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Welcome to the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and thanks to everyone who's just subscribed! Be sure to put our return address (anne@netfamilynews.org) on your ISP's allow or white list so its filters won't block the newsletter. And email me anytime!

 

June 10, 2005

Dear Subscribers:

Here's our lineup for this first full week of June:


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A mom takes issue with MySpace.com

Last week a teacher in San Francisco on young teens' blogging, this week a parent from the same area. Kathy emailed me:

"Hello Anne, I would love to correspond with other parents about this subject. Perhaps if we all shout loud enough someone just might hear us!

"I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have three children and have cancelled two accounts. Their ages are, 13 and 15. Boys. They weren't exactly 'happy' about the cancellation, but they are good kids and comply with our rules. I've explained all the dangers and such, and they understand. Of course, they don't believe anything could ever happen to them. But that's a kid for you. I have also talked to them about the fact that not only can 'bad' people see what they are writing but our family and friends can too. I will tell you, on my children's sites I had never seen anything obscene or objectionable that they had posted. However, when I have searched further into their friends and their friends' friends [blogs] it got to the point where I became so disgusted I had to close out of it altogether. So, I have spoken to them on that level as well. I put it to them this way, 'If I can figure this stuff out, anyone can. How would you like your grandmother to 'visit' some of your 'friends' - or the people you baby-sit for?' Naturally, kids don't think things through as adults do. Giving them a different way of thinking about it has helped.

"Another thing that I have heard many kids say about MySpace is how addicting it is. It is such a waste of time, but of course, that's just my opinion.

"Lastly, I did some research.... I wanted to get an address and name of a CEO or someone other than 'Tom' [the contact provided at MySpace.com]. I've emailed Tom, and he does not respond. Anyway, you will be interested to know that I found out the names and addresses of the CEO, the president, and the founding member of the venture capitalist company. I intend on writing to them to express my feelings, most notably their lack of responsibility where children are concerned. If I could single handedly shut them down, I'd do it in a heartbeat!"

* *

A few days ago, I heard from another mother, emailing anonymously. She asked about the "code language" kids use in email, IMs, blogs, etc., so I sent her some translation tools, which I'm including below her message:

"I just found out yesterday my 14-year-old daughter has a Xanga.com site, and all her friends do as well. Another mother came to my home for tea, and she went to my computer and showed me. All the complaining about moms and authority figures and the bad language from one whom I would have bet my life would never say such crude things. I am so disappointed in my daughter but don't want to tell her I am reading her Xanga journal because I want to find out what is in her head.

"Also can you please tell me WHERE I can find the wording the kids are using and how to figure out what they are saying. It's like in a code or something. Is there a book that explains what it all means?"

* *

Net-code cracking tools

Here are some Web pages that crack the chat-lingo code. Together they must have nearly every phrase known to mankind (at least, online kids!).

Feel free to email me your own thoughts, experiences, family Internet policies, etc. anytime. Your experiences can be helpful to other online families.

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Web News Briefs

  1. Help for file-sharers' parents

    London-based Childnet International today released a leaflet and companion Web site, "Young People, Music and the Internet: A Guide for Parents about P2P, file-sharing and downloading," the BBC reports. The leaflet, which was printed in eight languages and will be distributed in 19 countries, describes the little-known risks associated with using the global peer-to-peer (P2P) networks - pornography, viruses, spyware, and loss of personal privacy, as well as the legal risk. Here's the site at Childnet (Net Family News contributed to this project). The launch coincided with a lot of digital-music news this week:

    • A Los Angeles Times story about the benefits of file-sharing to many independent record labels, 125 of which have just started their own trade association, CNET reports
    • A new study cited by CNET, finding that Apple's iTunes is as popular as many P2P networks
    • Another CNET piece about a new, legal ("instantly gratifying") option in the free-music scene that combines P2P with legal Internet radio - something besides the 30-second sampling clip, a 99-cent download, or signing up for a subscription service.
    • A new law in Sweden banning the sharing of music files online without the payment of royalties - Swedish news site The Local reports.

  2. Candid teen-protection campaign

    Many parents have heard that one in five children received a sexual solicitation online in 1998 and '99. It's a figure from a study done for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (and right now being updated) by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. Meanwhile, the number of US kids online has grown to 87% (or 21 million, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project), so what better time to launch a fresh nationwide ad campaign to alert girls in particular to the risk of online sexual predation (two-thirds of the children surveyed for that original study were girls)? "Created to coincide with the designation by the United States Senate of June as national Internet safety month, the campaign is the second joint effort in two years by the Advertising Council and the center, a nonprofit organization that works with the Justice Department to prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation and to help find missing children," the New York Times reports. The print, radio, and TV campaign, launched today, is hard-hitting. One of the TV ads "shows a disheveled apartment being searched by police officers, as one of them puts a computer keyboard into a plastic bag. A teenage girl warns in the voiceover, 'Before you start an online relationship with a guy, think about how it could end'." Here's the National Center's press release about the campaign.

  3. Tragic end to gamers' dispute

    A gamer in China killed a fellow player for selling something that never really existed for real money. "Qiu Chengwei stabbed Zhu Caoyuan in the chest when he found out Zhu had sold his virtual sword for 7,200 Yuan [about $870]," the BBC reports. Qiu had loaned Zhu the sword. It was a "gaming artifact," a weapon that Qiu's character had won in the process of playing the popular multiplayer online fantasy game "Legend of Mir 3." "Attempts to take the dispute to the police failed because there is currently no law in China to protect virtual property," according to the BBC. South Korea, on the other hand, does have a law enforcement unit that investigates "in-game crime." Qiu has been given a suspended death sentence for killing Zhu, who was 26. Here's MMORPG.com's description of the game. This is probably indication enough of how much gamers value gaming artifacts, but the BBC reports that they are "a booming business on the Web," eBay's Internet games section having seen revenues of $9 million even as far back as 2003.

  4. Legal music's next step?

    Watch out iTunes and Yahoo Music Unlimited, here comes MSN's music subscription service. "The tentative features of the new service - which is still under development -include advanced community aspects and playlist-sharing," CNET reports. But here's where MSN will really up the ante: It wants subscribers to be able to play any song purchased at iTunes on music players other than the iPod, what a lot of digital music fans have been waiting for. To that end, MSN is seeking rights from record companies to create a Microsoft-formatted version of any song people can find at iTunes.

  5. P2P networks' dilemma

    File-sharing networks aren't the only channel for traffickers in child pornography, but they're definitely one of them. Which puts the P2P networks in a tight spot, the Dallas Morning News reports: They want to help law enforcement find the illegal pornographic content without sending the signal that they can track all illegal activity, including music copyright infringement. "The [P2P] companies don't want to appear to have too much control over what users trade." And law enforcement does agree that if pedophiles come to believe the file-sharing networks are no longer anonymous zones, "they'll simply move to darker corners of the Internet where they're more difficult to catch ... chat rooms, newsgroups, email and even Web pages," the Morning News adds. The article goes into the types of tools now available to both media companies and law enforcement for identifying file-sharers. It's also good background for the US Supreme Court decision on MGM v. Grokster expected this month. In that case, entertainment companies are asking the court to hold file-sharing companies responsible for users' infringement of copyright laws.

  6. On Net predators' trail

    The Washington Post's description of what goes on at the Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., is not easy reading for a parent, but it's good to see what's being done to protect children around the world. The Center is a "state-of-the-art forensic computer lab run by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency [ICE]," the Post reports. Its investigators "are cracking the most sensational, horrifying, gut-wrenching criminal cases involving children, pornography, predators and the Internet." The Post quotes Ernie Allen, CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as saying that 10 years ago even he didn't think there was a significant market for this material, but what we all now know is that it's a "multibillion-dollar industry around the world." But progress is being made in fighting it, with law enforcement agencies using the very technology that predators use as a tool against them. In the two years since ICE launched Operation Predator, "more than 5,700 people have been arrested in more than 100 countries, with crucial support from the Cyber Crimes Center."

  7. Net-savvy school

    Here's an enlightened school, where tech's concerned: The William Penn School in Philadelphia sees cyberspace as an extension of its community, ConnectforKids.org reports in a thoughtful article, "Cyberbullying: No muscles needed." "The school community doesn't begin and end at the door," Mark Franek, the school's dean of students told CFK. Though traditionally schools saw anything happening off of school property as beyond their reach, this may have to change as, increasingly, everything happening at school spills into a constant swirl of instant messages. To get students thinking about possible consequences, Penn even had local police officers come in and alert them to the fact that "electronic messages such as IMs and emails leave 'fingerprints' - nine-digit numbers recorded with your ISP (Internet Service Provider)." CFK adds that "violations of the school's honor code land a student in front of the community council, leading to suspension or expulsion. But small things can tweak a student's conscience," Penn has found, too. "For example, the school's director of technology put a mirror up in the lab, bearing the caption 'Are you a cyberbully?,' with action steps for kids who think they're victims as well." For more on this, please see "Cybersocializing, cyberbullying: Where are the parents?"

  8. 'Camp Unwired' appeals

    Unplugging kids is becoming a selling point for US summer camps. "The number of new camps that limit gadgets and electronic communication is on the rise," Business Week reports. "While 9 in 10 camps allow parents to send e-mails, almost none allow kids to write back over the Internet. Some 90% of camps don't allow cell phones." Farm & Wilderness in Vermont, "a Vermont cluster of six camps," is an example - its cabins have no electricity, which makes it really hard to charge up one's cell phone! But that's not to say that new friends from camp aren't IM-ing soon after they get home.

  9. Mobile bullying

    Watch out for the picture phones! In the UK, where cellphone use by young people is much higher than in the US, one in five 11-to-19-year-olds have been bullied by mobile phone or via the Net, 14% have been threatened or harassed using text messages, and 10% have been intimidated or embarrassed by bullies using images taken with camera phones, the BBC reports. It's citing research by UK children's charity NCH, which also found that "some 26% of digital bullying victims did not know the identity of their tormentor." The BBC added, however, that, "in terms of the proportion of children affected, the problem would not appear to be getting worse."

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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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