Living in a flattened, digital world

2:08:41 PM EST
The much awaited and long heralded release of the new operating system from Microsoft, code-named, Vista, has been pushed back once again.  This time to January 2007.  Microsoft seem concerned about continuing security problems and want to ensure the product is as protected from viruses and other breaches as it can be. 



The postponement puts off until the new year the prospect of having parental controls within the world's leading operating system.  A new feature, Family Safety Settings will offer parents an integrated parental control system embedded in the operating system.  These will be based on the existing MSN parental controls, which in turn run on RuleSpace technology.  RuleSpace, in turn, uses ICRA labels to help determine how a site is treated - whether it is blocked or allowed.  We expect the impact in level of awareness and the use of parental controls will increase dramatically once word gets out that there is a free and integrated filtering device within the operating system.  Let's hope we don't have to wait much longer.


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12:15:41 PM EST
On Tuesday of this week, thirty remarkable people gathered at Yahoo!'s Sunnyvale campus in Silicon Valley for the third in a series of ICRA Roundtables.  This one was entitled, Sex, lies and metadata: Promoting trust, quality and child protection in our newly flattened, digital content world.  Verizon sponsored and Yahoo! hosted the event and executives from companies such as Google, Microsoft, AT&T, AOL attended together with many from the NGO world such as TRUSTe, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Children Now.  Adam Theirer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation opened with a high level overview of the parental control versus freedom of expression landscape and provided an excellent summary at the end of our three hour discussion.  On ICRA's behalf I moderated a series of three panels which took different themes to uncover the major challenges facing the industry, legislators and parents in this constantly changing digital environment.



What was made clear right at the beginning is that there is no one technical solution to this problem: labeling must be combined with filtering together with URL block lists and artificial intelligence.  Also, there is no one public policy stance or law that can somehow cover there area of potentially harmful material.  Governments, regulators, and industry leaders must find a way to create a self-regulatory regime which is robust and that satisfies the legitimate concerns of legislators to be seen to be doing something in this highly sensitive area.

Finally, there is no one single public education message that will deal with this issue.  Unlike the very simple Smoking Kills health warnings on cigarettes, messages must be created and directed separately at parents, at teachers, at employers and, of course, at children across a wide range of ages and abilities.

As the discussion developed three themes emerged.  Firstly, we need to learn how to deal with a world of organically-generated content   where every man, woman, and child can be a publisher or broadcaster.  This is what some academics have called the "We-dia” world (as in We Media).  Further, the  problem used to be what kids could see or download.. but now the bigger problem is what kids will upload about themselves and others.  The continuing headlines over the MySpace.com is only the tip of that particular iceberg, while the use of cell phones, webcams and digital cameras to document and publish the intimate details of a teens (and younger child's) life is emerging as a considerable problem.  This then raises the question of what we consider “community standards” in a world where the community you’re talking to can be the entire planet.

Secondly,  who will be the new gatekeepers?  We use to talk about “gatekeepers,” “walled gardens,” and corporate social responsibilities.  But how do those notions translate to our new Multimedia Universe?  It is most likely that the oldest & biggest players will be called upon first to play this role - the large, incumbent telcos that have had a long tradition of government regulation and oversight.  But for the newer players and web based services, from search to social networking sites,  it’s simply not feasible to review everything out there.  The question is: Will they be forced to do so?  This raises concerns about new liability standards or the “deputizing the middleman” approach.  Also, will public and policymakers flock to a universal ratings or labeling scheme?

Lastly, the big problem is that there is no single, simple solution out there.  We know that many good systems and tools already do exist. How can we get more parents to embrace current or future solutions?  Are there methods of incentivizing parents to use the tools?  Of course, these tools and methods have to be easy to use.  But even when it is easy—as with the V-Chip—there doesn’t seem to be much take-up of the technology. Adam Theirer called this the “If you build it, they will come” fallacy.  Others openly questioned whether we have reached the limits of what technology can do. We use to joke that the government was always one step behind technology.     But now it appears that technological solutions are well behind technological innovation.

So, to summarize these 3 challenges in one sentence, Adam offered this:

In a multimedia “we-dia” world, who will mind the kids if technology is moving faster than the solutions?

Parents will try to do as much as they can, of course, but they are drowning in a world of information overload and are going to expect more help from us.  If we don’t give it, they will start to turn to lawmakers with greater regularity for them to solve this problem.

As I concluded the session, I reminded those present of the 3 R's at they apply to our endeavor:  Rights - it goes without saying that we support and defend the free expression rights of content providers providing what is being "said" is legal.  With those rights, go the concomitant responsibilities for everyone involved in content creation and distribution to get behind and use the self-regulatory tools and methods - such as labeling and filtering - to keep children safe from potentially harmful material.  And finally, parents must make rules within their own homes and regarding their children's use of the web, whether on the family PC or on a mobile device or phone. 

This Roundtable ended with a commitment by ICRA to take these issues forward to future events planned for New York in September and Washington in December.  The hoped for output would be a joined up approach by a wide range of industry, government and non-profit leaders to create a rapid response team-like approach to the ever more complex and challenging problems thrown up by our new media age. 

For a fuller discussion on this, please read Adam Theirer's write up of the Roundtable at his blog: http://blog.pff.org/archives/2006/02/thoughts_on_the.html




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2:40:08 PM EST
Today is Safer Internet Day 2006 - part of an European-wide effort to raise awareness of online safety.  To mark it, I've contributed to a 24-hour blogathon.  Take a look at the extraordinary range of entries and comments.  My entry is repeated below:



Today, kids can walk around with the Internet in their pockets.  The video iPod, the Sony Playstation Portable, mobile phones and PDAs can all access digital content unimaginable even during the dot com bubble.  We face an unprecedented challenge to protect children from the worst of the web while directing them to the best, most trusted, quality digital content, no matter what device that content is delivered on.

We at ICRA, the Internet Content Rating Association, believe it is possible to both protect the rights of content providers to express themselves, without the need for censorship, while providing parents, teachers and other concerned adults the tools to protect children from potentially harmful or offensive material.   We do this through an expertly created, content description system that allows web creators to self-label their content with a machine-readable tag or meta-data.  This tag is then read by parental control filters and if the content is filtered out if it exceeds what the parents want their child to see. 

Content labelling and filtering is only one part of the solution.  Because the world of digital content is so vast and growing at an exponetial rate, we need a range of technical solutions that include artificial intelligence, URL block lists, word and image screening to piece together a comprehensive method to block unwanted material.  We need a multitude of safety messages geared specifically for parents, for children, for teachers and for employers.  And gonvernments have a legitimate role in ensuring existing laws impact on this new world without impeding the growth and innovation that has brought us such enormous benefits.

I know as a father how difficult it can be to keep up with my daughter's interest and curiousity on the web; encourgaging her to seek out and find text, photos and video for her homework projects or just for fun.  I also know how just a simple slip of the keyboard or an innocent online search can take her off into areas I would never allow her to go in the "real" world.  I have to find the right balance of caution and warnings while allowing her a growing freedom to reach out and discover for herself. 

That's the challenge: to find the balance between fear of harm and the joy of tapping into the world's richest source of information, amusement and fun.  It is an unprecedented undertaking - to find a way for governments, industry players and NGOs to work internationally to allow this new medium the room to grow, while finding the right touch of government oversight, industry self-regulation and parental involvement.  Watch this space...



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7:51:41 PM EST
In Washington, DC yesterday, the US Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) held hearings on protecting children on the Internet.  This came after a morning hearing on indency on television.  The themes of both hearings were similar: how do we protect our kids from the worst of what's on offer on both TV and the internet.  Sen. Stevens described the web as worse than TV for its offensive and harmful material.  Yet children need the web - for homework, for instance, in a way they don't need television.  What to do?



Senator Innouye (D-Hawaii) reminded everyone that the Committee had wresteled with this issue for years and that technology had "made a diffucult problem more difficult".  First up was Senator Lincoln (D-Arkansas) who stated that this issue weighed heavily on parents, who are, as she put it, the "first line of defense".  The Internet is transforming the way children grow up and kids are accessing more and more porn from home.  She said that the average age a child is exposed to online porn in the United States is eleven.  She called on the industry for new and better blocking technologies to counter the burgeoning $12 billion porn business - of which $2.5 billion came from online porn sites.

Other statistics that were brought up in the course of the two and a half hour hearing included:

- from 1998 to 2003 the number of porn sites increased from 14 million to 260 million - nearly one for every person in the US

- 34 million adults visited an adult site in the US in one month in 2003

- there are, on average, 60 million unique visitors per day on adult web sites

- only 8% of parents actually use parental filters (although with AOL users, this percentage is much higher)

Various Senators used phrases such as "an explosion of porn on the Internet" and an "avalanche of new technologies" to describe the situation law makers and the nation are now confronting.  And the advent of mobile internet devices has made a difficult situation more severe.

One of the early panelists, James Weaver, a Professor of Psychology from Virginia Tech stated that protecting children onthe Internet was "one of the most complex problems of our time."  Headmitted that no single solution was going to provide a complete answer.  He felt that porn was being legitimized by mainstream, multi-national corporations - most of the major hotel chains, for instance, provide hard core porn as part of their "service".  He made reference to some recent studies that looked at the impact online porn is having on the generation now coming of age and the devastating effect it creates in some young people in forming normal, intimate relationships.  He went to argue that Internet porn is the leading tool for sex education in the US - a very disturbing development. 

Weaver called for an extensive public education camapaign, questioned whether online porn should be described as "commercial speech" and therefore have less protection under the First Amendment and wondered out loud how we were going to respond to the threat of mobile porn.

In contrast, Paul Cambria, General Counsel of the Adult Freedom Foundation and lawyer to many in the adult industry, put up a rousing defense of the industry.  He declared that the "industry" had a willingess to fashion effective solutions and that "self-rating of material could dovetail with filters".  He wanted a structured dialogue with all concerned to find a way for the adult industry to self-regulate and to mesh with existing parental controls.  At which point, Senator Stevens forcefully interjected, "Do it soon or we'll mandate it!"  Stevens also remarked, "Industry has not shouldered this burden yet." and other Senators said that members of Congress were incensed with the current situation. 

Dr. Weaver concluded by describing what he called " a public health education crisis" not unlike the early days of the campaigns against smoking or drunk drivers.  He felt that society was not saying anything about the problems posed by widespread access by children of porn as tacit acceptance and approval. 

Cambria finished his remarks by saying the adult industry was here to cooperate and to make the filters work.  "If we rate (our content) then we can accomplish these goals".



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9:57:35 AM EST
Here is an extraordinary development that has far reaching implications for how children are protected online, the privacy of users, the free speech rights of content providers and the autonomy of search engines and other major portals on the Internet.

Feds after Google data

RECORDS SOUGHT IN U.S. QUEST TO REVIVE PORN LAW
 
Check out the whole story here.


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12:29:55 PM EST
I was walking down 11th Street here in downtown Washington, DC yesterday and a middle-aged man walked towards me talking rather loudly.  I looked up to check to see if he was speaking to me and, if so, whether he was friendly or not.  From the expression on his face and the way he carried on talking, I could tell he wasn't addressing me.  My next thought was that he might be on the phone, so I quickly checked to see if he had an ear piece and/or a wire with a microphone dangling from his head.  He didn't, but I could only see his right side.  In a further split second, I listened into his "conversation" and looked once more for signs of sanity or the lack thereof.  And then he was gone.  This all took place in a matter of moments.



This encounter reminded me of a conversation I had with the CEO of a medium-sized Korean mobile phone company at a GBDe conference lunch in Kuala Lumpur.  I told him excitedly about the new mobile devices I had seen at a GSM Association conference in Cannes earlier in the year.  Catwalk models wore flexible screens on their sleeves.  Others pulled out screens like scrolls from tiny handsets.  One simply wore a pair of glasses (with a fetching dress, of course!).  What was remarkable about her specs was that she was on the phone - a microphone in the bridge over her nose and the receiver in the curl of glasses over her ears.  And that's not all.  She also had fitted two of the world's smallest video screens - smaller than a thumbnail, inserted into the corners of each lens. 

My lunch colleague listened patiently and when I was all done, he leant forward conspiritorially and said, "You should see what we're working on."  He then proceeded to describe a research project that entirely cut out the middle man (or woman).  Pointing to his eyes and ears he said, "We don't actually see and hear with these.  We see and hear from here."  And with this he made a grand gesture and touched the back of my head.  "We are working on implanting a chip in a person's occipital lobe and simply sending voice and visual images directly to the place the brain actuall processes this information.  There will be no need for a device or gadget." 

Yes, I thought, no need for a phone - just surgery.  Can you imagine the consequences?  We would certainly not be able to tell who was on the "phone" anymore.  This kind of advance, which before my conversation I had assumed would be laughed at as poor science fiction, would have a profound impact on what we think of as "normal" sensory experiences.  If a chip could stimulate an image in our head, what is it we would be "seeing".  If we heard voices in our head, how could we tell which were "real".  And would we get a "busy" signal?  I felt a little dizzy after our conversation and went to lie down.  Now, how about a chip to allow us to download our dreams first thing in the morning.  Dreamware anyone?



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9:53:07 AM EST
The following is a blatant and unabashed plug for a wonderful, inspirational and just plain fun experience.  Check out the Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun by Canadian Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons.  It's an amusing and illuminating slide show of words, images and Strauss' Blue Danube.  Not to be missed!





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4:34:16 PM EST
What are we to make of this year's annual tech-fest, the Consumer Electronics Show or CES, that just concluded in Las Vegas?  There was the usual hype, glitz and glamor.  Technical demonstrations broke down in mid-flow, proving once again that the definition for technology is:  it doesn't quite work yet.  There was a new standards war to get bothered about - the fight over the next generation of DVD.  Will it be Blu-Ray (backed by Sony) or will it be HD-DVD (created by Toshiba and supported by Microsoft, amongst others)?  And there was the expected flury of announcements, deals done, and marketing mania to satisfy the geekiest of gadget lovers.



What I think was remarkable was the dominant presence of both Yahoo! and Google at what is, after all, a product show.  Their first-time paticipation in the show accentuated another aspect that is truly remarkable - the widely held assumption that the convergence of different media is already upon us.  Movie and TV stars talked up the software, hardware and wetware of companies making mobile phones, PCs, television sets and portable game consoles.  Search engines lay down with entertainment houses.  Phone companies touted their latest video output.  Computer chip manufacturers declared the intentions on our living rooms and remote controls.  Everyone was in everyone else's territory and nothing was sacred.  The walls were coming down and even the distinctions made in the conference program and exhibition halls seemed to make less and less sense.

What will all of this mean for parents, policy makers and ordinary human beings trying to make sense of this new digital landscape?  For one thing, the onslaught of digital mult-media of all kinds has only just begun.  As the penetration of broadband becomes more pervasive, and the access to the internet becomes easier and faster across a range of devices, we will simply be able to call up whatever digital experience we want, whenever we want it.  And our children will probably be leading the way in the adoption and take-up of these new ways to consume content.  Protecting kids from the worst of this while directing them to the best will engage many in the industry and beyond as we all try to leave Las Vegas.


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10:51:21 AM EST

There is a remarkable new, open-ended, virtual world out there and it’s accessible by anyone with an internet-enabled device.   Second Life was created by Linden Lab of San Francisco and it is a world where most of the content and the objects are created by the “residents” themselves.  Those who populate Second Life do so with what are called “avatars” or human-like digital creatures who can walk, talk, buy, sell, create, perhaps even procreate with other residents “in-world”.

A couple of weeks ago I moved in and took on the persona of a young man (I could just have easily been an old woman) with a new name, physical attributes, an endless wardrobe of possibilities and (wonderfully) the ability to fly.  Within moments of entering my new world, I was approached (by e-mail) to see if I wanted to join one of the many social groups that exist in-world.  There are groups for gamblers, Goths, Bad Girls and clubbers.  There is a constant backdrop of chatter as the instant messaging tool keeps you updated with all the interactions of the nearby residents as you move through various parts of this new, compelling world.

Another intriguing aspect to Second Life is the ability of its residents to create objects, services and even practical advice for the other users and to charge for them.  The currency used is the Linden dollar, also known as the Linden or, cutely, L$.  Joining Second Life is free and you are given 50 Linden Dollars for each week you log in.  If you opt for the premium accounts, you receive L$500 each week and the ability to own a small area of land, which brings with it the chance to build your dream home in your own virtual world.

For anyone who has ever played SimCity or Sims, you will get some idea of the addictive nature of Second Life.  However, what is different is the ability in real time to relate to “others”, get involved socially, create products and services and even hold debates and teach-ins.   Larry Lessig is due to “speak” with the Second Lifers soon.  And there are now web sites that bridge the gap between real life (or half-jokingly referred to as First Life or RL) and Second Life experiences, interests and money-making enterprises.

So what about rules?  Can anyone say or do anything they please in this new world?  In a fascinating section of the web site, there is a kind-of Six Commandments of Second Life.  That shalt not:

-      be intolerant

-      harass others

-      assault residents (no shooting, pushing or shoving – in that order!)

-      disclose others personal information

-      be indecent

-      Disturb the Peace

The Community Standards of Second Life go on to state:

“All areas of Second Life,… adhere to the same Community Standards. Locations within Second Life are noted as Safe or Unsafe and rated Mature (M) or non-Mature (PG), and behavior must conform to the local ratings. Any unrated area of Second Life or the Second Life website should be considered non-Mature (PG).”

There are ways to warn, suspend or banish recalcitrant residents and there is a robust abuse reporting system in place.  Just the other night, a “woman” ran into me on her way to a social gathering.  A dialogue box popped up immediately asking me if I wanted to report her bad behavior.  I let it go this time, but next time I see her, I may simply fly up into a Linden tree.

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5:48:40 PM EST

Last week, I moderated a remarkable three hour roundtable discussion about the challenges and some of the opportunities in protecting kids from the worst of the web while directing users to the best on offer in the exploding world of digital content.  Hosted by the GSM Association in their very modern central London offices and sponsored by ICM Registry, the folk behind the .xxx domain idea, the roundtable was the second in a series organized and run by ICRA – the Internet Content Rating Association – of which I am the CEO.   

Thirty people – from companies such as AOL, BT, Microsoft and Vodafone –  gathered for the debate, entitled, To Protect, Direct and Select.  We were joined by leading experts from academia, the fixed and mobile internet, a free expression lawyer as well as visitors from the US, Holland and Germany.  Prof. Jonathan Zittrain of the Oxford Internet Institute began the proceedings with a masterful overview of what he describes as Internet 2.0.  He argued that if the net were completely open – with no rules or regulation – it would be a desert.  If it were closed, it would become a prison.  Obviously, we need something in between, a net with enough reasonable rules to ensure fair play, but without resorting to the kind of censorious legislation seen in China, for instance.  To achieve this balance we need to build more trust into the infrastructure and everyday experience of living on the internet.

A number of the participants felt it was necessary to put the onus on content creators to use existing labeling schemes and that content aggregators should also accept their responsibility in the value chain.  And, if any one was in any doubt, “metadata is where it is at” as one contributor put it.

While lessons could be learned from the fixed internet world of “traditional” ISPs, the mobile sector was faced with particularly difficult problems when it comes to content controls.  In addition, it was pointed out that there is a huge discrepancy in the ways in which kids and adults use mobile devices.  Added to that, there was the “schizophrenia” inherent in the market place in the UK, where the mobile industry is not allowed to market or talk to kids about mobile devices, yet they are the quickest and most ardent adopters of this new technology.  

Some questioned whether labeling and rating schemes didn’t have a boomerang effect whereby kids were attracted to the very content adults tried to shield them from because they were labeled “adult”.  Still others were concerned that the content industry itself were not fully engaged in the debate.  Indeed a number of content providers were invited to attend the roundtable, but failed to show.

In summing up, Prof. Zittrain described a “profound uncertainty” and the lack of any magic formula to both protect kids and protect free expression on the new emerging internet-enabled platforms.  Devices like the video iPod (which I demonstrated with some iPod porn) were making the availability of potentially harmful material ubiquitous.  We could no longer give parents the advice to keep the PC in a common part of the house, when kids were walking around with their internet devices in their pockets.

Even with these challenges, Zittrain saw some glimmer of hope.  We seem to be in a calm before a storm.  There is an opportunity for the industry to get out ahead of this issue before parents (and legislators) are roused from their slumber.  It raises questions about how granular we want these labels to be?  As consumers we demand information and detail, though we also want simplicity.  The .xxx domain proposal had much to offer as this provides a clearer way going forward.  We should also explore the combined use of self-labeling (such as ICRA) combined with third party labels and assessments of content.  And we should consider a set of open, interoperable standards that have a closer affinity to digital rights management (DRM) than to search. 

Whatever the way forward, this roundtable demonstrated, once again, the enormity of the task and the urgent need for the engineers to talk with the business managers who in turn need to keep close to the policy and regulatory world who must listen and respond to what ordinary parents (and kids) are saying.  The conversation will continue at our next roundtable scheduled for February 2006 at Yahoo!’s campus in Sunnyvale, Ca.

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