News for the Week of December 10, 2006
On the technology front, legislative efforts to protect teens on the social Web led the news this past week.
New federal law proposed
There is logic to this legislation, just announced by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Charles Schumer (D-NY). Among other measures that would strengthen anti-child-exploitation law, it would require sex offenders to register their online contact info too - "their email addresses, as well as their instant messaging and chat room handles and any other online identifiers they use," says Senator McCain's press release about the Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act. The law would also require social-networking sites as well as ISPs to report child pornography, would more clearly define what should be reported, and would create stiffer penalties, make failure-to-report a crime, increase recommended sentences for sex offenders, and require Net companies to preserve data 180 days in case it's needed as evidence. If the bill passes, MySpace will be able to include the required online identifiers in the national sex-offender database it's building (see this 12/5 item), and sites that use the database (which I imagine MySpace will make available to them) will be able to check it for the email addresses and screennames people use to establish accounts - another tool for keeping pedophiles off social sites. The two senators said they will introduce the bill at the beginning of the 110th Congress in January.
Virginia weighs in
Echoing Sens. Schumer and McCain's announcement, Virginia is now looking at a proposal to bar sex offenders from social-networking sites. The state attorney general, Robert McDonnell, is proposing requiring the state's 13,500 sex offenders to register their email addresses and IM screen names," InformationWeek reports, adding that "the proposal was immediately endorsed by MySpace.com." The proposal, which will go to Virginia's General Assembly for approval, calls for the offenders' electronic IDs to be turned over to social sites for blocking.
In other news...
- Patch your Windows! Microsoft released seven PC security patches this month. "The software maker originally planned to release only six security bulletins as part of its monthly patch cycle. However, it added a seventh to deliver a fix for two flaws that affect the Windows Media Format," ZDNET reports, adding that they were to take care of 11 security flaws, most in the Windows operating system." If you need to download the patches manually, just go to Microsoft Update. Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs offers protection advice for the long term at the bottom of his coverage of "patch Tuesday".
- FTC on disclosing stealth ads. You might call it digital word-of-mouth. Probably since the beginning of blogs, advertisers have been creating ad blogs - blogs that look like any other pundit blog or music-fan blog but are really more like banners ads or billboards. Now, in a milestone development for Internet marketing, the Federal Trade Commission is going to require that advertisers disclose their relationships with paid bloggers, the Washington Post reports. "In October 2005, Commercial Alert, an advertising and marketing watchdog group in Portland, Ore., petitioned the FTC to consider taking action against word-of-mouth marketers," according to the Post. Among the practices Commercial Alert has spotlighted since then are Procter & Gamble's use of "a volunteer force of 250,000 teenagers to promote the company's products to friends and relatives."
- Eating-disorder 'ed': Young sufferers of eating disorders are getting the wrong kind of reinforcement on the Web, according to a new study in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Not only are they learning about "new weight loss or purging methods from Web sites that promote eating disorders," but also from each other on "Web sites aimed at helping them recover," Reuters reports. "The survey by researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford showed a third of patients [aged 10-22] also visited pro-recovery sites, and half of them learned new weight loss and purging methods."
- Game industry to parents: Check out the ratings! With the help of Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) on Capitol Hill recently, the videogame industry launched a new consumer-awareness campaign. Senator Lieberman "said parents must play a central role in learning about the ratings and what games their children should be playing," Fox News reports. CNET adds that "both senators have been vocal critics of the game industry in the past." The videogame ratings are at the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
- For young game developers. Microsoft wants to create the YouTube of videogames, the BBC reports. The difference is, though, a lot more people know how to shoot and produce videos (and post them in a site like YouTube) than know how to design games. So Microsoft made its game-development tools available to everyone - including students. Five UK universities "were involved in the initial trial of the software, suggesting tweak to the tools." A computer science lecturer at Hull University got started right away on working the game-development tools into his curriculum, he told the BBC. The development software can be downloaded for free, "but many may want to join the XNA Creators Club, which allows [game] developers access to technical support, white papers, starter kits and other assets to help turn the games into reality. This will cost £65 [about $128] for an annual subscription, or £30 for a four-month subscription."
