• Teen jailed for posting nude photo. A 19-year-old was sentenced to 30 days in prison for posting a nude photo of his ex-girlfriend on MySpace, the Associated Press reports. "Anthony D. Rich pleaded no contest Tuesday to child abuse and attempted child abuse. Prosecutors reduced the charges from sex crimes that could have branded Rich a sex offender for life." He was 17 when he posted the photo of the 15-year-old girl after they broke up. The AP reports that the girl consented to having her picture taken but not to having it posted.
• A Net founder comments on social Web. "The Internet should not be used as a scapegoat for society's ills," Vint Cerf told the BBC. Cerf, who is considered one of the "fathers" of the Internet for the role he played during its early stages, was speaking on BBC Radio. He argued against over-regulation of the Net, after some members of Britain's Conservative Party proposed government limits on sites young people can use, including YouTube which is owned by Google, where Cerf now serves as chief Internet evangelist. Cerf's comments were specifically about Web 2.0, or the social Web. "Most of the content on the network is contributed by the users of the Internet," he said, "so what we're seeing on the Net is a reflection of the society we live in." Cerf pointed out that Google, like other search engines, can be configured to help parents limit the types of sites their kids can find.
• Euro online youth self-reliant. A survey of 27 EU member countries plus Iceland and Norway found that "European children are well aware of the potential risks of Internet and mobile phone use but are confidently embracing digital technologies, believing they are capable of handling any problem that might arise without the help of a parent," according to an article in the portal Tiscali.Europe. That's good and bad news, of course, indicating that on the one hand they may be less susceptible to victimization and smarter than we think but on the other hand a little over-confident. Especially amid the rise of cyberbullying on phones and the Web, this may indicate an unhealthy disinclination to tell parents and other trusted adults about bullying incidents (out of fears that Internet privileges would be taken away, as other research shows). The study also found that "ways in which the internet was used proved similar across the continent as well as age groups. Schoolwork, communicating with friends and family via instant messaging and chat, downloading music, videos, and games scored highest, the latter more popular with boys in the 12-14 category, while chatting and emailing came out top for the older girls. Hours spent online per week also increased with age."
• Connected family reunions. "Do you have wi-fi?" A logical question from any teen-aged second cousin once removed. It was the type of question, anyway, that New York Times contributor Roger Mummert received at the beginning of a family gathering at his house - the "first inkling of how the vastly expanded electronic and informational needs of houseguests would flavor our time together. Soon guests were positioning themselves to get dibs on one of the three computers in our Long Island house the way they would otherwise line up to jump in the shower." In the UK and South Korea, there are probably already unwritten rules of etiquette about texting at social and family gatherings, and those sensibilities will undoubtedly develop the world over, as we adjust our human interaction to increasingly ubiquitous digital connectivity.

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