 fans from all over the globe for a chance to buy the very first retail kits anywhere." The handing out happened in "a gigantic aircraft hangar" in California's Mojave Desert, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Here's GameSpot's exhaustive review of the 360 and the GMSV blog's at-a-glance review. What it and a lot of the reviews say is that - though this next-gen system is multimedia (it'll connect to iPod Video and Sony PlayStation Portable to play music and videos on a TV), it's still very much about games, only now with a strong *online* focus, which should tweak parental antennas. The 360 offers two levels of Xbox Live (the basic one free), which means voice and text communications and evenutally video messages, with players anywhere in the world. Xbox 360 reportedly also has some parental controls (e.g., restricting access to online chat and to games rated "M" for Mature), according to the Ferrago.com gamers' blog.

In other gaming news, "the US has been declared the top gaming nation at the World Cyber Games" held in Singapore last week, the BBC reports. "America's 16 players won two gold medals and one silver to top the national rankings"; South Korea and Brazil came in second and third, respectively. Here's the Washington Post's list of videogames that "have gamers abuzz" this holiday season. And Common Sense Media looks at the question, "Is your kid ready for a gaming system?"

Mac OS & other vulnerabilities

Heads up, Mac users! This CNET report about how malicious hackers are branching out says the Mac OS X is increasingly vulnerable. "Online criminals shifted their attacks in 2005 from operating systems such as Windows to media players and software programs," CNET reports, citing the latest "Top 20" computer vulnerabilities from the nonprofit SANS research group. Here's the Top 20 list, which - besides the UNIX-based OS X, MP3 players, and Microsoft's Explorer Web browser - includes software very popular with kids: file-sharing, instant-messaging. Apple did plug 10 critical security holes in OS X, CNET reported in September, but it may be time for Mac users to start thinking about what a Mac technician told me in September: that "sooner or later" he'll have to fix a virus-infected Mac "because a lot of hackers use Linux and Unix [code in writing viruses], and the Mac OS is based on Unix. That makes it more stable and better but also open to the possibility of infection. We recommend that our customers buy anti-virus protection now for when it could happen. You just never know when it's going to start."

'Paradise Lost' in a nutshell

...or on cellphones, anyway. We're talking about text-messaging as a learning tool for students of English literature. Here's John Milton's "Paradise Lost," as pointed out by the San Jose Mercury News:
"devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war. pd'off wiv god so corupts man(md by god) wiv apel. devl stays serpnt 4hole life&man ruind. Woe un2mnkind." Just one of a number of "condensed masterpieces" that a service called dot mobile will be offering students starting in January. It's an "aide memoir," says Prof. John Sutherland, Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of English Literature at University College London, who co-developed the service with dot mobile and his students. Of course there's also "2B? NT2B? =???" and the rest of Hamlet. Dot mobile's press release says they'll launch with "precis versions" of Romeo & Juliet, Paradise Lost, Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Lord Of The Flies. By April: all of Shakespeare and the Caterbury Tales. Consider Cliff Notes replaced. Well, sorta. Parents, you have heard of CliffsNotes.com and SparkNotes.com, right? What's really notable, here, is that everything's moving onto mobiles in interesting ways.

Web search: No. 2

Though IM is No. 1 with teens, email is still the top Internet activity among Internet users as a whole, with Web searching now No. 2. "Of the 94 million American adults who went online on a given autumn day this year, 63% used a search engine," the Associated Press reports. The email figure is 77%, according to the latest data from the Pew Internet & American Life project. Search engines used to be neck and neck with news,"but search had a dramatic jump over the past year to widen the gap over news." See the AP piece for an interesting note on changing email use, though. Here's the latest on teen use of IM vs. email.

Insights into e-dating

More and more people are meeting their future spouses online - in social-networking sites, matchmaking sites, and even online games such as SecondLife.com (with nearly 80,000 players worldwide). Some of us baby-boomers and Gen X-ers are among them, so of course more of our children will be. The Indianapolis Star cites Pew Internet & American Life figures showing that one-sixth of Internet users 18-29 using online dating sites (only 1 in 20 older Net users do). In kind of an online chat format (a little more wordy), the Star article lets Tammy Paolino (formerly njbarefootpoet) and Jeffrey Taylor (formerly jtay999) tell the story of how they met and got to know each other at Match.com in late 2001 - offering insights into why it worked so much better for them than, say, nightclubs and parties - and how males and females navigate the online-dating scene differently (using Jeff's Frank Zappa T-shirt as an example). "They married in October 2002 and recently celebrated the first birthday of their son, Jonah." The Star piece has a sidebar linking to a number of online dating sites, though teenagers are more likely to socialize at sites like eCrush.com, Bolt.com, Hookup.com, or blogging spots like MySpace or Xanga. For more on the Second Life and Teen Second Life games, including the romantic parts, see "Lively alternative lives." There's also recent news of online-dating site users, in separate cases, suing Match.com and Yahoo Personals for fraud - see CNET.

Death to DRM?

"DRM" is digital-rights management, or anti-piracy tech, on CDs, DVDs, etc., and Sony's use of it so far may not spell death to DRM but has seriously damaged whatever good name the technology had. In fact, from now on digital-media companies will probably go to great lengths not to set off a similar p.r. disaster. Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs reports that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is suing Sony BMG for its anti-piracy practices, the first the first lawsuit filed under Texas's new spyware law" (lawyers in California and New York have filed class-action suits against Sony, he adds). On Friday Brian pointed to yet another harmful type of DRM Sony used on *another* set of CDs. Brian links to the site of the security researcher who found the problem and to a partial fix (see also Gartner Group's scotch-tape fix, reported by VNUNET.com). Here's Sony's list of 52 CDs that have the offending DRM technology on them. The good news is, Sony is offering replacement CDs (without DRM on them) for all 52, CNET reports . Writer Charlie Demerjian at UK tech news site TheInquirer.com finally got through to a Sony spokesperson. His takeaway: "Based on this brief chat, I get the feeling that Sony is trying to clean things up, but doesn't really understand the problem. Things seem to be pretty chaotic, and internal communications are not all that hot. At this point, I almost feel sorry for Sony. Almost."

A *little* help for parents

I was thinking “out loud” in this newsletter/blog when I wrote, "Video iPod: Mom's-eye-view” after the debut of this little video player and music videos on iTunes. Two things got me to thinking: the label “explicit” I saw next to some of the videos listed in iTunes that day and how mainstream online music videos had become (having just read that users look at 350 million music-video clips a month at Yahoo Music alone! - see this). So I wondered what parental controls there were for this vast video area of cyberspace, whether child-protection tech had caught up. Then Niel Macdonald, tech coordinator for St. Christopher School in San Jose, Calif., and former Apple engineer, emailed me a thoughtful reminder (I had, after all, reported on this last April).... [Please see this week's issue of my newsletter for Niel's comment and more on tech aids for parents.]

*Don't* install Sony's patch

That’s the advice from the Washington Post’s Brian Krebs, reporting that “security researchers say it will introduce even more vulnerabilities into your system.” If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, see my coverage last week. If you’re not sure if someone at your house has inadvertently downloaded the offending Sony anti-piracy software (by playing one of the Sony BMG CDs that installs it automatically), Sony finally has a list of the CDs that carry this copy protection technology. If you’re still not sure if you have this flawed software on a Windows PC, you can go to a new Microsoft service you should know about anyway: Windows Live Safety Center, which will scan your PC and help you get this and other nasty, invasive software off it. The Post explains all of this in detail.

Anime on iPods

It's nice to know the porn industry isn't the only early adopter of new technology. Anime characters can now be found on video iPods too, the New York Times reports. Nine days after Apple introduced the device, anime distributor Central Park Media announced it would make some titles available on iTunes for the video iPod. Titles the Times mentions include "the adventures of Chirico Cuvie in the series 'Armored Trooper Votoms'," and - to be offered a little later - "Descendants of Darkness," "Revolutionary Girl Utena," and "Shadow Star Narutaru." For insights into a small, dark corner of online anime, see "A mom writes: Yaoi not for kids" in my 8/5 issue.

IM: Tops with teens

This will not be a huge surprise to parents, but a new AOL study found that IM is definitely the communications tool of choice among young people. "Two-thirds of teens and young adults between the ages of 13 and 21 said they use instant-messaging more than email" (up from 49% last year), and "an increasing number of people across age groups are sending IMs from their mobile phones [almost double the 2004 figure]," according to InternetWeek's coverage of the survey. Nearly half of 13-to-21-year-olds change their away messages every day to let others know where they are, to list a cell-phone number or alternate way to be reached, or to post a favorite lyric or quote, the study also found, adding that some use their away messages to "post a call to action, like “'Please donate to the Red Cross to help hurricane victims'.” What's coming in IM-ing? The fans are asking for live streaming TV on their IM services (26%); music on demand (25%); video on demand (21%); using IM to make voice calls to other computers, land-line phones, and cellphones (21%); and replacing their primary home phone service with "IM-based Internet telephone service" (12%). Fastern your seatbelts!

'Toons & other TV on the Web

Television shows old and new are popping up all over cyberspace these days, a true trend. First Desperate Housewives turned up in iTunes (along with a few other ABC shows). Now AOL announces it's launching an online TV channel, In2TV, offering dozens of old shows like "Welcome Back Kotter" and "Growing Pains," grouped "by genre, including comedies, dramas, animation, sci-fi and horror, action-adventure and 'vintage TV'," the Associated Press reports. The lineup will keep changing, but "within the first year, In2TV will offer more than 100 series and at least 300 episodes per month," the AP adds. According to the New York Times, each show will have "one to two minutes of commercials for each half-hour episode, compared with eight minutes in a standard broadcast. The Internet commercials cannot be skipped." Meanwhile, Nickelodeon has found a new distribution channel for its cartoons: Hasbro's VuGo digital media player, CNET reports. With it, kids will be able to download an episode for $1.99-2.99. "The cartoon offerings range from SpongeBob SquarePants to The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy," CNET says.

Everybody's site? database? store?

Want to put the new baby's photo on the Web so all the distant relatives can ooh and ah? Or care to post that scrumptious recipe for leftover turkey so that we all can simply print it out? Or perhaps your child will post her university course schedule so you know when *not* to call on her cellphone? Well, now you don't even need a Web site or blog to do these things. You can put info or photos or sell goods on the Web for free and for everyone in the world to see at a new service called Google Base, basically Google's new global database or classifieds, maybe (though postings need to be in English, Google says). Certainly there are qualifications: no pirated material, no promotion of violence, no gambling, hacking, or weapons or drugs sales, and no child pornography or "non-consensual material" (which means consensual explicit content isn't ruled out, for parents concerned about kids' exposure to that). Here are the San Jose Mercury News and CNET on this development.

More 'digital shoplifters' sued

That's what Britain's version of the RIAA, the BPI, is calling the file-sharers it's suing these days: "digital shoplifters." The BPI announced yesterday it had filed 65 new lawsuits in the UK, "among 2,100 similar cases launched around the globe this week by local recording industry trade associations," The Register reports. The 2,100 this week bring the total to 3,800 lawsuits, in addition to "the 16,200-odd individuals targeted to date by the RIAA in the US." This week saw cases filed for the first time in Sweden, Switzerland, Argentina, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In Britain, 70 of the 150 file-sharers sued so far have agreed to pay up to 6,500 pounds (about $11,300) to settle out of court. For more on P2P risks (in addition to the legal one), see "File-sharing realities for families."

Band promoter's word to the wise

In "TalkBack" at the bottom of a CNET piece on schools dealing with teen blogging, there's a very credible message parents might find helpful from someone who uses MySpace.com for its music-community focus: "I visit mySpace to promote a band's profile," writes one Rob Stevens, "and find myself surprised to see the kind of information some people put on their profiles. There's one type of common profile that I guess it may use a form for the users to fill in. This form posts information that could be easily used for identity theft or blackmailing. I'm not trying to be paranoid, but I'm not naive either. There are a lot of perverts, cons, and criminals out there looking for victims. And I think some young surfers are just opening their front door to sickos. Let's hope they wake up and change their information." He's talking about the Web form MySpace users fill out to create a profile - they should know they don't have to answer all the questions, and they can be careful not to post personal information ill-intentioned people can use to contact them - this goes for other blogging/social networking sites, too, e.g., Xanga.com, LiveJournal.com, Blurty.com, DeadJournal.com, STLpunk.com, etc.

Facebook: Getting students in trouble

Colleges and universities are beginning to use Facebook.com as a tool for monitoring and protecting students. "Nine underage students at N.C. State are facing charges of violating the school's alcohol policy after a residential adviser visited one of their profiles on Facebook and found links to pictures of them drinking," CNET reports. Similar actions were taken at Northern Kentucky University and the University of California at Santa Barbara; and "Fisher College in Boston expelled a student this fall for posting threatening comments about a campus police officer on the site." CNET also looks at what high schools are doing about their students blogging at MySpace and other social-networking sites, and there's some good advice (in a sidebar) about parental involvement. Here's a little background on Facebook and other such sites at USNews.com.

Porn's new platforms

By "platforms" I mean video players, music players, phones, gameplayers - and this is all over tech news this week. Parents who care about this need to know. One porn publisher told the Washington Post that his industry's Web business had peaked a couple of years ago, so there's great interest in moving onto new, more portable platforms. Of course, because of the iPod's popularity, much of the news focuses on that (it took 20 days from the day videos became available for iTunes to reach 1 million video downloads), but the Post looks at the big picture. Besides video iPods, there's the everywhere news of porn and parental controls on phones (see last week). And last July, I linked to Newsweek reporting that Japanese adult-DVD makers H.M.P. and GLAY'z had joined Playboy on the Playstation Portable gameplayer. The PSP does have parental controls. Here's a post about them at PSPJunkies.com: "With those porn coming out, the GTA ["Hot Coffee" mod] scandal, if I was a parent, I'd freak with real scary thoughts of having my 10-year-old having hands on the Sony PSP. With the 2.0 firmware update, under Security Settings, a concerned parent can set up the Parental Controls to stop little kiddies playing that R-rated stuff not meant for them. To set it up (or un-set it), the password is 0000, and turn it on as you like. This is a community service from PSPJunkies making the Sony PSP a safer device. :)" [Of course, there's a workaround detailed at PSPHacks.net, which someone not much over 10 could easily find.] Of course, the Web is far from passe, especially on the amateur front - for example, "vlogs" (video blogs) are taking off, with tech startups offering "tools that make it easy to create, distribute, and monetize homemade content," Red Herring reports.

Sony BMG's 'spyware'

It's looking pretty official, now, that the extreme copy-protection tech Sony put on about 20 of its CDs is indeed spyware. Microsoft considers it as such, and is updating its anti-spyware software, Windows Defender, "to detect and remove the file-hiding capabilities of the anti-piracy software," the Washington Post reports. The Sony anti-piracy software renders PCs vulnerable to viruses, it was reported last week. To find out which CDs have the software on them, go to the Electronic Freedom Foundation. For more, see my coverage last week.

321chat & kids don't mix

Heads up, parents of avid communicators: 321chat.com provides chatrooms specifically for kids and teens but doesn't protect their privacy. It's just one chat site but a clear illustration of how unmonitored chat puts kids at risk. Watchdog CARU, the Children's Advertising Review Unit of the New York-based Council of Better Business Bureaus, has referred the site to the Federal Trade Commission for a ruling against the site because it's not compliant with the US Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which CARU helps enforce. Because of this action, the site, with ads that link to adult-oriented dating sites right where children enter chat, temporarily shut down its "Kid Chat" room, designated for children 9-13. But CARU says that's not enough. Please see my newsletter this week for details.

Sony's nightmare could be ours

It's a pr nightmare for Sony BMG: the ruckus over the extreme copy-protection tech it put on about 20 of its CDs. But now it's becoming a real problem for music fans who have played the CDs on their PCs. The anti-piracy program these CDs automatically install on people's computers "is now being exploited by malicious software that takes advantage of the antipiracy technology's ability to hide files," the Associated Press reports. Once installed, Sony's technology is cloaked - it can't be found on the PC, which Sony doesn't mention in its user agreement. It's also very difficult to uninstall, and uninstalling reportedly disables the CD drive. Worse, virus writers have already taken advantage of the invisibility feature to circulate Trojan horse programs that anti-virus software can't detect (three are in circulation so far, PC security firms said Thursday). The Trojans take control of people's PCs. Mac users get little goodies, too, the San Jose Mercury News reports, but they're not cloaked and in the user agreement, and no viruses have invaded because of them so far. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a list of the Sony BMG CDs that have the offending copy protection on them. Sony has released a patch. The company has already been sued in a class-action lawsuit, Reuters reports, and CNET later reported that Sony has stopped manufacturing CDs with this tech on them.

MI videogame law blocked

Michigan's new law banning the sale of violent videogames to minors is on hold. "A federal judge Wednesday granted video game industry groups' request for a preliminary injunction preventing the state of Michigan from enforcing [the law]," Reuters reports. Judge George Caram Steeh said the state "had failed to show what harm could result from selling games to minors," and there was "obvious harm" to free speech. The law was to take effect December 1. The groups who won the injunction are the Entertainment Software Association, the Video Software Dealers Association, and the Michigan Retailers Association. Similar laws have passed in California and Illinois (also being challenged), and a legislator in Florida is working on one for that state. Reuters adds that "courts already have blocked similar legislation in Washington State, the city of Indianapolis, and St. Louis County in Missouri" for First Amendment reasons.

MySpace's own record label

The social-networking site's new label, to launch next week, has a significant group of ears right up front: its some 35 million members. Reuters reports that MySpace Records's first title "will feature a mix of tracks by major-label, independent-label and unsigned acts, including Weezer, the All-American Rejects, Dashboard Confessional, Fall Out Boy, AFI, Against Me, Plain White T's, New Year's Day and Hollywood Undead" (the last "a Los Angeles rock/rap act and MySpace's first signing"). More than 550,000 artists and bands have pages at MySpace, according to Reuters, and the site was ranked No. 4 in Web traffic in August (latest figure available), after Yahoo, eBay, and MSN - *ahead* of Hotmail, Google, and AOL!

Here's the latest article on "parents as filters" at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It has anecdotes about how other parents are dealing with the use of MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal, etc. at their house and sidebars on signs of kids' online risk-taking and keeping kids safe on various devices.

Young bloggers & France's riots

French police are trying to control rioting on the Internet as well as in rundown neighborhoods, Reuters reports. "Young rioters are using blog messages to incite violence and cell phones to organize attacks in guerrilla-like tactics they have copied from anti-globalization protesters," according to Reuters. Two "youths" were under "official investigation" today, "one step short of pressing charges under French law, on suspicion of inciting violence over the Internet after urging people to riot in blogs." They were reportedly blogging at Skyblog.com, owned by "popular youth radio station Skyrock" and claiming to host 3 million blogs. Reuters says cellphones are also being used by rioters to connect quickly, get away from police, and "organize the fires." Police are saying that the riots are waning on this 13th night of violence.

IM threats Way up

Tell instant-messagers at your house! Threats like worms and viruses targeting IMs were up 1,500% over the past year, CNET reports, citing research by IM security firm IMLogic. These are attacks that lead to outsiders taking control of your PC. To help kids be on the alert, tell them all these attacks use some sort of "social engineering," IMLogic indicated - "such as tempting users with an enticement to click on a link or attachment," like "check out my blog," "look at my photo," or "check out this cool video clip" (only more enticing because probably using kid chatspeak and posing as someone on their buddy list). Over the year (10/04-10/05), MSN Messenger users got 62% of the attacks, AIM 31%, and Yahoo Messenger 7% (with the top two switching in September). For more on developing IM security smarts, see "IM tips from a tech-savvy dad" and "IM anthropology."

Latest P2P news

Litigation against file-sharers rolls on. On the film front, "potentially trying to avoid a pr disaster after suing a … Wisconsin grandfather for $600,000 because his 12 year-old grandson downloaded four movies, the MPAA has offered Fred Lawrence a deal: pay $4,000 over 18 months to settle the case," BetaNews reports. The grandfather says he knows nothing about file-sharing, they already own three of the movies on DVD, his grandson knows nothing about copyright law, and he's on a fixed income and can't even afford the $225/month. Lawrence is going to fight the lawsuit. Here's the Associated Press on this. In Hong Kong, a man has been jailed for three months for file-sharing movies with BitTorrent, the BBC reports. "The authorities say he is the first person in the world to be prosecuted for passing on files using a popular file-sharing program called BitTorrent," the BBC adds. And South Korea's largest online music service, Soribada, shut down its file-sharing operation, as ordered by the Seoul Central District Court," The Register reports. The court order resulted from legal action taken by South Korea's equivalent of the RIAA, the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers.

Parental controls for phones

It's good news, but it's also a sure sign that porn is coming to ever-more-multimedia cellphones. The US's major cellphone companies this week agreed to adopt "a content rating system for video, music, pictures and games that they sell to cellphone users - a development that could pave the way for them to begin selling pornography and sex-oriented content on mobile devices," the New York Times reports. According to Reuters, rating guidelines were developed by the industry's biggest trade association, CTIA. The industry will provide filtering "initially" based on two ratings: "general interest and restricted content deemed appropriate only for people over the age of 18," the Times reports, adding that the carriers said they wouldn't make the restricted content available until filters were in place. No start date was apparent, just "soon." Reuters cites data from tech researcher IDC showing that about 21 million 5-to-19-year-olds had cellphones by the end of 2004. Meanwhile, cellphone upstarts like Amp'd Mobile are marketing directly to young "media savants" (teens and young adults) their ability to provide "pop culture in your hand" - music and video clips, dating services, celebrity news, games scores, and plenty of ads that "fill as much as half the screen," the New York Times also reports.

P2P service shut down

Grokster, the file-sharing service that played the "title role" in the Supreme Court case decided last June, has agreed in a legal settlement with the RIAA to stop distributing its P2P software, many tech-news outlets report. Illegal file-sharing probably won't be affected much by this and similar shut-downs, however, because "millions of people already have the Grokster software on their computers, and the company can't stop them from using it to get copyrighted songs free from other Grokster users," the Wall Street Journal reports, and file-sharers have also migrated to other services "to trade music online, notably BitTorrent, Gnutella and eDonkey." The Journal cites numbers from file-sharing consulting firm BigChampagne showing that "an average of 6.7 million people in the US were file-sharing at any given time in September, up from 4.7 million a year earlier. The Supreme Court ruled last June against P2P services' promotion of copyright infringement (here's my coverage of the decision). And here are CNET, the San Jose Mercury News, and Britain's The Register on this week's development.

Student wins free-speech case

In light of a New Jersey private school's decision to ban student blogging a couple of weeks ago, this is interesting news: "A New Jersey school district will pay $117,500 to a student who was punished for creating a Web site that included critical statements about his middle school," the Associated Press reports. A federal judge ruled that the district had violated the student's free-speech rights. Two years ago, Ryan Dwyer, now in the 11th grade, created a Web site on his own time at home. "Comments posted in the site's 'guest book' section angered school officials, who suspended Dwyer for a week, benched him from playing on the baseball team for a month, and barred him from going on his class trip, among other discipline. The district's lawsuit said anti-Semitic remarks were posted on the site, which Dwyer denied writing." The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey helped the Dwyers sue the district, which they say never told them what school policy was violated. This is not a public school, as opposed to the N.J. school that recently banned student blogging, so these cases are different on several levels, but the question of what free-speech rights students have in the Internet Age is definitely unresolved and will make for interesting discussion for some time to come.

New Windows patches!

Microsoft says they're critical, so all Windows PC owners out there need to get the patches here if you don't already have patching automated. To automate the process (which is a good idea), go here. "Two of [the security flaws they're patching] could allow a remote intruder to gain complete control over a Windows PC," ZDNET cites Microsoft's November security bulletin as saying. That loss of control could turn the family PC into a "zombie," a cog in the works of a porn spammer or an extortionist - not a pleasant thought, especially since it would be very hard to tell (sometimes zombie owners notice their computers have slowed down a bit, though).

More risk-taking at home

More risks online, that is. A new study of youth online behavior found that 51% of US 8-to-18-year-olds say their schools' computer-use rules are tougher than their home rules. "The findings suggest that less rigid supervision at home increases kids' freedom to surf inappropriate Web sites, download digital copyrighted works such as software and music without paying for it, and chat with strangers," said the press release of the Busienss Software Association, which sponsored the survey by Harris Interactive. The BSA also said that "one reason that school computer use is safer than at home is that, at school, children are much more likely to be online with adult supervision." Just 15% of respondents said they are online alone at school, as opposed to 62% at home. In other findings...

* 35% of 8-to-18-year-olds "are more likely to use a home computer rather than a school computer to chat with someone they don't know, divulge personal information online (24%), or go to Web sites they probably shouldn't visit (29%).
* 52% of teens 16-18 have downloaded software and 52% music on their home computers this year, and just over a third of 13-to-15-yearolds have (36% software and 38% music).

*Serious* homework help

It's a pretty amazing trend: public libraries providing free online tutoring and homework help in many subjects. There are 29 library systems in California doing so, as are the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System in Washington (for students in grades 4-12 with library cards), the San Jose Mercury News and Seattle Times report. The service is also offered in some Arizona libraries and "in more than 800 libraries across the country through Tutor.com," based in New York, according to the Arizona Republic. The idea is to help students who don't speak English or can't afford expensive private tutoring. And there are other, non-library services on the Web, some free, some pay-per-query. The New York Times mentions Google Answers, Ingenio.com, and Wondir.com (which "fields about 10,000 questions a day"!). USATODAY points to sites and software offering help in spelling and writing, math and science, and history and geography.

Introducing 2 new family resources

In my newsletter this week, details on a couple of resources of special interest to parents of online kids: OnGuardOnline from Uncle Sam and FamilyTechTalk, from yours truly and my partner, Larry Magid of SafeKids.com. The former offers plainspoken help on all aspects of PC security and online fraud - and what to do about them. The latter is family-tech news you can *listen* to! Read on....

Porn: 'Vast amounts' on iPod?

Just last week Wired News reported that the adult industry was "largely staying away" from the new video iPod. This week we learn from Reuters that massive amounts of it will soon be available - and searchable - to video iPod owners. A little-known search engine called Guba is set to offer pornography and other video files (lots of TV shows, which will draw a lot of mainstream traffic) formatted for the iPod. "Guba is a subscription-only search engine that culls video files from the Usenet newsgroups - much of it adult, pirated or both." Reuters adds that it "specifically searches through Usenet's multimedia content, which is not indexed by popular search engines such as Yahoo or Google." Guba says it will offer a "safe mode" to filter out adult content, but there aren't too many kids who won't be able to turn the filter off. So the porn industry is only part of the concern - there's plenty of amateur stuff on Usenet - which means, of course, that the industry will probably follow suit sooner than it indicates.

Sony anti-piracy move: Music fans irate

Who would've thought a music CD could harm the family PC?! That's basically what digital music fans have discovered about Sony BMG CDs that've been sold since last March, and there is quite an uproar about it, the Washington Post reports. It does make one think twice about buying Sony CDs if the copyright-protection tech on them can make one's computer vulnerable to hackers and viruses. The company that developed that technology for Sony has even issued a security patch! The controversy started earlier this week, when "computer security researcher Mark Russinovich published an analysis showing that some new Sony CDs install software that not only limits the copying of music on the discs, but also employs programming techniques normally associated with computer viruses to hide from users and prevent them from removing the software," according to the Post. Here's Post security writer Brian Krebs's blog yesterday about how the Sony software affects PCs. All his readers' feedback at the bottom, much of it saying they would be boycotting Sony products of all sorts, is longer than the blog post itself.

Teen 'content creators'

Most of us knew teenagers love to communicate online, but we now know more about their avid interest in creating content there, thanks to a just-released survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pew found that "fully half" of all US 12-to-17-year-olds, about 12 million (and 57% of those who use the Net) "have created a blog or Web page, posted original artwork, photography, stories, or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations."

* 19% of online teens keep a blog and 38% (or 8 million) read them (as opposed to 7% and 27% of adults, respectively)
* Older girls (15-17) "lead the blogging activity among teens"; 25% of online girls keep blogs, as opposed to 15% of boys.
* 51% of online teens say they're downloading music files, and 31% video files.
* 75% of teen downloaders think that getting free music is easy, and it's
unrealistic to expect people not to do it.
* Teens are just as likely to have paid for music online as they are to have
tried P2P (file-sharing) services like BitTorrent or eDonkey.

USATODAY this week zoomed in on just the blogging/journaling part of teen content creation, with "Teens wear their hearts on their blog." USATODAY cites market research firm Intelliseek numbers as saying at least 8 million teens blog (compared to Pew's 4 million).

Spam scams on phones

Watch out, it may be coming across the Pacific. I'm referring to a tech plague: Apparently, junk SMS messages, including fraudulent ones like the nine scams that, reportedly, have bilked victims out of 1 million yuan (about $124,000) in less than 20 days, may be coming to a cellphone near you. "China has declared war on scams using mobile phone short messages that promise everything from fake cash prizes to sexual services to contract killings," Reuters reports, adding that "China's mobile phone market have fallen behind its explosive growth, which has generated huge profits for short message service providers." China had 330 million mobile-phone users by the end of last year, having sent "a total of 217.7 billion messages" in 2004, according to Reuters.

Teen in court over email 'bomb'

The legal world is watching this case because it's testing Britain's Computer Misuse Act (CMA). In the case, a teenager is accused of launching a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on his former employer by sending the company 5 million emails, CNET reports. So far, no Briton has been convicted for launching a DoS attack (which is like "bombing" a corporate network or Web site). "According to those familiar with the case, the teenager's defense will argue that launching a DoS attack is not illegal under the CMA," according to CNET, which adds that "the CMA does not specifically include a denial-of-service attack as a criminal offense, something some members of … Parliament want changed." Later today CNET reported that the judge cleared the teenager of charges - that DoS attacks were not illegal under the CMA.

Update on $100k virtual land

Remember last week I linked to coverage of the $100,000 (real-money) purchase of a virtual resort-in-development in "the treacherous but mineral-rich Paradise V Asteroid Belt" in the online game Entropia? Well, it turns out that buyer Jon Jacobs, an avid Entropia gamer/citizen who appeared in a 2003 dance music movie Hey DJ!, plans to turn his virtual real estate "into a nightclub to change the face of entertainment," the BBC reports. He told the BBC that he "wants to call it Club Neverdie [after the name of his character in the game] and sees it as the perfect vehicle to bridge reality and virtual reality." It's hard to tell from the BBC piece how he'll do that - but maybe by providing live music for gamers while they play. He also told the BBC he's talking with "some of the world's biggest DJs" about doing the real music in his virtual nightclub."

Lively alternate lives

This is one of those mind-blowing stories about how whole lives can be lived - not just dragons slayed and death stars exploded - in cyberspace. Check out a New York Times piece about Second Life, pop. 75,850, where people in 80 countries "live"; take balloon rides; hold Nascar races; dance at nightclubs; buy and sail boats; purchase, subdivide, and sell real estate, get married (in real life), and kiss (virtually) distant spouses (in real life). "A handful" of players earn six-figure (real) incomes in profitable virtual businesses in the game, according to the Times. What parents might want to know, not readily found in SecondLife.com site info is the fact that parts of this massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) are X-rated. "Like most virtual worlds, Second Life also sees its share of cybersex, in which two people will use a private chat channel within the world to type suggestively to each other," the Times reports. "But Second Life adds a visual element to cybersex that chat rooms lack…. In addition, there is a virtual sex industry," the Times adds. Which is why there's a Teen Second Life (see my coverage of this in August).

Child-porn filter in Denmark

Large Danish phone company and Internet service provider TDC has "activated a nationwide filter to help fight child pornography on the Internet," DMeurope.com reports. Developed by TDC, Denmark's national police and Save the Children, the filter checks Web addresses against a database of addresses of sites containing illegal pornographic content (involving minors) and blocks illegal ones. The police and Save the Children together do the work of identifying the sites for the database. A similar project in Norway "daily blocks 10,000–12,000 attempts to get access to addresses with child porn, and in Sweden, 20,000–30,000 attempts are blocked," according to Dmeurope.com. Thanks to BNA Internet Law for pointing this news out.

Web therapy: Kids & adults do it

Let's hope mental healthcare people are paying increasing attention to what people are saying online - especially in specialty sites such as WrongPlanet.net, for people with Asperger's Syndrome. The Los Angeles Times reports that, "in the weeks before 19-year-old William Freund donned a cape and mask and went on a shooting rampage in his Aliso Viejo neighborhood, he reached out for help" at WrongPlanet.net. Another example was reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The blog of Alex Stirlen, 17, at STLpunk.com "came to light … after he was charged with the murder of classmate Erin Mace, 16…. She also had a blog on the local punk rock Web site that linked to Stirlen's and vice versa." Those are horrible extreme examples, but research shows that "nearly half of [the Net's some 15 million] bloggers consider [blogging] a form of therapy," the Washington Post reports. AOL sponsored the research, which also found that "although AOL provides tools that allow bloggers to limit their audience to selected viewers, most don't." Making one's inner thoughts very public seems to be the whole point of blogging, whether you're a teenager or an adult - something healthcare professionals should be aware of. Of course, some are. Ron Scott, a St. Louis-area psychologist mentioned in the Post-Dispatch article, has thought a lot about this phenomenon. And the Washington Post cites a warning by psychologists that "although it may feel good to blog … going public with private musings may have ramifications, and … little research has been done on the consequences of the Internet confessional."