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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
How do you prove that a kid got his parent's permission?
Have your parent click here [__] to proceed.
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)
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.