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GENERATION Y is the internet generation and its members, aged five to 20, are being courted by online media companies seeking to connect with them. The mission is imperative: generation Y is expected to be three times the size of generation X, with buying power that will outstrip their parents, the boomers. A study last month of more than 7000 15- to 24-year-olds by the research firmn AMR Interactive says the internet is their main love ~ now ranking second only to watching television- With the next generation of mobile phones promising portable internet access, analysts say the medium is ripe. Younger children are just starting to come online - they'll be raised on it. The retailing giant Harvey Norman says education ranks as the No-1 reason why parents buy computers, and children's websites are flourishing, promising to revolutionise early learning with tie-ins to popular television shows on the ABC. But the digital school and playground of generation Y is the same internet exposed last week by Operation Auxin as a conduit for child pornography. Nielsen//NetRatings says hard- core adult websites regularly rank in the top five for men aged 25-54 in its competition index, which reveals standout trends in web use. Young people, however, are said to be using the internet largely to chat to mates and download music. But everything is available on the net. A search on Google will bring up links to the videos of beheadings of captives in Iraq and others to borderline child porn. The revelations of Operation Auxin brought renewed calls for regulation to force internet service providers to filter out the nasties from the web before they reach our homes. In Britain, British Telecom started doing it this year. But it is not that easy. As reported this week in the Herald, peer-to-peer file sharing networks, which rose out of the clampdown by the music industry on websites that traded files illegally, make tracking or blocking activity such as illegal music sharing and pornography difficult. Web filters would have no impact. The file-sharing software network, are growing, emboldened by a recent us court victory. In August a US appeals court upheld a 2003 ruling that cleared the way for Grokster and Streamcast networks to continue distributing their software, indicating that makers of the software were not legally liable for the copyright infringements of their users. Digital rights groups continue to fight for the net to be free of all restrictions, and support free software that can encrypt and mask activity on the internet from the police."I worry about my child and the internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet," writes Mike Godwin of the US Electronic Frontier Foundation on The Free Net- work Project home page. "Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and sav 'Daddy where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the internet?'" Landry Fevre, a director at the technology research firm IDC in Australia, says: "Technology is always going to be ahead of the government." But that does not mean the internet is a lost cause for families concerned about net nasties. A variety of home technology solutions can put people in control of the content coming into their computers. In Australia, the Federal Government offers an advisory body and complaints system to provide guidance to families on how to safely use the internet. NetAlert offers a website (www.netalert.net.au) and advice line (1800 880 176) to get families started, as well as links to the Australian Broadcasting Authority to make complaints when people find objectionable content. And while peer-to-peer networks are still growing, analysts say young people are starting to run away from them because they also spread computer viruses and may contain adware. "The negative aspects are starting to outweigh the benefits (of peer-to-peer)," an analyst at AMR teractive, Chris Caley, says. "A lot of people are getting scared off." Despite this trend, it took only a few minutes for the Herald to find links to child ponography on peer- to-peer networks this week. US Customs used direct keywords to find 34 images, of which 44 per cent were child pornography. The investigaton also punched in the names of singers and downloaded 177 images, of which 55 per cent were pornographic. The leading peer-to-peer software maker, Sharman Network's Kazaa, has recently added a "Family Filter" that lets a parent, for example, block adult content from children by assigning a password to gain full access. But the list of options to tame the internet can be long and the solutions can be complicated. Sydney Morning Herald (10-10-2004) Mike Barton |
Australian News
About Child Pornography
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