There are few incentives to give your real age out on the Internet, but even fewer if you are a minor. If you answer “under 18″ on an adult website you won’t be allowed in. If you answer “under 13″ on many sites like Amazon, YouTube, and others you’ll be denied access. That’s [...]

After decades of trying to curtail the amount of pornography available on the Internet, a glimmer of consensus has been reached. But the moment might be fleeting.

Every once in a while you get to see government acting like government and a business that responds to a bit of government strong-arming. That’s my take on the big news from MySpace and the Attorney General’s office regarding the recent announcement that they would work together to make the Internet a safer place for [...]

What’s next? Brick walls?
I Googled the words fence-plowing today and there were 63 news mentions (now 64), so far mainly in the greater New York area. Fence- plowing involves humans (well, kids) hurtling themselves into fences until they knock them down.

We’ve been paying a lot of attention to legislators as they attempt to rid the web of predators and purveyors of child porn. But, while we’ve all been looking at predators, we haven’t been paying attention to what the kids are doing. They’ve become creators of their own pornography.

It’s been a busy few weeks in Washington as a flurry of legislation is being proposed to help clean up cyberspace. Most recently, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced a bill that would require ISPs, web sites, social networks, and other online services to alert the government when there’s any illegal depiction [...]