It affects commercial U.S. websites, but applies to third-party commercial web sites that schools permit their students to access, and may apply to commercial portions of other sites. While non-profit sites are not covered by the act, the term is not defined and many non-profit sites, concerned about safety are complying nonetheless. It also isn't restricted to sites aimed at children, but includes general audience sites where the sites have knowledge that they are dealing with someone under thirteen. (Such sites have to comply with COPPA, and frankly don't understand what information they have about their site visitors that might implicate COPPA.) There are essentially three key aspects of COPPA: Disclosure, Information Collection and Safety Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, requires commercial website operators to get parental consent before collecting any personal information from kids under 13. COPPA allows teachers to act on behalf of a parent during school activities online, but does not require them to do so. COPPA has yet to be effectively enforced because judges keep ruling it unconstitutional, not unlike its predecessor, the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which was held to be unconstitutional by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in 1997. To date, every federal judge to consider the legality of either CDA or COPPA has found that the Internet content regulation laws violate the First Amendment because "there are 'no other reasonable measures' available to restrict access to minors, without requiring users to register or provide a credit card or other proof of identity before gaining access to restricted content. Requiring adult Web users to do so would impermissibly burden the First Amendment rights." EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center) "http://www.epic.org/free_speech/copa/" http://www.epic.org/ has joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to ask the U.S. Supreme Court not to disturb the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that found the Child Online Protection Act to be unconstitutional. Reading & Resources Complete information on the COPPA litigation, including the text of the brief opposing Supreme Court review, is available at: "http://www.epic.org/free_speech/copa/" The Center for Media Education (CME) "http://www.cme.org/" has released a report, "Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) - The First Year" which evaluates the level of compliance with the law one year after it went into effect. "http://www.cme.org/children/privacy/coppa_rept.pdf" The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has also issued a highly readable report, "Privacy Policies on Children's Websites: Do They Play By the Rules?" "http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/jturow/privacyreport.pdf" COPPA... has been ruled many times unconstitutional and is against the 1st Amendment. So how can WE as List Owners help in this or do we just shut down every ListSERVE site? --- In the Spirit of the Golden Cards, O_/ Andrew Castiglione _/| N2 in waiting, Referee Instructor, __)\ Assessor/Mentor Grade 3 ` \ o Ken Aston Camp Staff Member Retired Registrar Region # 54 Area E Section 11 Co-Administrator/Owner of [log in to unmask] Creator/Owner/Webmaster of... http://www.ayso-l.org Artesia, CA. Al Iverson wrote: Come again? http://www.echalk.com/erate_coppa.html http://wiredkids.org/coppa1.html Adam Bailey wrote: > > On 10/22/01 10:31 AM, Al Iverson <[log in to unmask]> wrote... > > >I thought COPPA was ruled unconstitutional? > > I think you're thinking of CDA. > > -- > Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois > [log in to unmask] | Finger/Web for PGP > [log in to unmask] | http://www.lull.org/adam/ -- Al Iverson -- [log in to unmask] -- Minneapolis, Minnesota My spam-related website: http://www.spamresource.com/ Support Jazz in Minnesota! -- http://www.mnjazz.com/ All opinions are mine alone unless I state otherwise.