May 24, 2002
Dear Subscribers:
Here's our lineup for this third week of May:
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Online teen tragedy
Before the news went nationwide this week, subscriber
and police officer Bob Williams in Connecticut emailed us about this Internet-related
tragedy that he said happened much too close to home:
"I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news. This past
Friday night, May 17, 2002, a 13-year-old girl met a 25-year-old male at a
shopping mall in Danbury, Conn. She met the man in a chatroom on the Internet. She was reported missing by her family that night.
"The predator was taken into custody by the FBI on
Saturday. Police examined her home computer, found emails, and traced them
to the predator. He confessed to his actions and the child was found dead
on Sunday night, 5/19, in Greenwich, Conn."
Bob, who started an award-winning online-safety
education program in the Greenwich area four years ago, later asked us
to "please remind parents that this can happen" and not to fall into "that
mindset that this can't happen to their child. Supervise those children online!!!"
There are many stories in the US media these days
about sexual exploitation of children whose online activities go unsupervised
(for examples, see Web News Briefs below), but few of the cases reported end
in the death of the child, which is why this story became national news in
the United States. In fact, our friends at Childnet International in London
- creators of ChatDanger.com, teaching children and adults how to stay safe
in online chat - got calls from US reporters concerning this story.
Local coverage of the story - in the News
Times of Danbury, Conn. - had the most background on the 13-year-old victim,
a cheerleader and good student who came from a broken home and was living
with an aunt, her legal guardian. The News Times also describes a darker side
of her life, on the Internet, saying the girl "was already promiscuous beyond
an adult's years, living in the fast lane in a child's body." The News Times
adds that she had her own Web site, "whose name includes the phrase 'sxyme4utosee'."
Her aunt told a national audience on the "Today" news show this week that
she didn't know about this side of her niece, that they'd talked about the
dangers of the Internet and that her niece had said she wouldn't talk to strangers
in online chat.
According to the Hartford
Courant, "some of the state's top law-enforcement officials said the case
highlights the need for parents to know what their children are doing online....
FBI special-agent-in-charge Michael Wolf said predators preying on children
online is a growing problem. The FBI has more than 25 open investigations
involving computer sex crimes." Here's CNN's
brief report.
Quick
dot-kids action said to be 'related'
Meanwhile, possibly because of the Connecticut case,
a "dot-kids" safe space for children on the Web is definitely on the fast
track in the US Congress now. The House of Representatives this week "voted
406-2 to approve the 'Dot-Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002,'
which would mandate the creation of a 'dot-kids' extension within America's
sovereign 'dot-us' Internet domain," the Washington
Post reports. Dot-kids is now before the Senate, where Sens. Byron Dorgan
(D) of North Dakota and John Ensign (R) of Nevada, the same day introduced
"identical" legislation, an aide in Senator Dorgan's office told us Thursday,
confirming the law's fast-track status.
The Associated Press (via the New
York Times) directly links dot-kids's swift passage in the House to the
Connecticut story, though Wired News
links dot-kids and action on an unprecedented number of other Net-related
laws to Congress's "race to leave town before the Memorial Day recess." Internet
News and CNET
provide further coverage.
* *
Our view on dot-kids
Our hearts went out to the Connecticut girl's aunt
and father, who courageously went on national television, apparently to alert
other caregivers and kids to be smart about and in online chat. According
to the Hartford Courant and the Today show interview, the aunt blames herself
for not knowing more about her niece's online activities, having accepted
the girl's assurances that she was conducting herself safely.
However, despite possible associations lawmakers made
this week between a ".kids.us" domain and the case in Connecticut, there is
little that a US-based "safe playground" on the Web could do to protect sexually
curious or promiscuous kids from contact with strangers in adult chat rooms,
email, or instant messaging. For one thing, dot-kids only concerns sequestering
children's Web sites in the US so they can be found more easily and people
can trust that only child-friendly Web content will be found in that area.
Eventually - if the full Congress passes a dot-kids domain law and if most
of kids' Web sites establish a presence in ".kids.us" (critical mass is key
to the success of this concept) - it's quite possible technology will emerge
that keeps kids from venturing beyond that area with their Web browsers.
But technology can never be the sole solution. Even
if the law requires no linking to sites outside of dot-kids and no unsafe
communications within it, there will always be safeguard-free places (friends'
houses, cybercafes, public libraries) that kids can find to log on. And there
are other Internet technologies besides Web browsers - such as file-sharing
software, instant-messaging, and email - that don't distinguish children from
adults, not to mention new technologies emerging all the time. Also, most
sites needed for school research will be out on the Web at large, so there
will be times when kids will need to be "out there."
Alert and engaged parents, guardians, and educators
taking measures to educate children and, with them, to establish and enforce
rules for safe, constructive Internet use would go a lot farther toward protecting
online kids than a safe e-playground. Dot-kids would be just another online-safety
resource, useful mostly to Americans and possibly English-speakers outside
the US. What about all those great children's sites in other languages - would
they want to have a presence in the ".us" part of the Web, and how relevant
are American sites to children of other countries?
What are we missing? Email us your views on
the best ways to protect children on the Net - via feedback@netfamilynews.org.
* * * *
Subscribers write:
Dot-kids effective?; Filtering & porn
- Janet in Japan on 'dot-kids'
"I'm glad they're doing something, but why do
we always have to wait 'til there's a disaster before doing something,
instead of just doing it because it's the right thing to do?
"I don't know if [dot-kids] will be an effective
solution, but at least it would be easy to enforce and use if set up strictly
- no chat rooms allowed, no R- or X-rated-type pictures, commentaries,
etc. I suppose parents could set it up so their kids could ONLY visit
sites in that area. All the educational sites could move there or post
material there. The trick would be making sure links outside were not
allowed by each computer (I don't think the site should be limited, but
the personal computers could do that). It would make enforcement much
easier - anything outside the strictly defined limits could be prosecuted.
Of course, people will argue the definitions forever, but that's America
- more concerned with arguing than children."
- Gen in California: Supreme Court decision on
virtual child porn
"The Internet must be allowed to police itself.
Filtering should be done by the parent and should reflect the parent's
code of ethics and morality. At one time the pornography vendors were
happy to be given a '.xxx top-level extension. I believe it never came
to be because there were people who didn't want to admit that pornography
exists. Sex is interesting and particularly fascinating to kids (you supply
the age). Us oldsters have been there and done that. Understanding that
natural curiosity and directing it is much healthier that trying to censor
it. And you realize - if there was filtering software - I couldn't send
this message to you" (because of the words "pornography" and
"sex" in her message).
Your views are always welcome and, with your permission,
usually published here for the benefit of all subscribers. Do send
them anytime!
* * * *
Web News Briefs
- Police teaching parents
More and more police departments throughout the
US are getting involved in online-safety education. It's logical because
of their first-hand experience with what can happen when parents aren't
aware of what their kids can get into on the Net. An example is in Citrus
County, Florida, where the Sheriff's Office recently arrested two sexual
predators for meeting with 12- and 13-year-old girls they met online.
In one case, reports the St.
Petersburg Times, two girls were going to their local public library
to exchange emails with a 59-year-old man, Bryce J. Martin, who later
lured them to meet at his home (the Times gives the disturbing details).
"The Sheriff's Office learned of his involvement with the girls after
they spent the night at Martin's house and were reported missing by their
parents. When they returned to their homes, the 13-year-old told her parents
about the relationship with Martin, according to authorities," the Times
reports. The Sheriff's Office provides Internet classes for both parents
and children in Citrus County. (Our thanks to the National
Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this story out.)
Meanwhile, police in the UK arrested 36 people
this week in a crackdown on Net users who access child pornography, The
Guardian reported. The operation "targeted users of pay-per-view Web
sites in the United States which sell images of sexual abuse of children
as young as five. Officers from 30 forces around the UK searched 43 houses
and flats, seizing 30 computers and large quantities of disks and videos.
Those arrested ranged in age from 24 to 65." Here's the BBC's
coverage.
- Health info: What to trust on the Web
Eighteen months ago 52 million Americans relied
on the Internet "to make critical health decisions," a Pew Internet Life
study reported. That number is now 73 million, Pew
reports. But this time, because of "a drumbeat of warnings about the
quality of online health information," Pew asked Net users "how they decide
what information to believe and what advice to act on." Here are findings:
- About 6 million Americans go online for medical
advice on a typical day - more on any given day than actually visit
health professionals, according to American Medical Association figures.
- The typical health seeker starts at a search
site, not a medical site, and visits two to five sites during an average
visit.
- She spends at least 30 minutes on a search.
- She feels reassured by advice that matches what
she already knew about a condition and by statements that are repeated
at more than one site.
- She is likely to turn away from sites that seem
to be selling something or don't clearly identify the source of the
information.
- About a third of health seekers who find relevant
information online bring it to their doctor for a final quality check.
- Only about a quarter of health seekers follow
the recommended protocol on thoroughly checking the source and timeliness
of information and are vigilant about verifying a site's information
every time they search for health information.
The Pew report's appendix includes "A
User's Guide to Finding and Evaluating Health Information on the Web"
from the US's Medical Library Association.
Another recent Pew study found that a significant
number of Americans now use the Web to help make important decisions.
For example, the Net was "crucial or important" in upgrading education
or training for careers, buying cars, coping with illness, helping loved
ones deal with illness, choosing a college or university, making financial
decisions, and finding new places to live. Here
is that report.
- Online hate exposed
Hate is as transnational as the Internet, unfortunately,
and hate watch organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center are finding
more and more evidence of this. The center's associate director, Rabbi
Abraham Cooper, says "interest in William Pierce, the head of the extremist
right group the National Alliance in West Virginia, is showing up in Iran,
while the essays of white supremacist David Duke are being invoked on
Pakistani Web sites," according to Wired
News. The center's just-released CD-ROM, "Digital Hate 2002," points
out more than 200 Web sites that provide "animated hate games, online
enrollment for suicide bombers, and 'other examples of transnational hate
and promotion of terror after the 9/11 terrorist attacks'," Wired News
reports. Those 200 sites represent the some 25,000 sites that are examined
each month by Internet experts the Center employs in Los Angeles, Toronto,
New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, and Jerusalem.
- Legal 'clip art' on the Web
Students (and just about all personal Web site
builders) love to troll the Web for clip art, video clips, and music they
can put in their Web pages and online reports. The problem is, copyright
theft is an issue whenever a Web publisher uses other people's creative
work. Now there's a Web site "to help educators, students, artists, and
researchers find creative works they can use without fear of being sued
for copyright infringement," eSchoolNews
reports. The "Creative Commons" , a
nonprofit organization formed by legal scholars and Web publishers at
Stanford University, encourages "authors and other creative persons to
donate selected writings, music, video, and other works for free exchange,"
says eSchoolNews, adding that "contributors retain copyrights on their
works. They can still sell them; for instance, they can offer them through
the project royalty-free for noncommercial use but charge others independent
of the Commons." (Here's an award-winning site by middle school students
about "Art Rights & Wrongs"
on the Web and our '00 profile of its young creators.)
Here's another resource, out of Australia, for
classroom Web page building: ClassroomClipart .
- Toward collaborative Web projects
In a useful service for teachers, eSchoolNews
ran a report this week linking to 20 Web sites with lesson plans for collaborative
projects. "These projects have been improved and honed over a number of
years and iterations" and come with "built-in contacts to students and
teachers all around the world who are working on the same projects and
therefore can provide extremely valuable perspectives and enhance the
collaborative aspect."
- Technology for thinking kids
Just the name of Mitchel Resnick's research group
at MIT - "Lifelong Kindergarten" - brings a twinkle to one's eye. Dr.
Resnick makes the comforting point that his group's research focuses not
on tech toys that think but on tech toys that help children think
- "new toys and tools that let them engage in creative activities, to
design, create, and invent new things with the new materials and new media
around them," reports the BBC.
In the interview, Resnick explains the difference he sees between traditional
toys and those that employ new technologies: "With traditional construction
kits like building blocks, children can build castles or houses and learn
about the structures of the world as they are built in the world. With
new technologies, children can build things that come alive, that move,
that react and interact. They can build something that doesn't just look
like, say, a rabbit, but can actually behave like a rabbit, move around
in the world, could have sensors to interact with the world around it."
We only wish we lived near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
so our kids (or we?) could test Mitchel Resnick's toys in the Lifelong
Kindergarten!
- 'Lessons from the average teenager'
John Seely Brown, Xerox's chief scientist, recently
told a group of educators at Harvard
Business School that if they can't deal with screen language - basically,
the way teenagers "talk" in online chat or instant messaging - they're
not literate. As the B-School's Web site reports, he was speaking on how
to teach effectively online. The content part is easy, it's communications
in electronic media that adults need to figure out, Brown said, referring
to the generational digital divide between faculty and students. "Students
already have a handle on how to convey their emotional states electronically.
It's up to adults to learn that vernacular, he said. Educators who create
programs for adult learning and distance learning need to apply the vernacular
and deepen and strengthen these new means of communication."
- Napster acquired, revived
Reports of its demise were exaggerated. Here's
the Financial
Times on Bertelsmann's purchase of Napster for $8 million. The New
York Times called it "a startling reversal.". Here's Wired
News too.
Meanwhile, another music file-swapping service,
Kazaa, has just begun putting a price on some of its music, CNET
reports. When people use Kazaa to search for tunes or musicians, some
of their search results will bear a price tag. No surprise: The move is
not without controversy. And Kazaa users are not without worries: A "first-of-its-kind"
worm (often known as a virus) is working its way through the Kazaa network,
reports VNUNET in the
UK. Here's a CNET
roundup on all recent Kazaa developments.
* * * *
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That does it for this week. Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Anne Collier, Editor
Net Family News
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