JimWorld Gazette Issue #91 04/20/2000

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #91 - April 20, 2000

They'll Never Get The Genie Back In This Bottle
Got Computer Problems?
More Than Just A Random Drawing
New US Law Has Wide Impact On The Internet
Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g91

I'm off tomorrow to Denmark to speak at the Internet Marketing Conference. I know many of you are registered to attend and I look forward to meeting you. For those that can't attend, we'll have a full report in the next Gazette.

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THEY'LL NEVER GET THE GENIE BACK IN THIS BOTTLE

The other night I succumbed to the lure of MP3 on the Net. After downloading Napster and running the install, I ventured forth to assemble the ultimate all time play list of best-of-class vocals. As an old lounge singer, my tastes may be a bit different than yours, but hopefully you'll come around to my way of thinking. After all, I am always right in these matters.

Armed with my trusty cable modem, off I went into the great unknown. I found more than I could have ever dreamed of finding.

The first problem I encountered was a tough one. Who to search for first? Al Jolson or Patsy Cline? Al won.

I started my play list with Jolson's "Let Me Sing I'm Happy" followed by "Red Red Robin".

Patsy Cline was a gold mine of songs. I took my favorites: "Crazy", "Back In Baby's Arms", and "Blue Moon Of Kentucky" just to have something with a bit less "torch" in it.

Having done the mandatory Him and Her, I was free to indulge myself. So I did.

Statler Brothers - "Do You Remember These?", "Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight", and "How Great Thou Art". Picked up the Righteous Brothers "Unchained Melody" and Joan Baez's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" before heading to Jesus Christ Superstar for a copy of "Herod's Song."

Just enough time to get some Louis Armstrong. "Wonderful World" and "Hello Dolly" ought to do it. While in the mood, why not some Al Hirt? Not a singer, but no list is complete without at least one. "Just A Closer Walk With Thee" works in nicely.

Neil Diamond's "Mister Bogangles" and Otis Redding's "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay." I'm on a roll now! Don Mclean contributes "American Pie" and Jim Croce's "Time In A Bottle" bring me almost to the end. Threw in more Billie Holiday than I really had room for. I just couldn't choose. And, of course, Ray Charles swings in with "Georgia On My Mind" and "I Can't Stop Loving You."

To wind things up I had to throw in another Louis Armstrong. His duet with Kenny G. of "Wonderful World" is too good to leave out just because I'd already included the solo version.

I was one hour into this little diversion and having a wonderful time. I assembled everything into a Napster Play List, got a cup of coffee, fired up my new digital computer speakers, and leaned back to enjoy the results of my efforts.

It was wonderful. Where else on Earth could I find a play list of my favorite stuff? The only fly in the ointment was Nick's bellow for me to turn that $%#$ down so he could study.

With over a million songs available here and there on the Net, how in the world can the music companies ever put a stop to this? They might shut down Napster and MP3.com but that won't stop the problem.

Like so many of us in the e-World, they will have to adjust to a paradigm shift in their business model. Maybe instead of spending all of their efforts on lawyers, they could start finding a way to offer higher quality downloads for a few pennies each. A few million downloads of a song at a nickel each could start them thinking a whole new way.

How many of us are fighting the changes brought on by the Net, instead of adapting quickly and gaining an edge over our competitors? The Net isn't going away, so we might as well learn to take a few risks. Trust me. It doesn't hurt.

Just a final note. Yes, this is the same Jim that is always preaching to you about copyright infringement. Rest assured, I still feel that way. Every song I downloaded is already in my collection of records, cassettes, 8-tracks and CDs.

Scary isn't it?

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GOT COMPUTER PROBLEMS?

Expert City
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958757489 >

If you've got problems with your Windows computer you'll want to read this one. Of course, since you're running Windows, you are sooooo unaccustomed to having problems. Right.

Expertcity.com is a service meant to replace taking your computer back to where you bought it and hoping to get it fixed before Christmas.

You log into Expert City and submit a description of your problem. Pretty soon you get 'bids' back from their various experts who are currently online and available to help you. The experts each estimate how much it will cost for them to solve your problem. You pick the expert you want to help you and begin downloading their "plug in" to start your session.

The plug in allows the expert to share your desktop with you. You can see the monitor, and so can the expert. You can move the mouse and type, and so can the expert. You can have the expert show you what to do, or you can have the expert solve the problem while you drink your coffee and watch.

You can chat online with the expert, or share a whiteboard or even talk on the phone with the expert while sharing your desktop.

When your problem is resolved, you are charged the amount the expert submitted as the bid. You'll need to enter your credit card number, so if you've been watching too much television "news," and are afraid to enter anything into your computer, just start unplugging everything from your computer, take it to the shop and stop to buy a good book on your way home to entertain you until someone has time to fix your problem.

If Expert City can't solve your problem, you pay nothing.

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If you have good PC knowledge, why not apply to become one of their experts? You can work from anywhere, any hours and you control your billing rates. They get customers for you and take care of the billing and accounting.

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MORE THAN JUST A RANDOM DRAWING

Many Web sites have sweepstakes on them to attract more visitors. Typically, they are random drawing sweepstakes in which visitors enter their names and addresses into a form, the Webmaster collects all the entries, and then performs a random drawing to choose the winner.

What are some options if you want a sweepstakes or contest promotion on your Web site, but you want to be able to offer your visitors more fun and excitement than just entering their names and addresses into a form?

You might consider using some of the following:

* Contests
  -- Recipes
  -- Photos
  -- Essays
* Instant-win Games
* Trivia Games
* Scavenger Hunts

>>CONTESTS

Contests are different than sweepstakes in that each individual entry is judged based on certain criteria. The winner is chosen based on those criteria -- not randomly "drawn out of a hat." There are many different ways you can set up a contest on your Web site. Depending on how much time and effort you want to expend to maintain your contest, you can either set up a simple contest or a more complex one.

Simple contest -- A simple recipe, photo, or essay contest would encompass having your entrants submit their entry according to certain criteria that you specify. You could require a recipe for a certain kind of food, or require that a photo or essay be about a particular topic you choose. After all of the entries have been submitted, you would be responsible for judging which one you liked best (that met all of the entry requirements, of course), and announce them as the winner. An example of a simple essay contest is here: < http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958932961 >

Complex contest -- That same recipe, photo, or essay contest could be set up so that all of the entries are posted on your Web site, and your site visitors would then be able to vote for the one they like. However, sometimes posting ALL of the entries is not feasible depending on the volume of entries that you receive. In those cases, you must state some predetermining requirements so you can choose the best of the entries, or "finalists," and then post the finalist entries for which your visitors can vote.

Recipe, photo, or essay contests are typically the most popular choices of Webmasters. For something a little different, check out the "warped celebrity photo contest" < http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958933086 > or a "Capture The Picture From A Cam Contest" < http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958933261 >

>>INSTANT-WIN GAMES

Because there are so few instant-win games available online, they tend to create a lot of excitement. They are very popular with Web site visitors, they are remembered more long-term by consumers, and they have more "word-of-mouth" advertising punch. Here are two sites with some good instant-win games: < http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958933365 > and < http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958933590 >

Adding an instant-win game to your site is not easy, though. If you have the programming resources in-house, you can create your own instant-win game. If you do not have in-house resources to create your own instant-win game, you might want to consider hiring a good Web development company to create one for you.

>>TRIVIA GAMES

People enjoy answering challenging questions, and with the new popularity of TV shows such as "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," trivia games on the Web are becoming increasingly more popular.

If you have the programming resources in-house, you can create your own trivia game. If you do not have in-house resources to create your own trivia game, you might want to consider having a good Web development company host and maintain a trivia game for you, such as eQuiz! like we have on our Web site < http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958933695 >

Since adding the trivia game, I've doubled the number of visitors to my Web site!

>>SCAVENGER HUNTS

If you want your site visitors to "wander" or "browse" through more pages on your Web site, you might want to consider setting up a scavenger hunt. You could have visitors search for a certain icon or graphic that you've hidden on one of your pages, and when the visitor clicks on it, a form pops up so they can enter their information into the drawing. You could change the location of the icon or graphic periodically, to deter visitors from bookmarking that page in an attempt to make it easy for future entries. You could also have them collect the page locations of more than one icon or graphic, and submit all locations into a single entry form accessible from your main page. There are many ways you can set up a scavenger hunt.

Setting up a sweepstakes or contest on your Web site is a good way to attract visitors to your Web site. We think the popularity of more interactive promotions such as trivia games, instant-win games, and scavenger hunts is increasing, and makes it so visitors will return to your Web site in order to play or enter more often. If you've considered adding a more interactive element on your Web site to offer to your visitors, try offering one of these fun, exciting types of games!

NEW US LAW HAS WIDE IMPACT ON THE INTERNET

>>Jim Note: We've been discussing the new COPPA Child Privacy Act in the Get High Forums < http://gethighforums.com > extensively. One of our popular moderators, Michael Martinez started looking into the new law in depth and published an article for another ezine. I asked him to extend that original article to cover the subject in more depth for the Gazette readers and this article is the excellent result. COPPA is real and you need to know as much as possible about it so you don't step on any land mines.

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>>ON-LINE INTERACTIONS WITH CHILDREN

Not very long ago a teenager asked me for advice on how to create a Web site. We discussed her interests and what she thought she could do, and then I made some suggestions on how to create the content for a unique Web site. When the girl was wrapping up her work, she asked me how to create the actual pages. In other words, she did not already have Web space to use. At that point I told her a little more about myself, and advised her to sit down and discuss what she wanted to do with her parents or a teacher at school, and to make sure they understood she had been in communication with me about this project.

In order to help her create a Web site, I would either have to ask her for private information such as her name and address, or at least instruct her in how to give this information to a Web-hosting service. I have no right to solicit such information from underage people. Nor should I be advising them to give out that information to other people. This last part of our exchange occurred only a few days after I had become aware of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998.

>>ACT TOOK EFFECT APRIL 22, 2000

This law, passed in October 1998, took effect on April 21, 2000. The Federal Trade Commission has been authorized by Congress to administer the law, and accordingly the FTC solicited input from responsible organizations and the public last year in order to put the final rule into proper form. Unfortunately, many other people and I knew nothing about this process, and the final rule has been implemented without any input from a lot of us. In fact, barely more than 140 individuals and organizations provided comments on a rule which will effect millions of people. For the children's sake, we have to hope it is a well -written rule, but there are some open issues.

>>TO WHOM DOES IT APPLY?

One of the chief concerns over this law is to whom it applies. The United States has no jurisdiction over the Internet outside its borders. Some people feel the law may put American businesses into a poorly competitive position. Perhaps, but big business usually finds a way to survive. And other countries may enact similar laws in the near future. The Internet is already governed by international treaty in some areas such as copyright, trademark, libel, and pornography. The international community is slowly but surely building up a framework of law that will apply to everyone or nearly everyone using the Internet.

The new law, known as COPPA, was designed to govern the practices of commercial Web sites that interact with children. But someone somewhere in the process extended the law's coverage to include ANY service that interacts with children. This broader application is of particular interest to non-commercial Webmasters for several reasons.

>>KIDS AND PRIVATE INFORMATION

First of all, many of us have children to protect. Even if they are not our own, we might find ourselves in positions of responsibility. A few months ago I helped my 8-year-old niece register for Zoog Disney. It is a big thing with kids, but Zoog required parental consent for the registration. Once we got that taken care of my niece could do all sorts of things on the Zoog site. I stepped away from the computer for a few minutes and when I came back I found she had a credit card sitting on the keyboard and she was about to order some merchandise.

Children are not precocious just when it comes to buying things on the Internet. Keeping the credit cards out of their hands is only one aspect of being responsible for them on the Internet. What about those Whizkid Webmasters who set up the fantastic Web sites? Where do they get the Web space? Some are using Mom and Dad's accounts, but many young people are signing up with free Web space providers. How many parents are actually involved in these Web contracts? Do they know what information their children are giving out, or what services their children are signing up for?

Parents may not be aware that kids can now download and install (on their own PCs) software from free Internet Service Providers such as NetZero, Excite, and Alta Vista. They do not have to use Mom and Dad's accounts any more, even though these ISP's may be trying to restrict access only to adults. What is to prevent a determined child from clicking on the "Yes, I am 18 or older" button? Nothing.

>>ON-LINE SERVICES INCLUDE CHAT ROOMS AND MESSAGE BOARDS

But where the online community of Webmasters becomes directly concerned with the privacy of children is the provision under COPPA for including "online services" in the target population which must comply with this law. An online service includes a chat room or message board. The FTC is not talking about America Online. They are talking about specific services that any Webmaster can install on his or her site: chat rooms and message boards. Also, if you simply run a newsletter, you, too, may have to comply with the law.

The FTC rule says:

If you operate a commercial Web site or an online service directed to children under 13 that collects personal information from children or if you operate a general audience Web site and have actual knowledge that it collects personal information from children, you must comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

How many of us are directing our chat rooms and message boards to the under 13 crowd? The FTC has decided they will use the following criteria for determining who is and who is not targeting children:

To determine whether a Web site is directed to children, the FTC will consider several factors, including the subject matter; visual or audio content; the age of models on the site; language; whether advertising on the Web site is directed to children; information regarding the age of the actual or intended audience; and whether a site uses animated characters or other child-oriented features.

Many non-commercial web sites are devoted to obviously mature themes. It may, perhaps, be a good idea for the Webmasters to put up a note indicating children should not browse the site, but you need to be careful about what advertising you put on your site. If you are a member of an affiliate or associate program (some online merchants use these terms in different ways), you may have some direct links with graphics which could give the impression you are targeting children. Web sites which promote services or products which could appeal to children are in a gray area.

>>NOT SO GRAY AREAS?

Web sites with content about actors and actresses who have appeared in children's television shows and movies, or about children's activities, or which provide information of an encyclopedic nature on a level children can easily understand will probably be perceived as directing their content toward children. Message boards or chats devoted to similar topics will further draw such Web sites out of the gray area into required compliance.

Reviews of movies and books directed at children, or even just bibliographies which children might use for school projects, also propel non-commercial Web sites into the arena of interacting with children. Web sites which carry the popular AskJeeves for Kids search box or similar services are clearly targeting children.

Of course, just because you have got referral links on your Web site does not mean you are required to comply with the law. The question comes down to whether you are initiating an ongoing communication with your visitors, and if you know whether these visitors (or some of them) are children under the age of 13. If you are not hosting chat services, message boards, and newsletters, are you in the clear? Maybe. What about that guest book you have got on your site? Does it not ask for names and email addresses? Is it not making that information available to third parties? Will COPPA be the death of the guest book tradition that many perfectly innocent Web sites have employed for years?

>>WHAT IS PRIVATE INFORMATION?

This is what the FTC regards to be private information as defined by COPPA:

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and Rule apply to individually identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full name, home address, email address, telephone number or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact the child. The Act and Rule also cover other types of information - for example, hobbies, interests and information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms - when they are tied to individually identifiable information.

If a child contacts you on his or her own initiative, you are probably safe as long as the contact is for a one-time purpose. The FTC ruling speaks of homework questions, but there are plenty of other innocent exchanges that happen. We occasionally receive email from children who want to know how to contact members of the television shows we have devoted Web space to. Sometimes children ask us for help in finding things on the Web. I may think twice about giving out that kind of advice in the future. But these kinds of contacts are regarded as reasonable exclusions.

However, any Webmaster who must otherwise comply with the law is expected to immediately delete any private information (including email addresses) they acquire from these exchanges once they are finished. So much for keeping a record of your past emails. If you have to go hunting for something to give advice to a child once, you will have to find some way of preserving the results of your search without violating the child's privacy or else go hunting again if you are ever asked the same question twice.

Now parents who volunteer their time and resources to help with local school projects need to think twice about how they implement the Web sites. And what about teachers who put up Web sites for their classes? If they are not interacting with the children they should be fine, but if they are soliciting comments from children (even members of their own classes), what measures do they need to take to comply with the law? If they confine their Web interaction to official school domains, compliance may be covered by whatever the school administrators implement, but teachers may have to work more closely with their online admins to ensure compliance.

>>NON-COMMERCIAL SITES IMPACTED

Like me with my domain, Xenite.Org, many non-commercial Webmasters create several mini-Web sites within one large Web site. My content covers Xena, Hercules, Edgar Rice Burroughs, J.R.R. Tolkien, Andre Norton, Farscape, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (and that includes the book, the movies, and the television series), and more. I am not going to be able to duck the "mass appeal" criterion, and many other SF & F Webmasters will find themselves in the same boat as me. So it is not just the commercial Webmastering community who needs to worry about complying with this law. But even the typical homepage may fall under the law's jurisdiction, as most people have more than one interest. A homepage with essays and link lists about books, movies, hobbies, activities, their local communities, and more may be regarded as having mass appeal.

A directory, no matter how specialized, is certainly intended for a large audience and not just friends and family. Web resource sites, free and cool stuff sites, award-program sites, and sites which promote community activism all fall into the category of non-commercial sites which are impacted by the law.

But what will happen if we non-commercial Webmasters do not try to comply? Only time will tell, but given that there are millions of Web sites devoted to all manner of interests and activities with "mass appeal" (e.g., horses, cooking, consumer rights, science, history, literature, etc.) it appears that the Web Content Monitors will not be knocking on many peoples' doors right away. The law will be reviewed in two years and we will see where we go from there.

>>POLICING THE ACT

The business community has, for this first two-year period, been given an opportunity to set up its own industry standards for compliance. It will be a largely self-regulating effort and doubtless people will be keeping an eye on large commercial kids' sites like Disney.Com, Ty.Com, CartoonNetwork.Com, et. al. to see what standards they adopt. Privacy and legal industry groups will be consulted and looked to to help define these self-regulating standards. But the final question two years from will be, have we all done enough?

>>WHAT THE WEBSITES CAN DO

What, specifically, does the law require of Web sites which must comply with its requirements? You have to post a privacy policy on your site, and you must link to it in any page which initiates some sort of ongoing relationship (commercial, discussion, or informative) with your visitors. The policy must state your procedure for verifying parental permission to conduct ongoing relationships with children.

There are several options for doing this, but the requirements are more stringent for sites that sell products or service to children. Not sites that are affiliates or associates of online resellers, mind you. The book stores, CD stores, and other online retailers are the people collecting the information and distributing the merchandise. But you may need to make clear in YOUR privacy policy that YOU are NOT collecting this information, that it does not pass through your hands, and that you are not responsible for its uses.

The privacy policy requirement also stipulates that the "operators" of the Web site or online service must make their offline contact information (name, postal address, and telephone number) available to parents. This is necessary for ensuring that children do not have an easy opportunity to fake a parent's approval. Not everyone is required to give out this information. The FTC says:

To determine whether an entity is an "operator" with respect to information collected at a site, the FTC will consider who owns and controls the information; who pays for the collection and maintenance of the information; what the pre -existing contractual relationships are in connection with the information; and what role the Web site plays in collecting or maintaining the information.

First of all, if you have volunteers or employees helping with your Web site, or if you are paying people to help with your Web site, they are off the hook (as far as your Web site goes). Secondly, if you are using a third-party service, or are referring people to online retailers for commissions, such that you are not directly collecting or using the private information, you are off the hook. An organization which is a legal entity can publish its office address, but individuals operating their own Web sites will have to provide some very personal information.

If you are running your own mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, or distributing your own newsletters, you are the "operator". If instead of running your own services you sign up with EZBoard or InsideTheWeb, or Onelist or Topica, you should be in the clear, unless they give you access to the personal information that their registrants provide to them. If you control the information that a third-party service acquires in the process of maintaining your service, you may become liable under the law. You are responsible for the information that you collect and use, regardless of whether you are selling anything. A child's privacy is not vulnerable just through a commercial Web site. And the purpose of the law is to protect children's private information, not to regulate commerce.

>>PROBLEMS WITH THE LAW

Of course, did the lawmakers and the people at the Federal Trade Commission stop to consider that non-commercial Webmasters who have to comply with this law are exposing their own private information? As a domain name registrant I have entered my personal information into a publicly accessible database. But what about people who do not register their own domains? Is it trivial to require them (many of whom are women who have taken measures to protect their own privacy) to post their full names, addresses, and telephone numbers on their Web sites just because they are running message boards or chat rooms?

I have questioned some people about the freeware that is available on the Web. It appears that the originators of these scripts are not going to assume the burden of ensuring that a Webmaster is in compliance with the law. If you download and install any free version of a message board or mailing list script, you cannot look to the software to cover you. There may be registration features which give you control over who is able to post information to the board and how much personal information is disclosed, but you must still take measures to ensure that either your content excludes you from coverage under the law or that you have set up a procedure for acquiring parental permission for the child who makes use of your services.

Even commercial versions of these kinds of applications will not offer any guarantees of compliance. No software provider can assume that kind of liability. It is the Webmaster's responsibility alone to ensure the Web site is in compliance with the law. So if you are running your own CGI applications now, and you are sure you are collecting information from children that is not protected, you should make some changes, but do not get your hopes up about finding a miracle application. Adding a registration requirement to your services will slightly inconvenience your communities, but the kids might just go elsewhere, since larger, commercial sites already require registration and soon will all require parental verification. And they also have many more goodies than the local Webmaster can provide. The law provides a few conditions where prior parental consent is not required for collecting information, but there are conditions attached (see the links at the end of the article for further details on such provis ions).

>>MASS APPEAL TEST

It is important to know whether your content has "mass appeal", or if it appeals to children. There are already some guidelines available for determining if a Web site is appropriate for children. You can check out the standards published by the Internet Content Rating Service. Their site includes a table that shows what ratings are applied to what content. At the very least, if you can determine that your content is inappropriate for children you can then say so on your Web site (if you feel that would not be harmful to the way your site is perceived). In most cases we do not want to put "Adults only" on our Web sites. But if you want to exclude your site from compliance with COPPA you will need to ensure it does not look like it is intended for children.

The "mass appeal" rule is harder to cope with. At Xenite.Org, for example, we do not forbid the use of profanity on our message boards but we strongly discourage it. We insist our discussion communities be civil and polite to one another. That provision was created for purely personal reasons. I wanted flame-free communities. But parents do not mind letting their kids browse our boards in part because we maintain a civil atmosphere. Many other message board communities have similar guidelines, and they are also visited by people of all ages.

Would Xenite.Org be rated "Kid Safe"? Probably not quite, but we would get a pretty good rating nonetheless. But if we put "Kid Safe" on our Web pages we are all but saying we intend to provide content for children and therefore we need to comply with the law. Up until now it was a great thing to be able to say your site is "Kid Safe". Now you need to think twice. If you do not get the "Kid Safe" rating, where does that leave you? Kids may still come and sign your guest book, sign up for your newsletter, join your message board, and enter your chat area. But if you put "For adults only" on your site, then you are giving a much different and in most cases the wrong impression. We may need a new, neutral content rating.

>>CHECKING ON LIABILITY

If you currently use remotely hosted applications you should review the application providers' terms of service agreements and privacy policies. If these documents have not been updated to show these services are aware of the law, then you should contact the service providers. Try to get some clear idea of who they feel is responsible for complying with the law. If they say THEY and THEY alone are, do not worry about it. If, however, the application providers you are using suggest you may also be liable (because you have access to the private information), then you should consider what you can do to either minimize your obligations under the law or to live up to them.

>>CHILDREN ARE EVERYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY

Inevitably, if we as Webmasters, parents, guardians, and employees of businesses which operate commercial Web sites or online services shirk the moral obligation to help ensure this law becomes effective, we will share in the burden of its failure and whatever consequences that failure brings, such as more stringent rules and regulations further down the road. But more importantly, we are leaving it to someone else to protect the children. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is the philosophy behind this law. It may not take much for the majority of us to help ensure the kids' privacy is protected. But we are entering a new era of greater responsibility for everyone, and regardless of whether you feel the law is well-designed, it is here. Let us deal with it as best we can.

>>FOR FURTHER READING

For further reading, the following Web sites provide detailed and explicit information on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act:

How To Comply With The Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958936435 >

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958936348 >

Gigalaw.Com: How To Comply With the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule

< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958936232 >
Essentially same content as the FTC site, but includes a discussion forum where people can ask questions.

Center for Media Education's COPPA resources
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958935957 >

Kid's Privacy.Org
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958936077 >

Internet Content Rating Association
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958935784 >

Internet Law Journal article on COPPA
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958935504 >

Zoog Disney is a trademark of Disney Enterprises, Inc.
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958935417 >

Onelist is a trademark of eGroups, Inc.
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958935321 >

Ty is a trademark of Ty, Inc.
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958935247 >

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>>Article by Michael Martinez
Science Fiction and Fantasy
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958934942 >

Jim Note: The law is having the effect I was concerned about when I first wrote about COPPA a few months ago. The most visible casualty to date is the Thomas The Tank reaction. The producers of the wildly popular TV show for kids has taken the approach of cancelling the email newsletter and email accounts of all members under 13 years of age -- worldwide. Their reason? It is simply to complex and too expensive to comply with the law. This is only the beginning of the process of making young people unwelcome on the Internet.

Thomas The Tank article:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36325,00.html

SNIPPETS

Hi Jim - I mentioned some time back that I had adapted a couple of your free site templates to my website - http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958939202

The AARP just linked to Go60 and had this to say:

"Go60 is an online magazine covering every aspect of the 60+ American’s life & health, career, travel, retirement, this site has it all. The site presents its information in a lively and accessible format. Very welldesigned both visually and ergonomically, Go60 is full of pertinent information for anyone, no matter what you are doing with your later years."

Take a look at the review if you'd like:
http://www.aarplifeanswers.com/library/library_page.asp?catid=10

Best Regards,
Robert Knechtel
Founder, Go60.Com

>>If you want to design a site for speed, impact and looks, drop in at < http://freesitetemplates.com/ > and shop around for a FREE site template. Another service of JimWorld.

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PlanetClick
< http://jimworld.com/re/go.cgi?ID=958939580 >

A slightly different approach to building a "people powered" directory has hit the super highway. You should drop in and get your sites listed and start the "review" process. Here's what they have to say about themselves:

"Our Web Discovery Engine is going to shake up the face of the Internet with its people-powered approach," says Scott Danielson, president and CEO of Denver -based PlanetClick.com. "By visiting festivals, we’re taking our product to the people -- the people who will ultimately decide what is or isn’t on our site."

"What we’re doing is using the latest technology to make our site something the people will find indispensable and empowering, Because it is people who give relevance to technology, and the less intrusive the technology, the more empowering it is. Sophisticated technology built in partnership with IBM enables fast searches that are informed by people’s opinions. Because the user interface is straightforward and simple, navigation tends to be more intuitive and direct than with conventional search engines."

I certainly hope they have better luck fighting off the engine-spammers than others have had. It won't take long to see.

Google is providing their second level search results and they appear to be spending a lot of promotion money, so it is worth your while to get to know them.