These are 3 of the best articles I have read in recent memory in terms of putting online safety risks in some perspective. Must reading:

David Pogue, NYT.com: "How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children?"

Larry Magid, CBS News.com: "Cyberbullying Vs. Free Speech"

Slashdot: "Spreading "1 in 5" Number Does More Harm Than Good"

Wow, look at the lineup for this Google and Stanford Law School event that I am speaking at next week as part of a "Legal Futures Summit," which is billed as "a conversation between some of the world's leading thinkers about the future of privacy, intellectual property, competition, innovation, globalization, and other areas of the law undergoing rapid change due to technological advancement."

I have no idea what I'll be saying at this event, but I'm really looking forward to just interacting with this impressive group of intellectual powerhouses. [Apparently the second day of the event--next Saturday--is open to the public. So Silicon Valley locals might want to come and hear the fun.] Anyway, here's the lineup...

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), Australia's content and communications regulatory agency, has just released a comprehensive new report on "Developments in Internet Filtering Technologies and Other Measures for Promoting Online Safety." It's 120 pages long and contains a survey of all the various tool and methods that Australians can use to deal objectionable online content or communications.

What I like best about the report is that the ACMA ultimately came to the exact same conclusion that I did after conducting a thorough review of these issues in my “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection” report. Namely, (1) there is no single "silver-bullet" technical solution (rather, some combination of many tools and methods must be used), and (2) education is essential. Here's how they put it on page 91 of the report:

"there is no single mitigation measure that is effective against all online risks. Neither is there a single mitigation measure that is effective in addressing even one category of online risks, that is, content risks, e-security risks and communications risks"...

"Education campaigns appear to be effective in addressing a broad range of online risks. Of the range of alternative risk mitigation measures, education is to the most effective measure in addressing risks associated with illegal online contact. Education is a viable alternative or supplement to filtering in targeting risks associated with inappropriate content, particularly for older children who may endeavor to circumvent filtering that they perceive to be restrictive. There is evidence from programs deployed in other countries that eduction can be deployed to address bullying."

Absolutely correct. As I argued in my report, "there isn’t any one, silver bullet tool or method that will get the job done on its own. ... [W]e will need to adopt a 'layered' approach to parental controls and online child protection to do the job right" that involves a combination of "rules, tools, schools, and talk" with education at the heart of all those strategies.

I suspect many of these issues will be considered by the new Internet Safety Technical Task Force that I will be serving on and which I discussed here this week. The Australian report will serve as a good resource for us as we begin our review.

Business Week has an article posted on its website concerning children and the media. Specifically, it discusses updating the children's broadcast media regulations to cover all types of digital media - from the Internet to cell phones. Of particular concern to the author are lack of standards for educational media and the proliferation of "digital marketing."

Her suggestions to update the Children's Television Act to encompass digital media include:

• Reach out to industry.
• Create research-based universal standards for what constitutes educational content.
• Build new, ad-free business models for sites targeting children.
• Increase transparency and labeling of sponsored digital content.

It's hard to argue with the author's concerns about ensuring children are exposed to educational and appropriate content, but most of her suggestions raise a red flag. I'm not sure why the author assumes it's the government role to micromanage the content on barbie.com or, for that matter, online business models. This dangerous creep of government intervention could be used to justify further regulation of the Internet. The labeling of sponsored digital content would also be a logistical nightmare and impossible to enforce in light of the global nature of the Internet. Not to mention, this raises serious concerns about free speech.

As Adam Thierer thoroughly illustrates in his report, Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods, parents are not completely at the mercy of media companies or their children's whims. Parental controls are widely available for all types of media platforms. Video entertainment is hardly limited to over-the-air broadcasting. Many television stations geared at children are commercial free. DVDs and DVRs allow parents to create libraries of content they find suitable and educational for their children without government intervention. In short, parents can easily tailor their children's media consumption to suit their own tastes and values without government oversight.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School has just announced the formation of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, and they were kind enough to ask me to serve as a member. According to the press release they sent out this morning:

The Task Force will evaluate a broad range of existing and state-of-the-art online safety technologies, including a review of identity authentication tools to help sites enforce minimum age requirements. The Task Force is a central element of the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by MySpace and the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking. Fifty Attorneys General adopted the “Joint Statement” with the goal of improving online safety standards industry-wide.

[I discussed the details of that My Space-AG “joint statement in this report back in January.] The Task Force is composed of industry-leading Internet businesses, non-profit organizations, and technology companies, including: AOL, Aristotle, AT&T, Bebo, Center for Democracy & Technology, Connectsafely.org, Comcast, Enough is Enough, Facebook, Google, the Family Online Safety Institute, iKeepSafe, the Institute for Policy Innovation, Linden Lab, Loopt, IDology, Microsoft, MySpace, NCMEC, Progress and Freedom Foundation, Sentinel Tech, Symantec, Verizon, WiredSafety.org, Xanga, and Yahoo! The Task Force will be chaired by John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center.

Over the past year, I have been very active on many of the issues that will be at the core of the task force’s mission, including the identify authentication / age verification debate. For those who might be interested, I've included the relevant PFF studies and links down below the fold. I'm looking forward to working with the other members of the Task Force to conduct a comprehensive review of these issues. I'm sure I will be reporting here occasionally on our progress.

As I mentioned way back in 2005, the specter of FCC content controls for cell phone and other mobile media devices is growing. And, according to this new Radio Ink report, it's now under serious consideration at the FCC:

FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate says the FCC is looking into how its indecency regulations could extend to the increasing availability of audio and video content delivered to mobile devices. In a recent speech delivered at the Association of National Advertisers Advertising Law and Business Affairs Conference, Tate said, "As we enter the age of content delivery over mobile devices, there is a whole new set of questions to address regarding how to provide ratings, how to block objectionable content, and whether the FCC has a role to play in this arena."

To be fair, Commissioner Tate also praised the voluntary steps that industry has already taken to empower parents to deal with this privately. And Tate also said that, "market-based solutions are the best way to achieve our shared goals and to provide parents the tools they need to be the first line of defense for their children." But the threat of more aggressive intervention by the FCC still looms in light of her earlier comments. Stay tuned; much more to come on this front.

If the comments of some lawmakers and video game critics were any guide, the public would be led to believe that most video games are filled with explicit violence or sexual themes. But that's a myth. The fact is, as I pointed out in my 2006 PFF study "Fact and Fiction in the Debate Over Video Game Regulation," the vast majority of video games are appropriate for young kids. That is, the majority of video games are rated "E" for "Everyone" or "E 10+" for “Everyone 10 and older" by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).

I decided to put together an updated chart illustrating this fact in preparation for a keynote address I will be delivering at a Penn State University conference in early April entitled, "Playing to Win: The Business and Social Frontiers of Videogames." Here is the breakdown of ratings by major category from 2003-2007.

One of the many reasons that those of who us cherish free markets and limited government oppose net neutrality regulation is because we believe it will be a major step down the slippery slope to far more comprehensive regulation of the Internet. Once we let this regulatory genie out of the bottle and the bureaucrats get their tentacles around the Net, a host of other misguided restrictions on Internet activities will likely follow.

One of the more destructive of these potential outcomes would be full-blown structural separation of broadband networks, such that government would force network owners to spin off their retail arms and become pure wholesalers of access (on government-set terms and price-controlled rates, of course). In a nutshell, this is the old regulatory playbook that did very little to benefit consumers or competition. Amazingly, however, we already have someone suggesting it as the logical next step after we get done slapping net neutrality mandates on the Internet. Writing in the Boston Globe on Saturday, David Weinberger a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center, says we need to take the next step and think about busting up broadband networks into atomistic bits:

“An Internet delivered by a tiny handful of old-technology providers, even if constrained by Net neutrality, doesn't get us to the second vision. It doesn't give us access laid like a blanket over the entire country, rich and poor alike. It doesn't give us a Net that we make together, rather than a Net the contents of which we consume. For that, we need more than Net neutrality. We need a structural change. We gave the incumbent providers their chance. They have failed. The FCC could decide to once again require them to act as wholesalers to local Internet Service Providers, which would offer genuine competition on price, access, reliability, services, and whatever other differentiators an open market would devise.”

Back in 2002, Wayne Crews and I penned a paper for Cato entitled, “The Digital Dirty Dozen: The Most Destructive High-Tech Legislative Measures of the 107th Congress,” and we named a structural separation proposal floating through Congress at that time as the single most destructive measure of the year. What we said then of structural separation for older wireline telecom networks is every bit as true today regarding proposals to impose structural separation on broadband networks--perhaps even more so since we would be talking about structural separation for telco, cable and wireless networks. As Wayne and I argued back in '02:

I hate to disagree with my friend Larry Magid, a technology analyst for CBS News, who writes this week in favor of a uniform online sales tax regime. Magid says he "can't think of any good reason why customers of online retailers should shop tax-free while people who spend their money locally have to pay sales tax." Well, I've got a couple of good reasons, Larry.

Back in 2003, Veronique de Rugy [now of the Mercatus Center] and I penned a lengthy Cato Institute white paper on this issue entitled, "The Internet Tax Solution: Tax Competition, Not Tax Collusion." In that study, we addressed the arguments in favor of the so-called Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP) and noted that a move toward more simplified tax regimes was certain laudable. In reality, however, the effort by states to build a "uniform" sales tax regime for online sales was less about achieving simplicity and more about raising taxes and imposing tax collection burdens on interstate commerce. Veronique and I pointed out that this created both economic and constitutional concerns since the SSTP was tantamount to a state-run sales tax cartel:

Ahead of next week's FCC en banc hearing at Harvard Law School to discuss network traffic management and net neutrality, The Wall Street Journal today published this article by me and George Gilder.

The petitions under consideration at the FCC and the Markey net neutrality bill would set an entirely new course for U.S. broadband policy, marking every network bit and byte for inspection, regulation and possible litigation. Every price, partnership, advertisement and experimental business plan on the Net would have to look to Washington for permission. Many would be banned. Wall Street will not deploy the needed $100 billion in risk capital if Mr. Markey, digital traffic cop, insists on policing every intersection of the Internet.