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

 

October 24, 2003

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this third week of October:


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Family Tech: 'More violence to choose from'!

Contributor Gen Katz, publisher of Games4Girls.com, has a commentary this week on the new violence ratings for interactive games - a timely heads-up, we feel, with holiday shopping just around the corner. Below her comment, you'll find a fund of links to the latest reports on gaming technology.

"Not only girls but boys and men are being short-changed in the selection of games without violence. With the exception of sports titles, games are reflecting and amplifying the fighting and strife that fills the news today. Basically it's about war - cold war, hot wars, old real wars with Japanese and Germans, and new fantasy wars with dragons and werewolves. There is such an abundance of games with a violent component, that it is becoming more acceptable. I've watched both sexes play, and there is an undeniable attraction to the violence. In fact, some of my girl reviewers claim that they enjoy the challenge of the shooter games. The more the market grows for violent games, the fewer alternative games the industry will bother to make. If all that's out there is violent games, we will play violent games.

"Presumably to deal with this reality, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has upped the number of violence categories from four to five, better to describe the types of violence that occur in games:


"While many violent games fall in the 'Teen' category (age level 13+), 'Mature' (17+) is reserved for the heavy stuff with sexual overtones. The categories are meant to be age-related, but the 'Everyone' category is so broad that it's almost no help at all. Games that fall into this category include those as diverse as, Barbie Beauty Boutique for ages '5 and up' and the sophisticated city-planning activity, Sim City 4 Deluxe Edition, which includes the added descriptor, 'Violence.'

"Parents will want to note, too, that teen titles are migrating to the Game Boy Advance platform. This hand-held platform has been mostly for kid games. But now, Guilty Gear X Advance Edition offers 'instant kill ability' on the Game Boy Advance. With advances in graphics, teen-rated games now provide the options to choose slow-motion death animation and to model dismemberment. Marketers pitch a tempting array of weapons: '200 unique weapons - each weapon possesses unique attributes that add an element of strategy to every battle and hours and hours of fun.' I'm not sure the US Army has 200 unique weapons!

"Parents have to pay attention to game ratings if they want to keep their children from hours of immersive interactive violence. Movies are generally 1.5 hours long; games are planned for at least 40 hours of play. While there are two differing opinions about the effects of games on stress - that they relieve it or that they cause it - the residuals of the game remain in the mind. While the 'Everyone' category is basically free from violent content, children will pick up the ones with the 'Teen' rating claiming that they are, 'old enough.' Buying games is often an impulse purchase, which is why it's important to be aware of the category and read the description on the back of the box. With a little more advance planning, you can go to the ESRB Web site, which offers rating information on games - just type in the name of the game and get the rating."

For more information


Gaming in the news

  1. A whopping 71% of US boys and 34% of US girls aged 14-17 have played Grand Theft Auto, which is rated "M" (Mature) for the violence of its content, a Gallup study found. "Although the study showed twice as many boys who had played the criminal adventure game reported having been in a fight in the last year, the survey's authors cautioned that did not prove a link between game violence and real-life behavior," Reuters reports. The study also found that 62% of teens play games at least one hour a week, 25% play six or more hours a week, and more than one-third of those surveyed reported spending no time playing video games.

  2. Killings associated with Grand Theft Auto. Two teenaged boys in Tennessee claimed they were acting out the virtual-criminal game when they shot into traffic with a .22-calibre rifle, the BBC reported last month. A man was killed and a woman badly injured in the incident.

  3. Video games that 'calm fears'. A study conducted at the Universite du Quebec en Outaouais and published in CyberPsychology and Behavior journal found that "regular, off-the-shelf computer video games are an effective method of treating people's fears, using a style of therapy that exposes people to what scares them in a controlled setting," Wired News reports.

  4. New Star Wars game a hit. LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment announced they signed up more than 275,000 subscribers for "Star Wars Galaxies" since the game debuted in late June, CNET reports. "Galaxies" is "the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the Star Wars universe," according to its own home page.

  5. Mobile gaming 'set to explode' in UK. "People are going to be spending millions of pounds to play games on their mobiles by next year," the BBC's technology editor cites experts as saying. He's talking about a different sort of "online" game: "designed to appeal to people with a few minutes to kill waiting for a train or bus." Of course, Japan - years ahead of Europe in mobile gaming - provides insights into what's ahead, according to another BBC piece. And one type of mobile "game" already played in Britain is text-voting (audience interaction) with TV game shows, a third BBC item points out.

  6. MS wooing families to Xbox. Timed to holiday shopping, Microsoft plans to unveil 10-or-so Xbox games for children, among them "Dancing Stage Unleashed," Harry Potter: Quidditch Cup," and "Grabbed by the Goulies," the BBC reports. It's an attempt to soften a bit Xbox's image of being just for hard-core gamers.

  7. Targeting online players. Here's a bigger-picture piece from Wired News about what the big console games companies have in mind for online kids (and grownups) at your house and mine.
Readers, email us about your families' experiences with games - console, handheld, computer, multiplayer, multi-user dungeons (MUDs), whatever - via feedback@netfamilynews.org!

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File-sharing: More lawsuits, new resource for parents

File-sharing was a top tech story again this week, as the RIAA announced its second round of lawsuits against suspected music pirates. This time, however, "there is a difference," the New York Times reports: "The industry is notifying the 204 suspected pirates before suing them." The new approach allows the RIAA to contact people privately without filing legal papers. It comes in the wake of "considerable criticism from federal lawmakers and others concerning the group's first batch of court actions against 261 individuals last month," CNET reports. But the advance notice is only a small concession to critics, CNET adds. Here's the Washington Post's roundup of media reports on the RIAA's action.

Meanwhile, parents of digital music fans can get more clues about the file-sharing phenomenon at a new Web site just for them. Provided by the file-sharing trade association P2P United," the "Parent 2 Parent Resource Center" tries to put all this news - especially the part about the presence of porn files on file-sharing networks - into perspective. The resource links prominently to a chart attributed to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children which shows that pornographers use file-sharing networks "very seldom compared to the Internet overall." The National Center's chart compares child porn sightings on P2P networks vs. 1) chat, email, etc., and 2) Web sites. The page also links to information about the law & child porn, law enforcement sites, and kids' online safety in general. [Here's coverage this week of a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting looking at child porn distribution on the Net (not just in file-sharing, though Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, zoomed in on that channel because P2P is used by so many young people) at Internet.com and in the UK's Inquirer.]

Other Net music news

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Web News Briefs

  1. US Senate approves anti-spam bill

    The Senate voted unanimously (97-0) Wednesday to outlaw deceptive spam (junk email) and create a do-not-spam registry, CNET reports. Calling the vote "historic" (spam now exceeds 50% of all email traffic), Internet News reported that the onus is now on the House of Representatives to push through its version of the law (currently bogged down in committee) for passage by the end of the year. "Disputes about the ability of individuals to sue spammers, caps on damages, and definitions of what actually constitutes spam continue to divide the committee members," according to Internet News, but House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R) of Louisiana is optimistic the House will pass a bill in time for the President's signature in 2003. As for the do-not-spam registry, that idea has been the most controversial part of the Senate's legislation. The bill requires the Federal Trade Commission to set one up but gives it a "back door" - six months to report on why such a registry wouldn't work (the FTC has not supported the idea).

  2. New study on spam

    Just released this week, the Pew Internet & American Life study found that spam has begun to "degrade life online" and reduce people's use of email. Nearly a third of US Internet users say 80% of the email in their in-boxes is spam (unsolicited commercial, or "junk," email). Here are some other key findings:

    • 25% of email users say the ever-increasing volume of spam has reduced their overall use of email, and 60% of those say spam has reduced their email use in a big way.
    • 70% say spam has made being online unpleasant or annoying.
    • 75% of email users are bothered that they can't stop the flow of spam.
    • 59% describe spam as "annoying, but not a big problem"; 27% say spam is a "big problem" for them; 14% say it is no problem at all.

    And what are they doing about it?

    • 37% of those who have a personal email account use spam filters; 21% of those with filters say less than a tenth of the email they receive is spam.
    • 86% say usually they "immediately click to delete" their incoming spam.

    Here's coverage of the Pew study at the Seattle Times and the New York Times.

  3. Tell kids: 'Phishing' spam on the rise

    Business Week this week told the story of a "professional email fraud spotter" who was confused about one particular bit of spam he got. The confusion of the director of product management of MailFrontier "underscores the dangerously high level of sophistication in a rapidly proliferating brand of e-mail fraud," Business Week reports. It's called "phishing" spam, and recipients - including your children - need to be alerted to emails from what appear to be legitimate businesses asking for personal information. "The perpetrators spray e-mail by the millions to random addresses using domain names of popular e-mail services such as aol.com, yahoo.com and earthlink.net. These messages request that recipients give up their passwords, account numbers, and other key information." EBay users, Business Week goes on to point out, are favorite targets. MailFrontier conducted a study recently which found that 40% of people who read a fraudulent Citibank email were fooled into thinking it was real. Internet.com, too, had a piece this week about a Net-savvy businessman who nearly got taken by one of these scams. Yet more confirmation that phishing expeditions are on the rise.

  4. Protecting young mobile-Net users

    Britain's The Observer reports on new cell-phone technology that alerts parents to sudden unusual patterns in their kids' phone use. The technology detects "unusual patterns of calls from, say, a child who has mostly used a phone for text messaging and short calls to friends but suddenly begins expensively downloading a lot of pictures, dialling premium rate or foreign numbers - one possible indicator of a suspect site registered overseas - or running up huge bills in chatrooms. Parents could then be alerted," according to The Observer. The paper points to a growing market for such technology because of how mobile phones allow for unsupervised Net use, the thousands of porn sites accessible by phone, growing concern about gambling via phone and online chat use by texting pedophiles, and the sheer growth of the mobile phone market (which The Observer says tripled in the past year). Wired News reports on the growth of the mobile phone market in the US. Phone data services - such as picture and text messaging - "are becoming significant in the United States, according to Wired News, and youth are "a big part of the surge in data traffic." Sony, of course, is banking on the cell-phone gaming part of that market.

  5. Cheaper textbooks overseas

    Like prescription drugs, textbooks are cheaper outside the US, and the Internet has helped students not only figure that out but also make purchases at about half the price. According to the New York Times, textbook publishers say they have to price their products to the needs of individual markets, but critics call the practice price-gouging of the American public. The National Association of College Stores has a written a letter of protest to publishers, but two students at Williams College created a workaround: BookCentral.com. Sites like Book Central are helped by "a 1998 Supreme Court ruling that federal copyright law does not protect American manufacturers from having the products they arranged to sell overseas at a discount shipped back for sale in the United States," the Times reports.

  6. Teen hacker acquitted

    A teenager accused of a hack that temporarily shut down the Port of Houston was found not guilty in a UK court. "Even though both the defense and prosecution acknowledged that the attack had originated from [the 19-year-old's] computer, the defendant claimed his computer had been taken over by a hacker using a Trojan horse program," CNET reports. According to the BBC, "On the final day of the trial, Mr. Caffrey admitted being part of a group of hackers called Allied Haxor Elite, but denied he had ever illegally hacked into a computer." We last mentioned the case in Web News Briefs, 10/10/03.

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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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