Comentary on Michigan and Utah Laws to Protect Children Online
Thursday, August 31st, 2006According to Direct Marketing News, two companies were recently charged with sending inappropriate emails to minors that were registered in their state e-mail registries. The only two states in the country that have “minor contact registries” like this are Utah and Michigan.
The idea is that a parent or guardian can register their child’s e-mail address with the state and that marketers are supposed to check their e-mail lists against the state registry before sending out solicitations.Â
I am not certain that this is a good solution to the problem of kids having access to adult materials, but I commend these two states for attempting to address the issue. I am happy to see that Michigan is also doing something about it besides just passing a law.
One thing that came to my mind in reading the story and perusing the laws is that many of us don’t really understand how adult material can come in contact with minors. There are a lot of ways that marketers are reaching out to minor audiences.
The most basic ways include:
- Web Pages Which Include Online Message Boards & Chat Rooms
- Instant Messaging Programs like AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Trillian, ICQ and more
- File Sharing (aka Peer to Peer or P2P) Programs Like Napster, GNUtella, KaZaA, and LimeWire
- E-Mail Messages
- SMS And Text Messages Through Mobile Phones
My belief is that laws to protect children must be much more all encompassing. Although e-mail messages to kids can contain adult materials, I don’t think that the most unscrupulous senders are going to use these registries anyway and certainly e-mail is only one way that adult material reaches kids.
This reinforces my belief that the best solution is to create a law that simply makes it illegal to allow access to pornographic material on a web page or through e-mail or through File Sharing or Instant Messaging or through cell phones unless the recipient or user enters a credit card first AND to disallow adult web site operators from offering “free samples”.
If a user is required to enter a credit card before accessing adult materials, and if adult website operators were prohibited from offering “free samples”, most underage users would be eliminated from access. The combination of these two rules could do a lot to make adult materials inaccessible to just anyone who can type in a web address on a computer.
A few people have told me that children (under 18) can access ATM cards and use them online but I think that the banks and other issuers of credit have ways to track their ages. Certainly they could get involved as well.
Banks and other issuers of credit can easily create some type of electronic token on every credit or ATM account that establishes the age of the user. That could easily be used to prevent underage users from going into pornographic sites.Â
Detailed Explanations of Various Popular Online Communication Methods
Web Pages
Message Boards are community sites where people can post messages and pictures to share with others online. These posters can be anyone of any age and should never be completely trusted. Also, anything that children post to a message board is viewable by the public at large so it is important to teach your children not to post personal information on message boards. Online message boards can be found at Yahoo, Google, and all over the web and cater to all types of interests. Below is a directory of the largest online message boards.
Chat Rooms are a lot like Message Boards, except that the messages are conveyed in real time, much like a conversation. They are also less permanent. Chat rooms often have several conversations going on at the same time on the same screen. Chat rooms can be part of a web page or can be downloadable software that works outside of a web page. Yahoo has chat rooms that cater to most any interest. Yahoo lists a directory at the link below.
Instant Messaging usually works outside of a web page. The software is downloadable onto your computer and then allows others to write you quick messages in real time and you can respond in real time. Instant messaging is offered by AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Trillian, and many other software providers.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging.htm
http://tinyurl.com/reeqq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3378647.stm
File Sharing Networks (aka Peer to Peer Networks or P2P) File Sharing is software that is downloaded to your computer that allows other computers to communicate directly to your’s over the Internet and to share files. This software is most commonly used for sharing illegal music files. It is estimated however that 35% of files shared contain pornographic materials. They can also contain viruses and other malicious software.Â
Some examples of these programs are Napster, GNUtella, KaZaA, and LimeWire. Explanations of these types of programs are in the links below.
http://tinyurl.com/r4dr4
http://tinyurl.com/m4chk
http://onguardonline.gov/p2p.htmlÂ
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/file-sharing.htm
http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5207254.html
http://tinyurl.com/qfhls
There are a few things to take from the above.
1. To protect their children, parents should educate themselves on the various ways that adult materials can be accessed online.
2. Any legislation to stop access of adult materials for children must consider all the possible ways that the material can be distributed.