Interweb could send your kids bananas

28 Mar 2008 | 17:12 GMT

By Mark Ballard

THE UK GOVERNMENT has given the Internet industry its report card for child protection. It reads: good effort, but pull your socks up.

The industry has made some generally compliant compliments about the UK's Byron review into children and the dangers of new media since its publication yesterday. But it hasn't been so accommodating that has agreed to the extensive and specific recommendations of the review.

Specifically, web sites such as Youtube, which host user-generated content, have been told that they should employ third parties to scan for illegal or harmful content. Website owners should commit to take dodgy content down within a set time period. Internet advertisers should stop pitching immoral adverts at kids.

Interestingly, Byron said that Internet advertising could harm children's psychological development.

"The ability to critically evaluate commercial material correlates to the development of the frontal lobes, and therefore it is important that children are not exposed to commercial messages that they do not understand," she said in the report.

She had been alarmed by the sheer volume of inappropriate adverts that were served up on sites frequented by children. This included not just ads for pr0n, but violent ads for films, for dating sites and for fast food. It also recommended that Website owners should target charity ads at children who surf for material about "harmful behaviours", which might include things like drug use and suicide.

Search engines should make also parental filters prominent and lockable on specific machines, it said. While PC manufacturers should put parental filters on every machine sold in the UK. And Social networking sites should adopt a code of practice.

Wriggle room
There may not be any sound arguments for these measures not to be taken, particularly as Byron has sidestepped the freedom of expression issue by saying that she is concerned only with the few Websites that handle the majority of Internet traffic.

The industry's cursory support for Byron's recommendations has left it some wriggle-room, despite their being presented as part of such a comprehensive review. Google, for example, "applauded" Byron's work, said how it was "deeply committed" to protecting kids online, and mentioned some of the things it had already done, like making a safe search tool available. But it would not commit to Byron's specific recommendations.

A spokesman said it could only commit to looking at them. They will be looked at in the UK Council on Child Internet Safety, in which industry, government, parents and others will try and bring Byron's recommendations into self-regulatory practice.

Meantime, the industry has to commit to nothing. The difficulties the council might face are illustrated by Byron's analysis of attempts by Webcos to prevent users loading illegal and harmful content onto their sites by users.

Some site owners had told Byron that they were wary about taking steps to remove harmful or inappropriate content because they were worried about being made legally liable for it. They are made liable in law for content they know about. So if they don't bother to check, they won't get done for anything they miss.

Companies that used software to scan for such content might even be made liable for anything they had missed. Such matters had yet to be decided by the courts. Nevertheless, said Byron, for companies to say they couldn't balance the risks of liability against the risks to children was "a bit like saying that it is unfair to ask companies to survey their premises for asbestos in case they find some but fail to remove it safely".

"Child safety is everyone’s responsibility and I believe that on this issue companies should not hide behind the law," she said, recommending that the matter be taken up by the Council. µ

See also
Internet cannot be sanitised for kids

L'Inq
The Byron Review: Safer Children in a Digital World

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