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This week I will again be attending the Family Online Safety Institute’s excellent annual summit. The 2-day affair brings together some of the world’s leading experts on online safety and privacy issues. It’s a great chance to learn about major developments in the field. As I was preparing for the session I am moderating on Thursday, I thought back to the first FOSI annual conference, which took place back in 2007. What is remarkable about that period compared to now is that there was a flurry of legislative and regulatory activity related to online child safety then that we simply do not see today.

In fact, just 3 1/2 years ago, John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology and I compile a legislative index [summary here] that cataloged the more than 30 legislative proposals that had been introduced in the the 110th session of Congress. There was also a great deal of interest in these issues within the regulatory community. Finally, countless state and local measures related to online safety and speech issues had been floated. Today, by contrast, it is hard for me to find any legislative measures focused on online safety regulation at the federal level, and I don’t see much activity at the agency level either. I haven’t surveyed state and local activity, but it seems like it has also died down.

Generally speaking, I think this is a good development since I am opposed to most proposals to regulate online speech, expression, or conduct. But let’s ignore the particular wisdom of such measures and ask a simple question: What explains the decline in Internet safety legislation and online content regulation? I believe there are three possible explanations: Continue reading →

On Wednesday afternoon, it was my great pleasure to make some introductory remarks at a Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) event that was held at the Yahoo! campus in Sunnyvale, CA. FOSI CEO Stephen Balkam asked me to offer some thoughts on a topic I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about in recent years: Who needs parental controls? More specifically, what role do parental control tools and methods play in the upbringing of our children? How should we define or classify parental control tools and methods? Which are most important / effective? Finally, what should the role of public policy be toward parental control technologies on both the online safety and privacy fronts?

In past years, I spent much time writing and updating a booklet on these issues called Parental Controls & Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods. It was an enormous undertaking, however, and I have abandoned updating it after I hit version 4.0. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still putting a lot of thought into these issues. My focus has shifted over the past year more toward the privacy-related concerns and away from the online safety issues. Of course, all these issues intersect and many people now (rightly) considered them to largely be the same debate.

Anyway, to kick off the FOSI event, I offered three provocations about parental control technologies and the state of the current debate over them. I buttressed some of my assertions with findings from a recent FOSI survey of parental attitudes about parental controls and online safety. Continue reading →

On June 29th, The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) and the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) will co-host a National Press Club briefing entitled “Sending an Online Safety Message to Congress.” This event will feature a discussion about the recently released report of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG), “Youth Safety on a Living Internet.”  OSTWG — a congressionally-mandated blue ribbon working group — analyzed the state of online child safety and offered policymakers and parents a wide array of recommendations for how to keep kids safe and secure in today’s “always-on,” interconnected world. [For more background on OSTWG and our final report, see this post.]  Several OSTWG leaders will be on hand to discuss the report and outline the next steps that need to be taken on this front. Here are the details.

What: Sending an Online Safety Message to Congress — A discussion about the OSTWG final report and the future of childrens’ online safety and public policy.
When: Tuesday, June 29 9:00 a.m. – 10:45 p.m. (breakfast provided)
Where: National Press Club First Amendment Lounge, 13th Floor 529 14th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20515
Who: Hemanshu Nigam, Founder, SSP Blue, and Co-Chair of OSTWG Larry Magid, Co-Director, ConnectSafety.org Michael McKeehan, Executive Director, Internet & Technology Policy, Verizon Adam Thierer President, The Progress & Freedom Foundation Stephen Balkam Chief Executive Officer, Family Online Safety Institute, (moderator)

To Register: Space is limited, so an RSVP is required to attend. Please register here.

Yesterday up on Capitol Hill, I hosted a very interesting discussion about “Next-Generation Parental Controls & Child Safety Efforts.”  I thought I’d provide a quick recap here for those who couldn’t attend. [Note: audio of the event will be up shortly at the link above and transcript is in the works.] The event featured Steve Crown, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Microsoft Corporation’s Entertainment & Devices Division; Dane Snowden, Vice President of External & State Affairs of CTIA – The Wireless Association; and Stephen Balkam, Chief Executive Officer of Family Online Safety Institute.

Steve Crown of Microsoft kicked the show off with a terrific overview of some the current and next-generation parental control tools and awareness efforts that Microsoft is deploying to help empower parents and keep kids safer both online and in gaming environments. Crown outlined Microsoft’s 5-prong strategy regarding how they have approached these issues on the gaming front, and I think it represents an excellent model of how sensible industry self-regulation and “best practices” can go a long way toward addressing concerns that many parents and policymakers have. The five strategies Crown outlined were: (1) Respect both the freedom of game creators and freedom of choice for game consumers; (2) empower parents with ratings, tools, and information; (3) use independent ratings (like the ESRB) to label content; (4) require all games be rated before they can be used on a platform so that parents can implement blocking controls; and (5) respect regional laws and rating systems in different parts of the globe.

In my book on Parental Controls & Online Child Safety: A Survey of Tools & Methods, I’ve documented many of the empowerment tools that Microsoft has deployed in recent years to make this empowerment vision a reality. One of the most important things MS does on its XBox 360 console is to provide an immediate “out-of-the-box” prompt for parents to set up parental controls and establish other limitations on online chat, spending, or Internet access. Microsoft announced another cool new feature in November 2007, the “Family Timer.” It lets parents limit how and when children play games on the console. This is similar to the time management tools Microsoft offers in its Vista operating system for PCs.  Incidentally, my wife has asked me to start using the Family Timer on our XBox — not for our kids, but for me!  This particular 40-year-old man is still a big kid at heart.

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As I noted recently, Berin Szoka and I just released a big PFF white paper (PDF) entitled, “Cyberbullying Legislation: Why Education is Preferable to Regulation,” which examines two very different federal approaches to the issue. One approach is focused on the creation of a new federal crime to punish cyberbullying, which would include fines and jail time for violators. One approach, set forth by Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA) in H.R. 1966 (originally H.R. 6123), the “Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act,” would create a new federal felony: “Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

The other legislative approach is education-based and would create an Internet safety education grant program to address the issue in schools and communities. In mid-May, the “School and Family Education about the Internet (SAFE Internet) Act” (S. 1047) was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and in the House by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). The measure proposes an Internet safety education grant program that will be administered by the Department of Justice, in concurrence with the Department of Education, and the Department of Health & Human Services.

On June 12, the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) hosted a discussion about these bill on Cap Hill, which was moderated by FOSI CEO Stephen Balkam. Representatives from both Rep. Sanchez’s and Sen. Menendez’s offices were on hand to discuss their bills, and I provided some feedback based upon what Berin and I concluded in our paper.  It was a good discussion and I encourage you to watch the whole thing because there were some good questions from the audience later in the show.

http://www.youtube.com/v/FsCpOgwTqQM&hl=en&fs=1&

Just wanted draw everyone’s attention to a couple of great podcasts about online safety issues that include comments from members of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF). As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the ISTTF project and final report represent a major milestone in the discussion about online safety in America, and I was honored to serve as a member of this task force.

This in-depth “Radio Berkman” podcast featuring ISTTF director John Palfrey and co-director Dena Sacco is a really excellent (but lengthy!) overview of the ISTTF’s word. Here’s a shorter podcast that Prof. Palfrey did with Larry Magid of CNet. And I also recommend this excellent NPR “On the Media” podcast featuring my friend Stephen Balkam of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI).

For those interested, down below you will find a running list I have been keeping of coverage of the ISTTF. (I will try to keep updating this list here).

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