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FTC Fines Xanga for Violating Kids' Privacy
WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, the FTC has fined Xanga.com $1 million dollars for repeatedly allowing children under 13 to sign up for the service without getting their parent's consent. This is the largest penalty ever issued for violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act." From the article: "'Protecting kids' privacy online is a top priority for America's parents, and for the FTC,' FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said in a statement. 'COPPA requires all commercial Web sites, including operators of social networking sites like Xanga, to give parents notice and obtain their consent before collecting personal information from kids they know are under 13. A million-dollar penalty should make that obligation crystal clear.'" What impact, if any, do you think this will have on other community sites that may not always follow the COPPA statutes?
The FTC is trying to prevent child predators access to young children, a noble endeavor. The problem is that there are few good ways to confirm a person age online. If they disallow users under 13 from creating accounts, the users will lie about there age. If they want age confirmation, then it costs much more, and less people will wan tto go throug the trouble. I have credit cards but I am not about to use one online for age verification purposes. What about all the legitmate users over 13 that do not have the ability to confirm ones age. I don't know how a 15 year old would go about this online. A 15 year old would not have a drivers license, a credit card, or any other indentification. This will do nothing to help thier goals of protecting children.
That being said, they seem to have broken the law, it doesn't matter that the law has no value.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Sites will move their hosting out of the US, and their executives won't visit the US.
More realistically, social networking sites will add more verification layers (that don't work) for greater plausible deniability, and those that think they can, will start requiring credit card info.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
How do you prove that a kid got his parent's permission?
Have your parent click here [__] to proceed.
It's a shame that someone will actually have to pay a fine for this bullshit, but really, they shoulda known.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I thought they had none, according to the last case i heard of the government/school searching students at will. " children do not have the same rights as adults "...
Lets make up our minds, ok?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What more could they have done? They asked for age verification upon sign-up. No parent is going to give their thirteen year old child a credit card for the use of age verification on a site like that.
The policy makes sense, parents should know what their pre-teen children are doing. The problem is that this is the parents responsibility, not the website providing the service. It's one thing for a movie theater or porn-shop to let minors in, it's on their premises. These kids are (mostly) accessing the internet from their own home, where the parents should be able to monitor their activities.
There's only so much that can be done and putting a million dollar fine on Xanga is a completely ridiculous way to try and make the government look like it's actually doing something to help the problem. They're laying a huge portion of the blame in the wrong camp.
There is a problem, this is clearly an overzealous attempt at creating an appearance of action to hide the fact that there is simply nothing effective that they can really do. Xanga is the unfortunate victim.
What effect will the websites have on the law? That's the question I would ask.
Laws like this are clearly unenforceable. More importantly, it is not morally the website's job to police the people who visit it. It's the job of the parents. Legislators don't seem to win their positions based on campaigns of parental responsibility, however. The trend seems to be "blame everyone else for your kid's problems".
Look at the crap going on involving Grand Theft Auto: someone makes a game modification to show a tit, a tit that isn't even available without modifying the game, and tons of legislators go apeshit about how it's inappropriate for children. Clearly these people aren't worried about justice, and instead are worried about winning the votes of emotional parents, the Security Moms.
A reasonable argument can be made that, for example, liquor stores have a duty to prevent children from buying alcohol in them. However, you must also consider that it is extremely easy and reliable to verify the age of store patrons. No analogy exists online -- it is impossible.
Expecting websites to perform such policing is unquestionably unfair, and I suspect that the courts will agree. The law might have effect on some websites in the short term. In the long term, the websites will have the law overturned as unreasonable.
We just have to hope that the justices who hear these cases really have an interest in justice, unlike the legislators who passed these braindead laws in the first place.
America needs to raise its own damn children (and I say this as an American)
Because the US is all about avoiding blame and responsibility. It's why there's so many punitive lawsuits and lawyers in the country.
That's right. That's why my father always asked me to do these stupid things; "Hey you don't have rights! ONLY OBLIGATIONS AND DUTIES!" when he used to whip me while I was working to bring in the money as a 10yo. "When you grow up you can have your own kids who have no rights", he used to say. Oh the fond times we had.
The older you get, the more rights you get and the less obligations, because you're more human when you're older. When you're a child, you're just an oversized spermazoid that's nagging at your parents head constantly for toys and food and love and stuff... Which you only deserve when you're a REAL human person.
You could use children to heat you at night, by burning them in the stove, they don't have rights, they can't go to court! Ha! and you can make plenty more of them... LEGALLY! and free...
From TA: "Protecting kids' privacy online is a top priority for America's parents, and for the FTC," FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said in a statement. Apparently it's not enough of a priority to the parents with underage children signing up on Xanga, or these parents would be stepping in themselves.
Why are parents allowing their 12 year olds to surf the net without supervision?
It isn't the government's problem to solve - it belongs to the parents.
Of course, it's the US, so it'll never fall in the lap of the sperm & egg donor.
Okay this is getting on my nerves.. It really is because Slashdot makes no bloody sense!
We act like we weren't children and we'll be the ultimate parents. We'll know where our kids are 24/7 and have RFID tags in their penis to stop them getting anyone pregnant or whatever magic pixie dust solution it is.
50 years ago kids did stuff they shouldn't, 1000 years ago they did, even today they do. That's because it's what kids do. If they can't get on Xanga/MySpace/whatever at home they will find a way to do it. Beg, borrow or steal you'll not stop a kid who desires something you try to keep out of his hands.
We bitch about over-protective soccer mums and then act like every bad kid is bad because the parents didn't do "the right thing". SHUT UP ABOUT IT! Some kids are just bad, some kids are just nerds, some kids want to screw their mother. That is how life is, everyone is different and while on mass people are generally okay that does not mean there are no bad apples and "parenting" can fix the ones that are.
Some times it's not possible to babysit your kids every second of the day. You have other things to do and hope for the best, most of the time it works out and you get away with it but once in a while it doesn't. This is not bad parenting, this is being a HUMAN BEING. Maybe we should hand-cuff parents and kids together, after all it's not like mothers and fathers need to pee any more, so it's fine if their kids follow them every where right?
I know this is rather trollish but damn it, you guys need to get off your high horses and accept that parents are meer mortals just like us! They can't be in 6 places at once and some times the greater evil comes before going Big brother on their 12 year old reading e-mails from their friends about how awesomely cool Ninja turtles was this week.
I like muppets.
I don't know how a 15 year old would go about this online.
A Time magazine article from a month or two ago indicated that the state attorney general's were having panicked meetings regarding this issue (including the famous quote from the Connecticut AG along the lines of "if we can put a man on the moon, we can verify age online.")
For a time they actually considered requiring sites like Myspace to collect SSNs...and according to the article, they rejected the idea once they realized that most of the world does not have an SSN, but does use the internets.
If that doesn't give you an idea of the caliber of people we're dealing with, I dunno what would. Requiring teens to submit their SSNs to use these types of sites would be a disaster along biblical proportions--imagine how easy phishing would be--all you'd need to do is send out an email that claims it's from Xanga needing your SSN.
In short "think of the children" political rhetoric. Where is the parent in all this questionable legislation? What makes you think COPPA is valid globally? COPPA DOES exist to be a pain as well as political poll "feel good" points. Add to that the revenue in fines like this and it is business as usual in Washington, DC.
An unjust and unenforceable law can and should be overturned. If not by Congress then by the courts. Most ineffective laws that are passed like this one get shot down sooner or later.
You should have stopped right there but no, you go on with...
Horseshit! More of the "think of the children" rhetoric when the responsibility should lie solely and squarely in the hands of parents. If your child isn't savvy enough to figure out what information is "safe" to give, then they shouldn't have access to the internet unsupervised. That is the proper role of a parent. There is never a good reason to assign the role of parenting to the government.
Which makes COPPA even more unenforceable and harder to implement. Now, instead of one level of verification, a site owner has many to contend with. For every level of complexity in any law, there are at least 1000 gray areas that fall between those levels. It is a result of knee-jerk politically motivated legislation like COPPA that makes companies move offshore to avoid this silliness. Does that mean that they are any less accessable to those under 13? Again, COPPA is simply a "feel good and get reelected" piece of legislation that has no meaning outside of the US.
Again, what affect does this have globally? Just how are you going to enforce this globally? It is a US law valid only in the US. It is also easy to circumvent no matter how you dance around the issue. In short, it is an ineffective law enforced arbitrarily and capriciously based on morals inflicted by the government to do the job of parents.
Of course they are. Gotta finance the FTC somehow not to mention the vari