News for the Week of January 15, 2006

Two top stories in kid-tech news this week - and they're related, unfortunately. The perennial, teen blogging, is everywhere again, but also USATODAY's look at...

The porn 'revolution' and teen girls. Remember the desktop publishing revolution? "Anybody" could publish "content" because it could all be done on a personal computer and the Net? The only problem was, not everybody could actually write - content quality was an issue. But production values are no barrier where porn is concerned, and of course all the digital-video enabling tools - from production to free Web hosting - are in place, so porn is literally everywhere, parents!

USATODAY spells it all out - including the part about how there is now no lack of teen porn stars. "The world of teenage-girl 'models' . is huge. Suzy parades around in her underwear, someone takes a lot of photos, and men pay $10 or $20 or $30 a month to look at them. Creeps me out, and I don't even have a teenage daughter," writes columnist Andrew Kantor. "These girls have found a niche and they're all over it. No magazine, porn or otherwise, would publish photos of 15- and 16-year-old girls, let alone the 10- and 11-year-olds who also have such sites." But the Web can (see "Sites for family (and other) video" for examples).

Some girls have developed followings, even fan clubs. For them, "Usenet is a popular place, but there are also Google and Yahoo groups dedicated to individual girls. And the guys who hang out there seem to know them intimately. They not only trade photos, they treat those photos like baseball cards, sometimes asking for 'fills' for missing images from a set," Kantor writes. Teenage boys are not immune to all this, of course - see "Kids & Webcams" and "Results of Webcam kid going public". With all the free Web services - blogs, video-hosting, payment systems, wish lists, etc. - there just are no barriers to anyone of any age to post, view, solicit, or be solicited.

Schools crack down on blogging. Facebook.com has been the main focus of schools' actions against student blogging, the Washington Post reports, but MySpace.com and Xanga.com have also gotten school officials' attention. So far, private schools in the Washington, D.C., area have been the most aggressive: Sidwell Friends School "prohibited students from using their school email addresses to register for access to Facebook"; the Barrie School "asked a student to leave over the misuse of a blog"; and, before the holidays, Sidwell, Georgetown Day School, and the Madeira School "wrote to parents to warn them" about Facebook. But area public schools are now joining ranks, with blog-focused Internet safety meetings for parents. Examples of blog posts schools want parents to know about, according to the Post: "an Alexandria girl with an abusive mother confides that she wants to have a baby, even though it would 'most likely make everything 5,000 times harder'; a girl from a Fairfax County school posts photos of herself in a bikini, inviting boys to comment." Page 3 of the Post's article looks at the attraction of these blogging sites for teenagers. Here's Sports Illustrated's "A Quick [2-pp] Guide to Facebook.com", as in "Sure, there is a lot of posturing on Facebook. It's the college bar scene [although there is now a Facebook for high schools], and you want to send out the right vibe."

In other news...

  • Student reporters catch sex offender. A 22-year-old man occasionally visits a Minnesota high school and poses as a 17-year-old "prospective student" and British royalty - until smart school newspaper reporters do a little Web research on him. That's the story told by KARE TV in the Twin Cities. They found his MySpace.com page, headed the "Earl of Scooby." Next he turned up in Florida's registry of sex offenders. He turned out to be Joshua Gardner, of Austin, Minnesota, "convicted of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in Winona County in 2003." Fortunately, there were no reports of student harassment during his three visits to the school.
  • Teen exploited in gaming. The first report I've seen of predation in the gaming environment, only further confirming that wherever kids are online, predators soon will be too. A 26-year-old man in California has been accused of grooming a 14-year-old gamer via Xbox Live, Microsoft's service for real-time game chat (voice and text). "Microsoft says that the safety and security of Xbox Live users is 'a top priority' and that it works closely with global law enforcement to ensure child safety," reports Eurogamer.net. In the California case, "police say that in November the [14-year-old] gave [26-year-old Ronnie] Watts his home address and phone number and they met in a Santa Rosa park, where the molestation allegedly took place." Parents should know that the new Xbox 360 and Xbox Live both have parental controls. To protect kids from online grooming, see pp. 7-8 of the British Home Office's "Good practice guidance for the moderation of interactive services for children" (Note: this is a link to a PDF).
  • Podcasting school announcements. Edgewater High School in central Florida wants to make tech work for students. Principal Rob Anderson podcasts his daily announcements, the Orlando Sentinel reports, and "within a few months, about a dozen teachers will begin podcasting lectures," as well as taking InterWrite SchoolPads (wireless keyboards) home to do "virtual tutoring" - "so students at any computer can get real-time answers. Connected by the school's network, they'll converse by instant message or email," reports the Sentinel, indicating that podcasting, blogging, and virtual tutoring, which started at the university level, are now "creeping into elementary and secondary schools across the country."
  • Protections for file-sharers. Not in the US, but lawmakers and courts in two countries - France and South Korea - are making clear distinctions between file-sharing for personal use and doing so for money. The former activity is now seeing some legal protection in those countries. In Korea, personal file-sharers "will not be accused" under guidelines issued by the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, the Korea Times reports, while "Internet users who share music files for commercial purposes will be subject to criminal charges." Net users who encourage illegal file-sharing "will also be punished," the Times adds. In France, a new digital copyright-protection bill is being reworked "to notably enshrine the right of consumers to make private copies of music and film disks and mete out smaller penalties to small-time downloaders," Agence France Presse reports.

For daily news, visit the NetFamilyNews blog or NetFamilyNews.org.