The Future of the kids.us Internet Domain

MxReb0 writes "The National Telecommunications and Information Administration will host a half-day forum, entitled 'The kids.us Internet Domain: Developing a Safe Place on the Internet for Children.' kids.us is a new direction of the www, overseen by the Department of Commerce and now offering registration. The forum will address the current state of the kids.us domain and future content and applications for the space. Will only allowing .kids.us sites be the new direction for a kid-safe internet?"

Comments

Re:Kids.us domains are $100 per year!

[orthogonal]

Have any of you tried *registering* these domains? They're $100 per year!

Then it becomes more clear why the U.S. Dept. of Commerce is backing this: "kids.us" will be shorthand for "kids.advertised.to.by.us.corporations".

$100 is nothing for a company, but it's a bit steep for individuals or even not-for-profit sites.

So we will see "disney.kids.us" and "mattel.barbie.kids.us" and "sugary.breakfast.cereals.kids.us", but not "teach.yourself.origami.kids.us." or even "intractive.math.kids.us".

Eventually, a few non-profit sites will gets grants to set themselves up in the kids.us TLD, as fig-leaf to "prove" it's not purely for corporations.

Then you'll see astro-turfing groups funded by corporations and fronted by "Parents'" and "Christian" organizations agitate to restrict most library and public school machines to the "kids.us" TLD -- and a lot of schools (libraries tend to be a bit more thoughtful) will do this just to make life easier for lazy computer admins and controversy-fearing school system bureaucrats.

And then lazy parents will spend $59.95 on software filters that restrict home browsing to "kids.us".

Pretty soon, many homes and most schools and libraries will be locked down, and kids locked into, an internet that presents only approved corporate beliefs and, of course, massive amounts of advertising -- traditional and "product placement" -- directed at the captive audience of kids.

Then any site that desires to have kids as at audience at all will have to get a "kids.us" domain, and submit to the periodic governmental review of content that entails. Unpopular minority viewpoints will of course not be allowed "kids.us" domains: gays, minority religions, neo-Nazis, sex education, pro-gun, pro-abortion, all will be kept out "for the good of the children".

Even "disturbing" sites, like those with pictures of Nazi atrocities at death camps (not to mention the less terrible but still terrible U.S. atrocities at Abu Ghraib), or those discussing banned books will have to be toned down, made more bland and "life affirming". Just as pornography on the net is regulated by the "community standards" of the most restrictive communities, the Dept. of Commerce will come under pressure to apply Podunk's standards to the entire "kids.us" TLD.

Just as "[f]our members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee (1983) called for the rejection of [The Diary of Anne Frank] because it is a "real downer", school boards in Alabama, Tennessee and rural Pennsylvania will lobby the Dept. of Commerce censors to exclude web sites about Anne Frank or evolution or gay rights or Wicca. A careful blandness and a spurious "balance of opinions" will reign, just as it does in U.S. high school textbooks, the publishers of which must cater to the large and largely conservative Texas State Schoolboard's opinions: "evolution is an unproven theory, and many believe that an Intellgent Designer created mankind".

Since inclusion in the "kids.us" TLD will be voluntary, it will be claimed that government review of content isn't censorship, but sites will learn to self-censor to avoid attracting the government censors' attention. As more and more sites get involved in "kids.us", it will become taken for granted that government review of site content is normal and even good. Sites that don't submit to governmental content review will be marginalized and tainted by association: "if there is nothing bad on that site, how come they won't let the government check for it?" the typical parent or school principal will ask.

Effectively, "kids.us" will become a means for corporations to advertise to children, another place where dissenting opinions are tidied up and swept under the rug "for the children", a vehicle for producing another generation of safely bland and unopinionated consumers.