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The MSN conspiracy...; Protecting children or profit
Topic Started: Sep 27 2003, 12:05 PM (135 Views)
captain_proton_au
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A Robot in Disguise

Microsofts decision to close various chat rooms reeks of a hidden agenda.
They say they are closing the chat rooms to protect kids from pedophiles, but wont that push kids into less regulated chat rooms, making them easier targets.

Dont be suprised if in the not to distant future Mr Gates et al reestablish the rooms at a service fee to the consumer, which is what this is really about, Microsoft dont make money monitoring free chat rooms.

For the techo-savvy parent, Net Nanny software exists to disallow emails and mpeg and jpeg files to be downloaded, and for the not so technically minded parent , the best advice I have seen in articles and books is to make sure the family computer is in a central place, the living room or kitchen , so what the child is doing can be monitored.

It might sound good at first, but denying service will only lead to the proliferation of less credible chat rooms that kids will transfer too.Money is to be made by others that start up chat rooms and charge advertisers for advertising space.

Microsoft is better off writing better child protection software that parents can easily understand, then they can use the profits to pay for monitors to their chat rooms.
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Swidden
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Adm. Gadfly-at-large; Provisional wRench-fly at large
Captain, you may or may not be aware down under that there have been a couple of attempts to regulate internet content and access via Congress here in the US. So far the attempts have been considered too broad legally anad been struck down. Still, there will be further attempts to regulate content unless the industry makes real efforts to regulate itself. One way of doing this would be to charge access as frequently as possible to sites that might well include chat rooms. The simple truth is that many kids will not be able to get into pay sites because this will require credit card and e-pay via bank accounts or similar features. If they cannot pay then they will not get in with out their parents agreeing to it.

To be sure there will be kids who find their way around it or have paarents who will not mind just giving the kids a blank check to log on wherever they want. At least until Junior runs up a high bill on a porn site or gets contacted by someone less than reputable.
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captain_proton_au
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A Robot in Disguise

My memory of the details of congress trying to regulate the internet are sketchy, but wasnt in response to EU demands for better privacy from US data collecters, and the FCC said that it was just about impossible to implement.I still think a corporation as large as Microsoft can come up with a better idea.And I think it was also the FCC that suggested the Introduction of Digital IDs a few years ago, credit cards are not the only way to guarantee identity.
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Hoss
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Don't make me use my bare hands on you.
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I still think a corporation as large as Microsoft can come up with a better idea.


Base on what past history do you make this assertion? I have never heard of good ideas from MS. Just ideas to increase profits and strengthen their monopoly.
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