Week of September 25, 2005

File-sharing is a top story in kid-tech news this week - you know, the controversial subject of peer-to-peer (P2P swapping of music, movies, TV shows, etc. across the Internet. More than 14,000 file-sharers (or their parents) have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, the vast majority having settled out of court, paying fines of several thousand dollars (see the latest on this).

Anti-P2P software. If parents are not sure what all this means and are concerned about P2P activity on their family PC, there's a free software program available to help. Parent File Scan was released on the Web by the US film industry last February (see the news), and now the application is available under a different name, Digital File Check, in six more languages at a London-based site representing the recording industry worldwide.

What the software does is very simple: 1) scans your PC and tells you what media files (video, music, photos, etc.) and file-sharing software you may have on it, and 2) allows you to delete any of those files and programs. The very easy-to-use app, which works only on Windows PCs, is designed to help less-than-tech-literate parents educate themselves about multimedia on their computer(s), but TechWhack.com in India suggests that, these days, "when the kids at home are smarter than their parents when it comes to using computers...we at TechWhack doubt that this application is going to make much of a difference." In other words, this software may not be able to find the more sophisticated work-arounds young digital-media fans are undoubtedly already developing as P2P services "go legit" (see this blog post).

In addition to using this software, it might be good to have a family discussion about P2P - ask any file-sharers at your house what they're going to do if sites like Kazaa, eDonkey, or WinMX go dark and talk about the ethics of trading copyrighted content without the owners' permission. For more discussion points, see NetFamilyNews's "File-sharing realities for families."

You can get Parent File Scan at the Motion Picture Association of America's site, RespectCopyrights.org, or through its developer's site. Here's Digital File Scan at the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's site. Read more about its release at the BBC and the International Herald Tribune.

In Other News

  • Netscape has flaws too, but no security patches for them as yet, the Washington Post reports, which means malicious hackers can use this browser as well as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (both in the news a lot lately) to take control of PCs. Even though the browser is "driven more or less by the same 'engine' as Firefox," Netscape hasn't issued an update to fix the flaws, reports Post security writer Brian Krebs. Nobody who uses a Web browser gets to have even a false sense of security these days! Here's a big-picture piece on the browser battle at the Post.
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to the stores. The game will be back on shelves Oct. 18, again compliant with the "M" (Mature) game rating and with a bit of "value add," Reuters reports. There will be a special edition for PlayStation 2 with a DVD add-on and, for Xbox, it'll be bundled with GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City. San Andreas had been pulled by retailers because of sexually explicit content that had upped its rating to "Adults Only." See NFN's 7/22/05 issue for background and the Entertainment Software Rating Board for a description of the ratings.
  • MTV on phones. Music videos have been on the Web for some time. Now they're coming to cellphones - MTV-produced ones, anyway, USATODAY reports. "MTV will create and distribute videos with Warner artists such as Green Day, Sean Paul and Twista for cellphones and other wireless gadgets." Warner's the first of the major record labels to strike a deal with MTV for the phone platform, USATODAY adds. Pricing will depend on what the phone companies offer, whether pay-per-video or subscription. A phone content-rating system is in the works in the US (see NFN's 5/6/05 issue).
  • Virtual pandemic. It's not the first time game characters have fallen prey to the spread of a virtual disease, but this time it's happening in "the most widely played massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the world," the BBC reports. That would be World of Warcraft, which claims 4 million players worldwide. The current "deadly plague" seems to have been launched at the murder of "the fearsome Hakkar, the god of Blood," when he was killed in the Zul'Gurub dungeon, newly added to the game. But wait, there's hope in virtual reality: "Luckily the death of a character in World of Warcraft is not final so all those killed were soon resurrected," according to the BBC.
  • Videogames & ADD. "Son, don't forget to do your videogaming tonight." Ever think that sentence would spill from a parent's lips?! Well, USATODAY reports that some kids who have attention deficit disorder are being prescribed videogame therapy by psychologists - aided by the S.M.A.R.T. BrainGames system currently being used in 50 US clinics (according to the psychologist who adapted it for this type of therapy). The system was among 40 projects on display at a recent "Games for Health" Conference in Baltimore, Md. - "an offshoot of The Serious Games Initiative, which seeks to push the evolution of games technology to aid in problem solving, public policy and social issues," USATODAY adds.