RE: New Federal Law (COPPA)

["Roeland Meyer (E-mail)" <rmeyer () mhsc com>]

> Ron Buchalski
> Sent: Monday, April 24, 2000 7:04 AM

> It's still up to parents to make sure that their kids are surfing the 
> Internet responsibly, but I don't know that the law assumes 
> this in order to protect ISPs.

> From what I've been reading, there is no such assumption. Add to this the inability to authenticate anyone's identity 
> and we have a small problem. ISPs aren't liable unless their web-hosting customers setup something risque. Then, it 
> appears to be an issue of whether the ISP actually has control of the host that is running the material. This may be 
> another nail in the coffin for the web-hosting business.

It appears that we have two camps, those wanting authentication and those who resist the idea. COPPA appears to come 
from the authentication camp, as a whip to "encourage" the resistors to come up with a means to authenticate the users.

<soapbox>
Also, one might note that the US legal system has been on an anti-parent binge for decades. Witness the unmitigated 
gall of a US Judge, in FLA, granting custody, of a six-year old boy, to a distant relative, rather than the actual 
biological father, based on political agenda. Anyone who has been through a custody battle can atest to this; That "for 
the good of the child" does NOT mean anything related to decency or parental rights. The USG has been setting itself 
over parental rights for a long time. Therefore, anything parents might agree to can be over-ridden by the do-goodniks 
in USG social services departments. COPPA is a part of this over-all agenda.
<\soapbox>