What You
Should Know About the Internet and the Law
Posted: 07/24/2015
4:39 pm EDT Updated: 07/24/2015 4:59 pm EDT www.huffingtonpost.com
Although Internet membership sites,
including emails, chat rooms and other forms of social networks, limit the use
of their services to adults or young adults (over 13 years), it is an open
secret that much younger children commonly operate in platforms such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr, in addition to having email accounts
of their own. ComScore, a firm that measures Internet traffic, estimates that 3.6 million of Facebook's
153 million monthly visitors in USA are under 12.
In many cases, children join network sites (including
emails) with full knowledge of their parents, and lie about their ages.
Although many parents do not mind the "minor fib" that allows
children to be online, and are aware of the risks of children on the internet
(exposure to inappropriate content, cyberbullying, sexting, pedophilia etc.),
there is less clarity on legal issues. The legal challenges that are associated
with the use of social network sites by underage users, such as validity of
membership, consenting to share or be tagged in photographs and liability for
certain actions, remain unknown compared to more (un)popular issues such as
cyber crimes and privacy concerns.
Governments around the world have
been addressing the problems in Internet material that are either illegal in
the real world and/or harmful or unsuitable for minors. The types of problems
perceived by countries differ depending on the political, social and cultural
backgrounds. For example, while governments of most western countries
encourage self-regulation by the Internet industry and discretion of the
end-user in filtering technologies, countries such as China, Saudi Arabia,
Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam block access to content deemed
"unsuitable for adults". Child pornography is another area that faces
varied legal implications in various countries. It, is perhaps one of the most
dangerous issues that requires urgent and serious legislative crackdown. The worldwide adult
industry revenue in 2006 was $97.06 billion, of which $13
billion was in the United States; a disturbing number indeed. But what is more
rattling is that 40 percent of visitors of such sites had both sexually
victimized children and were in possession of child pornography.
Formulating rights and formal limits
to the use of Internet by children (and adults) is a challenging task. Setting
the age for the acquisition of rights is, as described by UNICEF, a complex matter that must
"balance the concept of the child as a subject of rights whose evolving
capacities must be respected with the concept of the State's obligation to
provide special protection". Dr Ellen Helsper, associate professor in
media and communications at the London School of Economics, believes thatresearch on children's online lives must aim to inform regulators about
appropriate legislation. However, a common legislation is
challenging, if not impossible because the impact of the internet (and social
networking, which have almost become synonymous to "Internet") is not
uniform for all users; age, socio-economic background, psychological
characteristics, location and education influence how children, indeed people
in general, are affected by online material.
The rules and laws that apply to the
real world may not be directly applicable to the cyberworld. Online
interactions present new kinds of relationships across time and space,
which would not be possible in the offline world. For one, it becomes very easy
for identities to be hidden or misrepresented, making accountability and track-back
difficult. Lack of social roles and traditional cues of conversations provides
scope fordissimulation, fraud, exploitation and abuse of trust.
But that does not mean the Internet is a free-for-all jungle
out there. Government and industry-sponsored schemes have been designed to
provide various layers of protection to children online. These include
age-rating classification schemes, filtering systems to block unsuitable or
harmful content, formulation of laws and acts etc., which attempt to facilitate
the fostering of trust in the Internet for learning, information and
communication.
The Communications Decency Act,
1996, was perhaps the first legislative action by the US government to regulate
content on the Internet. It was aimed at protecting children from inappropriate
content on the Internet and the Act restricted speech of adults which, ironically, in the
real world would have been perfectly legal. Naturally, in due course, the Act
was deemed by the Supreme Court as imposing 'impermissible burden' on the free
expression rights of adults and hence, was ruled out as unconstitutional.
The Communication Decency Act was
followed by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA),
which regulates collection of personal information by persons or entities from
children below 13 years of age. It also provides guidelines and rules for
designing privacy policies, which a website operator must follow when designing
a site that could be used by minors and stipulates when and how to seek
verifiable consent from a parent or guardian to protect children's privacy and
safety online.
The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) aims to protect
children from obscene or harmful content over the Internet in schools and
libraries. All institutions that receive grants and discounts for Internet
through the E-rate program are subjected to CIPA, which ensures that children
using the internet in these places are not exposed to obscene material, child
pornography and harmful messages. Organizations coming under the CIPA are
required to actively monitor the
online activities of users and educate minors about appropriate
online behavior, including ethics to be followed during interactions with
others on social media.
The US FBI has a separate
department to investigate high-tech crimes, including cyber-based
terrorism, espionage, computer intrusions, and major cyber fraud.CyberTipline offers
a convenient and safe place to report cyber crimes, especially against
children. i-SAFE, a
non-profit foundation aimed at educating youth to make their Internet
experience safe and responsible, works with law enforcement agencies to foster
cyber-safe communities. Help is available from child safety organizations,
the Attorney General's office and other organizations to become educated on Internet safety
issues.
It is heartening to note that the Federal government of USA
extensively funds task forces to support state and local law
enforcement in protecting children against Internet crimes, with beneficial
outcomes. For example, between April and May 2015, Internet Crimes Against
Children (ICAC) Task Forces, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), arrested 1,140 child predators from 41 states
in an operation called "Operation Broken Heart". The task forces have also
delivered more than 2,200 presentations on Internet safety to more than 186,000
youth and adults during these two months.
These efforts aside, the fit of Internet into the current
system of jurisdiction continues to remain ambiguous in many countries,
including America, and Internet users do not have a unified set of rules or
laws to live by. Formulating generalized laws is challenged by the
pervasiveness of the Internet over nations with widely differing real-time
laws, and by the complicated architecture of the Internet that makes it easy
for people to obfuscate their identity and location.
Any law is enforceable only with cooperation from all
parties involved - the legislature, executive, judiciary, and most importantly
the public. Legal systems that oversee the Internet are geographically
restricted. Such a restricted system would put a sizeable burden on state and
local authorities, without ample support from the users themselves.
Writing credit: Co-authored by Lakshmi, a Mobicip blogger who
is just as passionately opinionated about the juxtaposition of technology,
parenting, and education.
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