NEWS The European parliament is now working on a recommendation for a proposal on "the protection of children and human dignity" in the audiovisual and information services world.
Parliament member and editor of the proposal, Marielle de Sarnez, is recommending the creation of a new generic top level domain, .kid, which will be reserved for "permanently monitored sites which would undertake to respect minors and their rights, on pain of criminal penalties".
Marielle de Sarnez told AFP: "The latest statistics show that time spent on the internet by young people is now greater than that spent in front of the television. At the same time, there are currently around 260 million pornographic pages available on the web."
The text proposed by the European parliament will now be examined by the Council members, before eventually being put before members of the European parliament for a second reading.
Comments
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1. Mike Bruce
The proposed .kid legislation sounds fine - in principle.
The problem remains the enforcement of such 'permanent monitoring' of unsuitable sites set up in countries where the authorities would turn a blind eye to illegal content.
There is, alas, a further problem, which is with the very section of the population that we wish to protect, namely our kids. Such is the nature of children that probably the last websites they would visit would be those in the .kid domain - they would consider it patronising.
I would have thought that the most promising line of prevention would be to increase detection of the promoters of illegal sites. 'Follow the money' is the usual dictum here.
Not an easy problem to solve!
2. Adam
As the father of 2 girls, I'm always interested in means of protecting them from the extremes of the Internet.
However, I have to agree with Mike that actually putting this into practice will be a great deal harder than setting up the TLD in the first place (which is no trivial matter in itself, when you consider the number of years it’s taken for the EU to set up the .eu TLD!).
Who will pay for all this 'permanent monitoring’? Sites that are aimed at younger children should (if they are really child friendly) not contain too much (or any) advertising or e-commerce. If the monitoring costs are reflected in the domain registration fees, then many child-friendly sites won't be able to afford to use the TLD.
The next question is who sets the standards about what is 'child-friendly'? The question about where to draw moral and ethical lines is one that affects the entire Internet, not just kid’s sites. What one country may deem perfectly acceptable for kids (look at some of the magazines targeted at under 16 girls in Europe and the US, and see if they would be acceptable in Muslim countries, or even some of the more fundamental Christian communities springing up these days). Would advice about sex, contraception and abortion to under 16 year olds be acceptable in these places?
The last point is that 'kids' come in a wide range of sizes and abilities. How does a parent of a 5-year old know that a .kid site is suitable for them? If it's aimed at 15 year olds, it's probably not.
Ultimately, the only way to protect your children on-line is to supervise and educate them. If you don't have the knowledge to educate them, get it. Lack of time is not an excuse, in the same way claiming you didn't have time to learn to drive is not an excuse for driving a car without learning too first.