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November 26, 1998

New Serious Side to Child's Play on Web
Privacy Protection Law Is Likely to Make Access More Difficult
By PAMELA MENDELS

For four years, children who visited the Cyberkids Web site have found puzzles, interactive stories and other activities designed to appeal to the 7- to 12-year-old crowd.

But lately, the young visitors have encountered a new and decidedly less playful feature: a consent form that must be downloaded, copied, signed by Mom or Dad and mailed to Cyberkids before the children can take part in certain activities, like entering contests or participating in chat rooms.


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It is intended to let the publishers of Cyberkids know that parents approve of their children's taking part in features in which the child might disclose such personal information as an e-mail address. Although Julie T. Richer, president of Able Minds Inc., the San Francisco company that publishes Cyberkids, is not completely happy about the form, she posted it because she wants to comply with a Federal law that has yet to take effect, but is already shaping children's online experience.

The new law, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, quietly entered the books last month, when President Clinton signed the budget bill of which the act was just a small part.

It is intended to protect children's privacy by requiring, with a few exceptions, that commercial Web sites aimed at children obtain parental permission before collecting personal information, like last names, addresses, phone numbers or Social Security numbers, from children under the age of 13.

It is separate from a similarly named law that also passed recently, the Child Online Protection Act, which is intended to shield children from commercial pornography online. That law is being challenged on First Amendment grounds by a coalition of free speech advocates and Web publishers in a lawsuit that led a Federal judge in Philadelphia to block enforcement of the measure temporarily with a order issued on Nov. 19.

Whatever happens with the pornography statute, some people believe that ultimately, the privacy law could exercise a greater influence on what children see and interact with online.

"I really believe the online privacy bill will have the most impact on children's online experience, because it will help guide the development of this online media culture for children," said Kathryn C. Montgomery, president of the Center for Media Education, a public interest group based in Washington. "It focuses on content and services directed at children, rather than focusing on what is not intended for them."

Ms. Montgomery hailed the law for protecting children from online marketers who otherwise might be tempted to use glitzy contests, animated cartoon characters and the like to extract information that parents would rather keep private. But businesses are worried about the law's unanswered questions, many of which will be taken up as regulators begin drafting the rules for how the statute is to be carried out.

The law does have the backing of some major industry players, among them America Online, which has a children's section, and TimeWarner Inc., which has a site aimed at children. In a statement, Arthur B. Sackler, a vice president for law and public policy at Time Warner, said the law had been "a compromise produced by the interested parties and not without some pain to business." But, he added, he believed that commercial Web site operators thought that regulation was important "for that special age category."

Privacy advocates have raised different concerns about the law. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group based in Washington, favors online privacy protections for adults, too, and would have preferred legislation based not on parental consent, but on the idea of privacy for all.

The bill was passed in part in response to a survey conducted by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year. After examining 212 children's Web sites, the regulators discovered that although 88 percent of the sites collected identifying details from their young visitors, only 23 percent advised them to seek their parents' permission before disclosing the information.

The new law helps correct that, said David Medine, associate director for financial practices at the Federal Trade Commission. "It puts parents in control of information collected from young children," he said.

There is still much about the law that has to be hammered out. For one thing, it is unclear when it will go into effect. The law specifies that its effective date can be up to 30 months from when it was signed. But Medine predicts F.T.C. officials will be finished drawing up regulations for how to carry out the law much sooner, so that the measure could be in force in 18 months.

What exactly will be in the regulations is another big question. Among the thorniest issues to be decided is exactly how parents are to provide consent to the Web site operators.


Cyberkids' Web site is not the easy entry to puzzles and games it once was now that parents must approve.

When the measure was discussed in Congress, legislators made it clear that consent delivered by regular mail or some kind of online credit card verification scheme would be acceptable. But the most obvious way to give consent online -- via E-mail -- was viewed with skepticism, in large part because it is easy for a child to send disguised E-mail that looks like it comes from a parent.

Medine said he hoped that by the time the law goes into effect, technology will offer a solution, either through digital signatures or another tamper-resistant mechanism that would give an E-mail message the stamp of authenticity.

Still, the industry is worried, said John P. Feldman, a Washington lawyer who represents a number of Web sites that offer children's content. If only slower methods of granting permission, like postal mail, are deemed acceptable, he said, that would put a damper on the very quality that makes the Internet so compelling: its ability to transmit information instantaneously. "The biggest concern I've been hearing from the industry is you don't want to lose the online experience," Feldman said.

Winnie Wechsler, senior vice president of Buena Vista Internet Group, the division of The Walt Disney Company that handles the entertainment conglomerate's online strategy, concurred. If only mail is acceptable, she said, 'That is somewhat in conflict with the whole nature of the medium.'

Already privacy concerns have had an effect on some children's online selling strategies. Time Warner Inc.'s Sports Illustrated for Kids Web site used to market the print version of the children's sports magazine by asking children interested in subscribing to submit their names and addresses and other information by e-mail. The e-mail message was followed up by a subscription letter to their parents. That practice changed several months ago, largely in response to privacy guidelines, similar to the federal law, drawn up by the Online Privacy Alliance, a new coalition of businesses including Time Warner, that vow to respect consumer privacy on the Internet.
A fear that children will go instead to sites for adults.

Today on the Sports Illustrated mail. There's been a price for the change: The number of subscriptions that come from the Web site has fallen about 90 percent, said Sackler, of Time Warner. "That's real dollars that have been lost there," he said.

Richer, of Cyberkids, has other concerns. She worries that the new regulations could end up favoring larger subscription-based Web sites, like Disney's Blast Online, because they rely on credit card payments, which could be considered an acceptable means of providing parental consent. She also wonders if the law will have an unintended consequence, pushing children into sites meant for more mature audiences, because it will be cumbersome for them to get permission to view some children's sites.

"The Government is making it harder for kids to get into Web sites specially targeted for them," she said. "So where are they going to go? Adult sites."

But Montgomery, of the Center for Media Education, said the law should be more comprehensive, offering protection not just to children, but to teen-agers as well.

Nonetheless, she believes the law is a good first start in shaping the Internet industry's behavior toward children, and could perhaps prevent the kind of marketing aimed at children that is common on commercial television. "There is an opportunity here to develop practices not harmful to kids, but if we wait five years, it would be too late," she said.

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