The FTC’s excellent Internet safety booklet “Net Cetera”

The Federal Trade Commission has published an excellent guide for parents about helping kids and teens stay safe and protect their privacy and reputation online and on mobile devices. The booket covers sexting, cyberbullying, texting, computer security, parental controls and pre-teen privacy.

The free booklet, called Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids About Being Online,” is available free in printed form or as a downloadable and printable PDF (scroll down for link). You can also order free printed copies in English or Spanish.

Read more at SafeKids.com

Computer Security firm Trend Micro has an offer for any teen or adult who cares about Internet safety and security and wants to become an award winning filmmaker. The company has launched a contest called “What’s Your Story,” where the person who submits the best short video (no more than 2 minutes) can win $10,000. There are also four $500 prizes.

Read more at SafeKids.com

It’s an odd concept but there is a movement to nominate “the Internet” for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

There’s even a Web site, InternetForPeace.org, to advocate that the “Nobel Peace Prize should go to the Net. A Nobel for each and every one of us.”

There are some heavyweights behind the idea, including Iranian human rights activist and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, fashion designer Giorgio Armani and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Media Lab and One Laptop per Child.

The group has a “manifesto,” arguing that “digital culture has laid the foundations for a new kind of society. And this society is advancing dialogue, debate and consensus through communication.” The Internet, it says, “is a tool for peace” and “anyone who uses it can sow the seeds of nonviolence.”

I’m not sure if it’s possible for something as amorphous as the Internet to win the $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize, but the nomination is certainly thought-provoking. The Internet is indeed a unifying force that brings people together, helps activists fight oppression and provides enormous possibilities for communications and global understanding.

It’s the way that people in the United States can learn about what is happening in the Middle East directly from people who live in that region. And despite China’s “Great Firewall,” the Internet helps activists in that country reach across oceans and across their own country to fight censorship and oppression.

The Net is also a tool for gay, lesbian and transgender people to provide one another support and encouragement and combat isolation. And it has been used to prevent suicides, counsel against drug abuse, and encourage countless laudable and even heroic acts by people all over the world.

One company, Global Hosted Operating System, uses the Internet and videoconferencing to link its two offices — one in Jerusalem and the other across the fence in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

But despite all those points in the plus column, there are some aspects of the Internet that seem as contradictory as the career of the prize’s founder, Alfred Nobel, a pacifist who was also the inventor of dynamite and nitroglycerin.

The Internet has been a boon to collectors of illegal child pornography, purveyors of hate sites, and millions of annoying, angry and not-so-peaceful “flame wars,” via e-mail, chat, forums and social networking sites.

Ernie Allen, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (whose board I’m on), has repeatedly pointed out that postal inspectors had all but eliminated child pornography until the Internet made it easy for criminals to disseminate these images. The Anti-Defamation League’s Web site has an entire section devoted to Internet hate sites.

Bullying has been around forever, but cyberbullying is making it all too easy to harass people 24/7. Just last week, a study by two researchers at Iowa State University found that 54 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth had been cyberbullied within 30 days of the study. Other studies have shown that as many as 30 percent of all American teens have suffered some type of cyberbullying.

Chatroulette.com could be cited for or against the Net getting a peace prize. On the plus side, it brings people from around the world together for a spontaneous online video conversation. I’m sure the Nobel committee would be pleased how easy it is for users to engage fellow global citizens who live on other continents. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of these global citizens seem to be engaged in activities that are more gross than noble.

If the Nobel committee ever did decide to give a prize to the Net, there probably would be a war over who would pick it up. Would it be early pioneers from the late ’60s like Vincent Cerf, Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn or Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited for inventing the World Wide Web in 1990?

Maybe it should be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who created a platform that, so far, links 400 million people around the world. Perhaps it should be Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, who have given a 140-character platform to activists around the globe.

They could give it to Al Gore, who reportedly once said, “I took the initiative in creating the Internet,” but he already has a Nobel Peace Prize.

This article originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

This article initially appeared on CNET News.com

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out the “broadband plan for children and families” Friday at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

FCC chairman gets help from Elmo in promoting broadband plan for kids. (Credit: FCC video of speech via YouTube)

Referring to children as “our most precious national resource,” Genachowski said “we must do everything we can to educate and prepare them to thrive in the 21st century and keep them safe.” New technologies, he said, “can expose our children to new dangers, and can potentially outpace the ability of parents to guide their children.”

Read more and see video of speech at SafeKids.com

At approximately noon Nairobi time (4:30 AM Eastern), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board voted to postpone any decision about ICM Registry’s bid to offer a .XXX top level domain until its June meeting in Brussels.

Here is the text of the resolution: (the “wherases” were not transcribed but they’re in <4 min audio file at end of post)

“It is resolved that the board has considered the independent panel’s declaration in conforming with the ICANN  bylaw requirements during its meeting in Nairobi and explored possible paths regarding ICMs application for .xxx. Resolved the board directs ICANN’s CEO and General Counsel to finalize a report of possible process options for further consideration and further resolves that the board directs ICANN CEO and General Counsel to post the report of possible process options on the ICM manner for public comment within 14 days which will enable the community to provide input on the board processes. The report will be posted for public comment for no less than 45 days which will enable the board to consider the possible process options no later than ICANN’s 38th International meeting in Brussels. ”

Here is the actual 3 min 45 sec.  audio of the resolution and vote:

ICANN Board XXX Vote Audio

Tags: .xxx, icann, ICM

This article initially appeared on CNET News.com

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out the “broadband plan for children and families” Friday at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

FCC chairman gets help from Elmo in promoting broadband plan for kids. (Credit: FCC video of speech via YouTube)

Referring to children as “our most precious national resource,” Genachowski said “we must do everything we can to educate and prepare them to thrive in the 21st century and keep them safe.” New technologies, he said, “can expose our children to new dangers, and can potentially outpace the ability of parents to guide their children.”

Genachowski had a mostly positive view of technology for kids, especially as it applies to learning. “The benefits of digital learning aren’t just theoretical. They’re real. One study found that low-income children who use the Internet more at home had higher GPAs and standardized test scores than children who use it less,” he said. He added that we need to set a “clear and non-negotiable goal: every child should be connected to broadband.

Read more at SafeKids.com

This is hardly the first time ICANN has dealt with this issue. It rejected similar proposals in 2000, again in 2006 and most recently in 2007.

In an telephone interview Wednesday night from Nairobi (scroll down for podcast), ICM President Stuart Lawley said he successfully appealed the 2007 decision, paving the way for ICANN to reconsider the proposal on its merits.

The proposal has been a hot button for years, uniting some conservatives and some free-speech advocates in opposition to it. The conservative Family Research Council, for example, opposed the idea in a 2005 press release, arguing that “pornographers will be given even more opportunities to flood our homes, libraries, and society with pornography through the .xxx domain.”

Read more at SafeKids.com

“Allied youth” refers to young people who are openly supportive of LGBT youth.

Read more at SafeKids.com

That’s the starting price of Cisco’s CRS-3 router that it announced Tuesday with great fanfare. The device can deliver a whopping 322 terabits of data. That, according to CEO John Chambers, is 3 times the speed of the company’s existing CRS-1 router and 12 times faster than what the competition offers.

It took a bit of web surfing, but I did find out that CRS stands for Carrier Routing System. As far as I can tell there isn’t a CRS-2 router.

Cisco made a really big deal out of this announcement, claiming in advance that it would “forever change the Internet.” It was a big enough deal for a radio reporter to wake me up at 5:30 AM to talk about it and for me to tune into a webcast announcement at 8:00 AM followed by a 9:00 AM visit from a TV camera crew to so that TV viewers could be filled in about this incredible new development. In retrospect, I wish I had stayed in bed.

Clearly, this is a serious product which, someday, could have a significant impact on the ability for service providers to deliver high speed data. Cisco says that the product is mostly about delivering video, claiming that the routers could make it possible for “every man woman and child in China to make a video call simultaneously.” The company also said that every printed work in the Library of Congress could be downloaded in just over a second and that every movie ever made could be downloaded in less than 4 seconds, which might be really good news for media pirates.

In addition to the vast demands of entertainment and video conferencing, the technology could help play a role in telemedicine and, of course, education. It comes as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is in the process of rolling out the Obama Administrations’ National Broadband Plan. On Friday, March 12th, Genachowski “will deliver a major policy speech outlining how the new National Broadband Plan will benefit children and families,” according to the FCC.
The Cisco announcement also comes on the heels of Google’s announced plans to build out a high speed fiber network in selected communities across the country. Unlike the Cisco router, the Google networks will deliver that data directly into homes. The Cisco product is really about the backbone plumbing. It’s kind of like a series of freeway interchanges that are necessary to speed traffic between highways but no substitute for local roads.

AT&T Labs chief Keith Cambron appeared with Chambers on the Webcast saying that his company has been testing the device on a 100 gigabit network backbone but he also indicated that it could play a role in the delivery of mobile data. I wonder if it will help out all those iPhone users in San Francisco who are having trouble with their 3G data plans?

As a reasonably heavy consumer of data, I’m all for progress at the infrastructure level. After all, how could I continue to be able to stream my Amazon and Netflix videos if the Internet gets too clogged up to handle all that traffic? It truly is important for companies like Cisco to innovate and keep things moving.

Still, I can’t help feel a little bit used by the company’s PR flacks. “Forever change the Internet” seems like a bit of hyperbole to me and, trust me, I’ve heard plenty of hyperbole after three decades covering technology companies in Silicon Valley.

My biggest problem with the Cisco press conference was trying to stay awake. After two cups of coffee and the anticipating of learning about something incredible, I found myself inundated with technical terms that even I don’t understand.

As talented as Cisco CEO John Chambers may be, he is no match for that other master of overstatement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs too exaggerates but he does it with such flare that you want to believe him even when you know that the product he’s announcing – as good as it might be – can’t possibly be all that good. Still, Jobs does it with infectious enthusiasm that Chamber can’t possibly match.

The new Cisco router will be available late this year. For the few who care, details about the Cisco router are on the company’s website.