Cyberbullying constitutes one of the largest growth categories of recent cyberlaw legislative proposals, and many state legislatures have already enacted measures aimed at combating this problem using a variety of approaches. Those attempting to monitor ongoing developments in this field might find it useful to examine this National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) compendium of recent state cyberbullying bills.
In June, Berin Szoka and I published a PFF white paper, “Cyberbullying Legislation: Why Education is Preferable to Regulation.” That paper mostly address federal legislation and, in particular, we contrasted the approaches set forth in Rep. Linda Sánchez’s (D-CA) “Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act,” versus the “School and Family Education about the Internet (SAFE Internet) Act,” which was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and in the House by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). Whereas the Sánchez bill would create a new federal felony to address these problems, the SAFE Internet Act proposes an education-based approach to the issue.
Generally speaking, Berin and I favor the latter approach, to the extent federal legislators feel the need to act. But we argued that state experimentation on this front may be the better way to go at this time. As the NCSL survey suggests, states are pursing a variety of strategies and will continue to do so. In light of that, I’m not sure why any federal legislation is needed at this time. If the feds are really eager to push something at the national level, perhaps a generic public awareness / PSA campaign would make the most sense while more tailored state-based experimentation continues. This is rare example of where state-based experimentation with a cyberlaw issue actually makes a lot of sense.
On July 27th, The Progress & Freedom Foundation hosted a Capitol Hill panel discussion entitled “Online Child Safety, Privacy, and Free Speech: An Overview of Challenges in Congress & the States.” The event featured remarks from:
- Parry Aftab, Executive Director, WiredSafety.org
- Todd Haiken, Senior Manager of Policy, Common Sense Media
- Jim Halpert, Partner, DLA Piper
- Berin Szoka, Senior Fellow, The Progress & Freedom Foundation
We’ve just released the transcript of the event, which I have also pasted down below the fold in a Scribd document reader. Also, the audio for this event can be heard by clicking below:
Download mp3
Here is the full event description: Continue reading →
Just a heads up for those of you in the DC-area… On Monday, July 27th, PFF will be hosting a Hill event on “Online Child Safety, Privacy, and Free Speech: An Overview of Challenges in Congress & the States.” I will be moderating the discussion and we will be joined by Parry Aftab, Executive Director of WiredSafety.org, Jim Halpert a Partner with the law firm of DLA Piper, Todd Haiken, Senior Manager of Policy for Common Sense Media, and my colleague Berin Szoka also of PFF.
The event will focus on the intersection of online child safety, privacy, and free speech issues at both the federal and state level. Bills introduced in Congress to address cyberbullying concerns propose either educational initiatives or a criminalization approach. Access to objectionable content also remains a concern and a new, government-mandated task force is looking into those issues. Meanwhile, state officials, including many state attorneys general, continue to explore age verification mandates for social networking sites and some have considered building on the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to expand “parental notification” mandates. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently announced an expedited review of COPPA to see if it is keeping up with new developments. The FTC is also exploring child safety in virtual worlds. New concerns about “sexting,” or the sending of sexual explicit images over mobile devices, has also raised new concerns led some lawmakers to ponder penalties.
How serious are these concerns? Is legislation or regulation needed to address them? What free speech issues are at stake? Should Congress take the lead or leave it to the States to experiment with different models? These and other issues will be discussed by the panelists at our July 27th event.
The logistical details are below and you RSVP here.
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“Online Child Safety, Privacy, and Free Speech: An Overview of Challenges in Congress & the States”
July 27, 2009
12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Room SVC-208
Capitol Visitor Center
1st Street and East Capitol Street, NE (entrance across from Supreme Court)
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 importantly that websites obtain the “verifiable consent” of a child’s parent before collecting personal information about that child or giving that child access to interactive functionality that might allow the child to share their personal information with others. The law was intended primarily to “enhance parental involvement in a child’s online activities” as a means of protecting the online privacy and safety of children.
Yet advocates of expanding COPPA—or “COPPA 2.0″—see COPPA’s verifiable parental consent framework as a means for imposing broad regulatory mandates in the name of online child safety and concerns about social networking, cyber-harassment, etc. Two COPPA 2.0 bills are currently pending in New Jersey and Illinois. The accelerated review of COPPA to be conducted by the FTC next year (five years ahead of schedule) is likely to bring to Washington serious talk of expanding COPPA—even though Congress clearly rejected covering adolescents age 13-16 when COPPA was first proposed back in 1998.
We’ll discuss some of the key points of our paper in a series of blog posts, but here are the top nine reasons for rejecting COPPA 2.0, in that such an approach would:
- Burden the free speech rights of adults by imposing age verification mandates on many sites used by adults, thus restricting anonymous speech and essentially converging—in terms of practical consequences—with the unconstitutional Children’s Online Protection Act (COPA), another 1998 law sometimes confused with COPPA;
- Burden the free speech rights of adolescents to speak freely on—or gather information from—legal and socially beneficial websites;
- Hamper routine and socially beneficial communication between adolescents and adults;
- Reduce, rather than enhance, the privacy of adolescents, parents and other adults because of the massive volume of personal information that would have to be collected about users for authentication purposes (likely including credit card data);
Continue reading →
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Posted in: First Amendment, Free Speech & Online Child Safety 
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