Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
With weather-related travel trauma so prominent on my Twitterscope, and with news that the federal government is banning flight delays, I stopped short when I read this techology pitch: One of the biggest hassles of travel has to be keeping track of those pesky hotel key cards and then trying to remember which way to [...]
Adam Thierer & I have just released a detailed examination (PDF) of brewing efforts to expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 to cover adolescents and potentially all social networking sites—an approach we call “COPPA 2.0.” As Adam explained on Larry Magid’s CNET podcast, COPPA mandates certain online privacy protections for children under 13, most [...]
This week, I have been up at Harvard University participating in another meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF), of which I am a member. The ISTTF was organized earlier this year pursuant to an agreement between 49 state attorneys general (AGs) and social networking giant MySpace.com. A group of experts from academia, [...]
As Braden mentioned, we were both down in Raleigh, North Carolina this week testifying at a big hearing on mandatory age verification for social networking sites. It was quite a heated battle. The legislation, SB 132, was supported at the hearing by North Carolina attorney general Roy Cooper, several of his staff attorneys, a couple [...]
In late March, I hosted a congressional seminar entitled “Age Verification for Social Networking Sites: Is It Possible? And Desirable?” I brought together 5 experts in the field to debate the issue, including: John Cardillo, President & CEO, Sentinel Jay Chaudhuri, Special Counsel to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper Raye Croghan, Vice President, IDology, [...]
Jennifer Medina of the New York Times penned an article yesterday on the debate over social networking fears leading to calls for age verification mandates. She noted that measures are moving in several states that would require social networking sites to age-verify users before they are allowed to visit the sites or create profiles there. [...]
Lisa Lerer of Forbes was nice enough to do a feature story this week about my views on the panic over social networking and the push for age verification of such sites. Her piece is entitled “Why MySpace is a Safe Space,” and begins as follows: “Adam Thierer doesn’t look like much of a revolutionary. [...]
I’m putting the wraps on a big paper on the dangers of mandating age verification for social networking websites. One of the questions I ask in the study is exactly how broadly “social networking sites” will be defined for purposes of regulation? Will chat rooms, hobbyist sites, listservs, instant messaging, video sharing sites, online marketplaces [...]
February 13, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
