Yesterday I highlighted the publication of the transcript from an event I hosted on age verification proposals for social networking sites. Today I want to highlight another excellent event that followed close on the heels of my event and expanded upon several of the issues we discussed that day.
On May 3rd, my friend Tim Lordan, Executive Director of the Internet Education Foundation, hosted a panel discussion on Cap Hill entitled “Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization.” The event featured the comments of 4 of the leading experts in the field of online child safety, including:
* Dr. David Finkelhor, Director, Crimes against Children Research Center (CCRC), University of New Hampshire
* Dr. Michele Ybarra, President, Internet Solutions for Kids and author of several studies on youth online
* Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet & American Life Project
* danah boyd, Researcher, University of California, Berkeley and Fellow, University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Communications
It was an eye-opening discussion that shattered many of the myths driving legislative efforts aimed at regulating Internet sites or activities in the name of protecting children. I strongly encourage you to read the transcript, or just watch the video of the event here. It will change the way you think about these issues.
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, Inc.
* Tim Lordan, Executive Director, Internet Education Foundation
* Jeff Schmidt, CEO, Authis
It was an outstanding discussion and I’m happy to report that the transcript is now available online here. Also, you can listen to the audio from the event here. Also, you can find the big study of mine that we discussed that day here.
new legislative proposals to regulate violence in video games
the David and Goliath struggle between the Library of Congress and WashingtonWatch.com
Rupert Murdoch’s surprise bid for ownership of the Wall Street Journal
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A debate is raging over at the Second Life blog about Linden Labs’ (LL) annoucement that the company plans on imposing age verification requirements on its users starting in mid-May. LL says they are making this move “to insure that minors do not inadvertently access Second Life or have access to adult content in-world. In addition, age verification provides an additional layer of trust for in-world businesses and Residents.”
Those are certainly worthy goals. But LL face two very challenging issues in attempting to implement this plan:
Jennifer Medina of the New York Timespenned 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. But Medina also noted that there are many difficult questions about how age verification would work and how “social networking” would even be defined. (I summarize these questions in my recent PFF report, “Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions.”)
Ms. Medina was also kind enough to interview me for the story and she summarizes some of what I had to say in her piece. In a nutshell, I stressed that the most effective way to deal with this problem is to get serious about dealing with sex offenders instead of trying to regulate law-abiding citizens. We need to be locking up convicted sex offenders for a lot longer in this country to make sure they behind bars instead of behind keyboards seeking to prey on our children.
I also stressed the importance of online safety education as part of the strategy here. But my comments on that didn’t make the cut in the story. But you can read my big recent paper on this issue for additional details.
Some lawmakers at the federal, state and local level have advocated video game industry regulation in the name of protecting children from potentially objectionable content, usually of a violent nature. In my opinion, the better approach–and one that doesn’t involve government censorship or regulation of games–is to empower parents to better make these decisions for their own families. And the key to that effort is an effective rating / labeling system for game content that parents understand and use.
Luckily, there are good signs that the video game industry’s voluntary ratings system–the ESRB (the Entertainment Software Rating Board)–is doing exactly that. The game industry established the ESRB in 1994 and it has rated thousands of games since then. (The ESRB estimates it rates over 1,000 games per year). Virtually every title produced by major game developers for retail sale today carries an ESRB rating and content descriptors. Generally speaking, the only games that do not carry ESRB ratings today are those developed by web amateurs that are freely traded or downloaded via the Internet.
The ESRB applies seven different rating symbols and over 30 different content “descriptors” that it uses to give consumers highly detailed information about games. Thus, by simply glancing at the back of each game container, parents can quickly gauge the appropriateness of the title for their children.
So, how effective is this system, as measured by parental awareness and usage of the ESRB ratings and labels? Since 1999, the ESRB has asked Peter D. Hart Research Associates to study that question and conduct polls asking parents if they are aware of the ESRB ratings and if they use them. As this chart illustrates, the results are impressive with both awareness and use growing rapidly since 1999:
Better yet, all gaming platforms and most PCs can read these ratings and labels and allow parents to block games rated above a certain level they find unacceptable. But the real strength of the ESRB’s ratings system lies in the content descriptors, which give parents plenty of warning about what they will see or hear in each title. That way, parents can talk to their kids about those games or just not buy them for their kids until they think they are ready.
The game industry deserves credit not only for creating such an excellent content rating / labeling system, but also putting significant resources into public education / awareness efforts to ensure parents know how to take advantage of it. So then, why are lawmakers continuing to waste millions of taxpayer dollarslitigating unneeded regulatory efforts?
Say what you want about Rupert Murdoch, but the man certainly knows how to make news. His bid for Dow Jones two days ago – despite being initially rejected by Dow Jones’ controlling family — is still reverberating through media, financial, and political circles.
From the start, the proposed deal came under a hail of criticism. That is in itself unsurprising. Murdoch is so unpopular that any acquisition would be roundly condemned. If he tried to buy a ham sandwich for lunch that would be condemned.
But isn’t this a debate over media concentration, not just Murdoch? Anti-media consolidation activists, of course, have trotted out all the usual concentration-of-power arguments. The media market has been called a monopoly, an oligopoly, and every other type of poly that can be found in Greek dictionaries. But these arguments have sounded even more hollow than usual. There’s little overlap between Dow Jones and Murdoch’s News Corporation. Dow Jones owns newspapers – mostly small ones and one really big one – but has no broadcast holdings. News Corporation owns TV stations but only one newspaper in the U.S.
…attacking the video-game industry has long been a favored sport amongst politicians eager to shore up their credibility with the concerned parent crowd. At the state level, at least ten laws banning the sale of certain video games to minors have been brought to life. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a guy who made his name hacking and slashing his enemies to a bloody pulp on the big screen, apparently didn’t want high schoolers doing digital imitations: He tried to ban the sale of violent games to minors back in 2005. Oregon is currently considering a similar law, and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer recently stated that he intends to pursue one as well. But these laws go down like a final level boss once they hit the courts. To date, not one of the dubious proposals has stood up to a court challenge.
Some lawmakers can’t even be bothered to worry about anything so insignificant as considering whether a law is constitutional. Regarding one video-game ban, Minnesota state legislator Sandy Poppas shrugged off any such responsibility, saying, “Legislators don’t worry too much about what’s constitutional. We just try to do what’s right, and we let the courts figure that out.” The recurrent bashing of the game industry tends to resemble a major league team taking on a troop of t-ballers: Politicians get to knock a couple of balls out of the park in front of parents, but the whole thing is just a show.
This morning on Minnesota Public Radio, I debated two proponents of FCC efforts to regulate TV violence. I don’t know how long it will be up on their website, but you can currently listen to a stream of the entire show at this link on their website. I was up against Doug Gentile of the National Institute on Media and the Family and Melissa Caldwell of the Parents Television Council.
I’ve got a new editorial up over on the City Journal website today about the FCC’s new effort to regulate violence on television. I begin by noting that the FCC probably wouldn’t approve of my grandmother’s viewing choices for me back in the 1970s since I probably watched every episode of “The Three Stooges” with her as a kid. “Would The Three Stooges constitute ‘excessively violent’ programming unfit for a young child?” I ask. Who knows, and that’s just one of the many problems with the FCC’s new effort. See the rest of my editorial for details.
If you’re interested in this subject, I also want to draw your attention to this excellent editorial by First Amendment guru Robert Corn-Revere on the Freedom Forum website. Bob does an excellent job outlining the legal / constitutional issues that the FCC report ignored in its report. Bob’s essay is part of an excellent online symposium that the Freedom Forum has put together featuring many distinct viewpoints on this issue.
Finally, conservative columnist Cal Thomas had a column in The Washington Times a few days ago opposing the FCC’s regulatory effort. He argued that: “Anyone concerned about preserving the First Amendment and the rights it guarantees to free speech and free expression should worry about this latest assault on the Constitution. Conservatives who oppose regulation of talk radio, which most of them like, must be consistent and oppose overregulation of TV content they dislike.” Good for you, Cal !
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.