The Progress and Freedom Foundation's Adam Thierer has published an analysis of the online child safety effort announced earlier this week by MySpace and 49 state attorneys general. In his paper, Thierer concluded that despite some concerns, the guidelines are a good alternative to federal or state regulation of social networking sites.
The proposed child e-mail registry, where parents would submit addresses that would be barred from opening a MySpace account, raises questions about privacy and security, he wrote. The database could also be circumvented by acquiring an alternate e-mail address.
Thierer also warned that a proposed online child safety task force must not become a rubber stamp for age verification mandates, as some state law enforcers seemed to imply. Age verification is a thorny, technical issue that has serious free speech implications, he said. Read the full document here.
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