Why is 13 the magic cut off age? It’s because of COPPA, or the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. This restricts the collection of personal information from kids that are online. Any site that is aimed at kids younger than 13, Radio Disney is a good example, requires parental permission. Other sites simply ban younger users.
It’s not a flawless system. It’s not hard to click the “yes I’m over 13” button. Or change the year of your birthday, but for what the act is in place for, limiting kids information being gathered, it has worked.
Here’s where it gets complicated. The Federal Trade Commission is proposing changes that will effect access to information for EVERYONE. Third party plug ins on websites can result in IP address of a computer used by a child to be received. More specifically, if a plug in collects an IP from a children’s site there will be trouble. That’s extremely hard to control. Twitter can’t tell if someone else pastes a line of code into their site that links to Twitter.
So how would developers for these sites prohibit plugins being used on a kid’s site? That’s nearly impossible.
Here’s another obstacle the FTC is putting on the field. Changing the terminology of sites that are deemed “directed to children”. Right now it is exactly how it sounds, encompassing sites that are obviously aimed at children. The FTC, however, wants to include sites that may, unintentionally, ATTRACT younger audiences. The Audience of any given site can’t have a disproportionately percentage of children. Who decides this? Is 20% disproportionate? 10%? It simply isn’t clear.
And here’s the catch 22. The ONLY way to know the demographic of your viewers is to collect data….but wait, isn’t that what this is trying to PREVENT?? Interesting. It also violates adults First Amendment right held up by the Supreme Court to access information anonymously.
According to arstechna.com’s Emma Llanso:
“COPPA is the only protect-the-children-from-the-Internet law passed in the late ‘90s that hasn’t been challenged in court. The Communications Decency Act (1996), the Child Pornography Prevention Act (1996), and the Child Online Protection Act (1998) each went to the Supreme Court and were all struck down due to First Amendment concerns about restricting access to information online...
COPPA hasn’t faced the same kind of challenge only because it has, so far, been narrowly focused and hasn’t interfered with adults’ or older minors’ access to constitutionally protected information. The FTC is proposing to radically alter that balance.”
My questions is at what point does responsibility of the online safety of our children fall from parents and guardians to lawmakers? There were few filtering devices in action when I was young. Only one that I can remember and her name was Mom and let me tell you it worked well. So how do you feel? This is the last weekend to submit your comments on the issue directly to the FTC: http://ftc.gov/opa/2012/08/coppa2.shtm
It’s not a flawless system. It’s not hard to click the “yes I’m over 13” button. Or change the year of your birthday, but for what the act is in place for, limiting kids information being gathered, it has worked.
Here’s where it gets complicated. The Federal Trade Commission is proposing changes that will effect access to information for EVERYONE. Third party plug ins on websites can result in IP address of a computer used by a child to be received. More specifically, if a plug in collects an IP from a children’s site there will be trouble. That’s extremely hard to control. Twitter can’t tell if someone else pastes a line of code into their site that links to Twitter.
So how would developers for these sites prohibit plugins being used on a kid’s site? That’s nearly impossible.
Here’s another obstacle the FTC is putting on the field. Changing the terminology of sites that are deemed “directed to children”. Right now it is exactly how it sounds, encompassing sites that are obviously aimed at children. The FTC, however, wants to include sites that may, unintentionally, ATTRACT younger audiences. The Audience of any given site can’t have a disproportionately percentage of children. Who decides this? Is 20% disproportionate? 10%? It simply isn’t clear.
And here’s the catch 22. The ONLY way to know the demographic of your viewers is to collect data….but wait, isn’t that what this is trying to PREVENT?? Interesting. It also violates adults First Amendment right held up by the Supreme Court to access information anonymously.
According to arstechna.com’s Emma Llanso:
“COPPA is the only protect-the-children-from-the-Internet law passed in the late ‘90s that hasn’t been challenged in court. The Communications Decency Act (1996), the Child Pornography Prevention Act (1996), and the Child Online Protection Act (1998) each went to the Supreme Court and were all struck down due to First Amendment concerns about restricting access to information online...
COPPA hasn’t faced the same kind of challenge only because it has, so far, been narrowly focused and hasn’t interfered with adults’ or older minors’ access to constitutionally protected information. The FTC is proposing to radically alter that balance.”
My questions is at what point does responsibility of the online safety of our children fall from parents and guardians to lawmakers? There were few filtering devices in action when I was young. Only one that I can remember and her name was Mom and let me tell you it worked well. So how do you feel? This is the last weekend to submit your comments on the issue directly to the FTC: http://ftc.gov/opa/2012/08/coppa2.shtm
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