State of Online Safety Report
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State of Online Safety Report 2008 A FOSI Publication Copyright 2007 ISBN 978-0-9801970-0-6 All Rights Reserved by the Family Online Safety Institute and contributors No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any menas – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the permission of the Family Online Safety Institute, 666 11th Street NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20001 +1.202.654.4228 The views and opinions expressed in this report are not necessarily those of the Family Online Safety Institute, its Board of Directors or staff. State of Online Safety Report 2008 2 Table of Contents Page Preface & Acknowledgements, Stephen Balkam 4 I United States, Adam Thierer 6 II United Kingdom, Chris Holder 27 III Germany, Thomas Rickert 37 IV Australia, Australian Communications and Media Authority 45 V Canada, Merlyn Horton & Jay Thompson 61 VI Austria, Michael Eisenriegler & Romana Cravos 73 VII Netherlands, Marjolijn Bonthuis & Marjolijn Durinck 79 VIII Belgium and Europe, Rudi Vansnick 89 IX Mexico, Armando Novoa & Marie-Claire Hernandez 95 State of Online Safety Report 2008 3 Preface Stephen Balkam CEO, Family Online Safety Institute The state of online safety is in flux. At no time in (our brief, digital) history, have so many tools to filter, monitor and control content and behavior been available to parents, teachers, employers and other concerned adults. And yet, the flood of digital images, videos, text and sound tracks threatens to overwhelm our defenses. Governments and regulators take steps to deal with this issue with vastly varying levels of success and legality. The large, amorphous “internet industry” makes efforts to self-regulate and offer assistance and help to parents and consumers with mixed results. Parents, themselves, awaken to the realization that they have a vital and growing role to play in protecting their kids. And educators, researchers and the non-profit organizations do what they can to track, study, and respond to the new realities of our always on, digital world. The State of Online Safety Report 2008 is our first attempt to take an international snap shot of the incredibly diverse and innovative attempts to keep kids safe online, while also respecting free expression. What began as a look at just five countries has blossomed into an account of twice that many as more and more international contributors offered their analyses. We expect that our next, annual report, will grow even larger to reflect the extraordinarily rich diversity and broad range of activity now taking place throughout the world. What you will find here is a range of voices, statistics, examples and efforts from some of the leading experts in the field. What each writer has attempted to do is to lay out the state of online safety in their country by listing and describing current and proposed legislation, existing educational efforts and the many technology tools and devices created to help protect kids. There is also some analysis and commentary on where the trends are leading and what the writer sees as signs of optimism or concern. It is a subjective synopsis, an individual assessment of what exists and what is coming. For if there is one recurring theme, it is the ever changing, technologically challenging, transitory-ness of this subject that makes it so invigorating and infuriating at the same time. There is no one law, no one technology, no one awareness campaign that will fix this. We are embarked on a journey without end. As we catch up with and provide solutions to technologies and content that could prove harmful to kids, new devices, new strange meeting places spring up and thwart our earlier efforts and consign them and their websites to the archives. (Have a look at some earlier attempts at www.archives.org!) And yet, we must not give up or abdicate our responsibilities as parents, as teachers, as industry leaders or as government officials. We have a generation to guide and young lives to protect. We also must preserve our centuries old State of Online Safety Report 2008 4 freedom to speak and to assemble and to express ourselves in our infinitely varied ways, so that this generation of kids will inherit these rights and take on the unenviable task of protecting the next generation from whatever and wherever the new technology and the ingenuity of programmers take us. Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my good friend, Adam Thierer, not only for his excellent chapter on the US, but also for his early contributions and suggestions for this report. Thanks, also, to Jillian Hess for her invaluable edits, notes and queries. To my colleague, Samantha Woolfe for her tireless work editing and working with the authors on their contributions, securing the chapters you see before you and assembling the many contributions that came from many lands. And to all our contributors who have provided us a unique insight into their country’s attempt to both protect kids and free expression in our ever changing online world. State of Online Safety Report 2008 5 Chapter I: The United States by Adam Thierer Senior Fellow, The Progress & Freedom Foundation, USA Overview Over the past dozen years, concerns about online child safety and access to objectionable material have prompted a great deal of legislative activity in the United States. Most attempts to legislate in this area, however, have been struck down by the Supreme Court and various lower courts as a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. The First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech,” has been viewed as an impediment on most attempts to directly control or curtail objectionable online speech or content. The crucial factor cited in each of the courts’ decisions is the so-called “less restrictive means” test. For example, in striking down the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which sought to ban the transmission of materials that were “obscene or indecent,” the Supreme Court declared in Reno v. ACLU (1997) that a law which places a “burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving” the same goal.1 This “less restrictive means” test has been cited in several others cases, and US courts have rejected efforts to regulate cable television and violent video game content on similar grounds.2 In the short term, therefore, it appears likely that as long as there are a respectable number of private parental control tools on the market to allow families to independently control underage access to objectionable content or communications, US courts will continue to reject most efforts by lawmakers to enact regulatory solutions to child safety concerns. Fortunately, a vibrant market of private parental control tools and methods has developed in the United States over the past decade. As will be detailed below, parents can utilize a wide variety of tools, sites, and strategies to help them decide what is acceptable in their homes for their children. Many educational and awareness-building efforts have also been created by industry and non-profit organizations. Indeed, there are so many private efforts underway that it has become difficult to keep track of them all. The private programs and services highlighted below are only a short list of what is available. 1 Reno v. ACLU, 521 US 844 (1997). 2 See Adam Thierer, “Fact and Fiction in the Debate over Video Game Regulation,” Progress & Freedom Foundation Progress Snapshot 13.7, March 2006, www.pff.org/issues- pubs/pops/pop13.7videogames.pdf State of Online Safety Report 2008 6 These private efforts, however, have not been matched by government efforts. Online child safety educational and awareness-building efforts are practically non-existent at the federal government level and state and local governments have only recently begun creating online safety plans and programs. Basic Stats According to a March 2007 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 71 percent of all US adults use the Internet.3 Another recent Pew survey noted that American teenagers were online more now than ever before. According to a Pew survey from late 2006, 93 percent of all Americans between 12 and 17 years old use the Internet. By contrast, in 2004, 87 percent were Internet users, and in 2000, 73 percent of teens were online.4 Pew has also found that more than half (55%) of the 12 to 17 year old American youths use online social networking sites.5 That Pew survey also revealed that parents have established a wide variety of rules for Internet use by their teenage children. The survey found that 69 percent of parents limit how much time their children can spend online and 85 percent have rules about which Internet websites they can and cannot visit.6 The survey also noted that 74 percent of homes with teenagers have their computers in an “open family area.”7 That result was consistent with Pew surveys taken in 2004 and 2000. Similarly, a June 2007 poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that, overall, “Parents say they are gaining control over their children's exposure to sex and violence in the media, but they remain more broadly concerned about inappropriate content in the media.”8 Specifically, the survey found that: Z 65 percent of parents feel they closely monitor their children’s media use; 3 http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_6.15.07.htm 4 Ibid. 5 Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden, Teens, Privacy, and Online Social Networks, Pew Internet & American Life Project, April 18, 2007, p. 3, http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_SNS_Data_Memo_Jan_2007.pdf 6 Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden, Teens, Privacy, and Online Social Networks, Pew Internet & American Life Project, April 18, 2007, p.