The Honorable Ron Wyden
516 Hart Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable George Allen
204 Russell Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20515
 

September 12, 2002

Dear Chairman Wyden and Senator Allen:
 

As the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space prepares to hold hearings today on S. 2537, which would mandate the creation of a second level, .kids.us domain, the Center for Democracy and Technology would like to take this opportunity to express its concerns with the bill.

CDT believes that Congressionally-mandated creation of a .kids.us domain - while well-intentioned - sets a dangerous precedent for regulation of the domain name space, creates new concerns about free expression online, and would be ineffective at protecting children. The goal of S. 2537, to ensure that America's children have a safe and positive Internet experience, is a critical one that we all share. Policymakers, the private sector and public interest organizations have explored approaches to protecting children in legislative proposals, in-depth studies, and business and community-based education initiatives, and have confronted the advantages and challenges posed by each of these approaches. Those efforts indicate that other approaches including private development of child-friendly spaces, and not government mandates, are most likely to promote safety online and do so in a way consistent with our Constitutional values.

1. Creation and maintenance of .kids.us in the manner set out in S. 2537 inappropriately involves government in making decisions about what material should and should not be available on the Internet.

   S. 2537 requires the company administering the .us domain to make decisions about what is suitable for minors and not harmful to minors. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the Department of Commerce would oversee this effort, determining whether the domain operates in accordance with the mandates of the bill. How will NTIA decide whether the content in .us is in its view suitable for minors? Government oversight about the inclusion or exclusion of content on the Internet goes to the heart of concerns about censorship; the type of government oversight contemplated by S. 2537 is inappropriate and should be avoided.

2. The approach provided for in S. 2537 would be limited in its ability to protect children.

   S. 2537 would create a new second level kids.us domain that would ostensibly contain only material appropriate for children below the age of thirteen - a very broad age group. This is problematic for two reasons. First, parents may differ about what material is appropriate for their children. A parent in Manhattan may allow their 10-year-old to view material that a parent in Minneapolis may not. Second, the age group twelve and under includes children at a wide range of developmental levels. Material suitable for a 12-year-old may not be appropriate for a 5-year-old. So .kids.us risks becoming a space so innocuous that it is safe for 6-year olds but uninteresting for 12-year-olds, or a space of interest to 12-year-olds but inappropriate for 6-year-olds. Either way, many parents will find that limiting their children's Internet activity to .kids.us will not be a solution to keeping them safe online. And the company administering the domain would be required to make decisions for millions of children that would be better made by families.

3. To make .kids.us effective and useful for families, the site must be aggressively maintained and monitored. The kind of enforcement necessary to make the site safe for children would be expensive and difficult.

   Were a .kids.us space created, it would be imperative that it be scrupulously monitored to assure that the material on its sites is, in fact, appropriate for children and that it is not altered to include or link to offensive content. To do otherwise would give parents a false sense of security about what their children may access while in .kids. To accomplish this would require constant surveillance of the space - an effort that would be cumbersome, demand tremendous allocation of resources, and seems very likely to fall short of parental expectations.

4. Required creation of this space would be a misapplication of one of the Internet's core technologies.

   Since the Internet's inception, the technical community has wisely steered away from using domain names to implement public policy. Designed for user convenience, domain names were intended only to help to structure the Internet by creating stable links between computer systems online. Congressionally-required establishment of .kids.us would open the door to other uses of domain names that could ultimately compromise the Internet's development.

5. The resources allocated to creating and maintaining this online space would be better spent on education for children and parents.

   Two important studies released over the past two years - The Report of the Children's Online Protection Act Commission (COPA Commission) and the National Academy of Sciences report, Youth, Pornography and the Internet, (the NAS Report) - discuss the most effective ways to protect children from inappropriate content online. Both studies found that the best way to protect children online is to equip families with information and technologies that help them understand the risks and benefits inherent in the world of the Internet, and to make choices about their online experience that reflect their values and sensibilities.

   We agree that parents can best assure a positive online experience for their kids by making informed, individualized choices based on sound information; by staying involved in their children's activities online; and by using filtering technologies, if they choose, to limit the kinds of material to which their children are exposed.

   All of this requires resources to provide education to families about how the online world and the information and technology resources available to help them tailor their family's online experience. The resources to be allocated for the creation and maintenance of a .kids.us space would be more profitably spent on these educational efforts.

6. Congress would more appropriately pass a resolution urging the private sector to create green spaces for children.

   Both the COPA Commission and the NAS Report cite the importance of making more content appropriate for children available on the Internet. The COPA Commission discusses green spaces -- areas on the Internet specifically devoted to children's material. The NRC report discusses private sector efforts to develop this material, and activities of Internet portals to make it easy for children to access this content.

   Private sector development of this kind of content - not government mandates - is most likely to provide the greatest range of options to families and allow them the widest latitude to find the kind of content that best suits their needs. Rather than create a government sanctioned space, Congress would do better to urge the private sector to redouble its efforts to develop creative, age appropriate material that would meet the diverse requirements of America's families.

Protecting children online will benefit all Americans, but, as both the National Academy of Sciences and the COPA Commission reports indicate, S. 2537 is not the way to achieve this goal. We urge you not to pursue S. 2537, and look forward to working with you and your staff to seek alternate and more effective approaches to children's safety online.
 

Sincerely,

Alan Davidson
Associate Director

Paula Bruening
Staff Counsel