Risk & Safety

A software company executive emailed me some concrete comments about the family P2P policy ideas I floated in "Legal music" last week. He wrote: "For your 'possible P2P policies,' I'd add a third (albeit, I am most certainly NOT impartial): Use a good P2P blocking application and 'override' the restrictions when your child wants to download [legal music], ensuring that you are around to … [Read more...] about Family P2P policymaking

Kids are specifically mentioned in California's new law against anonymous file-sharing. The law, which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this week, establishes fines and possible jail time for anonymous file-sharers, CNET reports. "The new law says that any California resident who sends copyrighted works without permission to at least 10 other people must include his or her email address and the … [Read more...] about CA: Tough on file-swappers

File-sharing isn't the only way the music fans at your house will be swapping tunes. If Yahoo and MSN have their way, instant-messaging will soon be kids' favorite way to share music. "While the popular IM software already lets people listen to online radio, new versions will let people share and interact with one another's digital playlists," CNET reports. Yahoo's plans are still sketchy (though … [Read more...] about Tunes the IM way

For kids and teens, the online social scene is a little like what happens when 18-year-olds go off to college. Suddenly there's a lot of freedom; people get experimental socially. Most of what happens is relatively harmless, some not. What's different about the online scene is, the experimentation starts at a much younger age and - to an even greater degree - there are no grownups around. What I … [Read more...] about Cybersocializing, cyberbullying

Even kids - those who use Kazaa or BitStream, anyway - will be interested in this case. It pitted dozens of huge media companies against two small software companies (and the millions of file-sharers that use their services, Grokster and Morpheus). In a unanimous decision, a US federal court in California ruled Thursday that Grokster, Morpheus, and other P2P services, can't be held liable for the … [Read more...] about File-sharing milestone