This post copyright frozen... used to be: "Report: Grade School Age Kids Actively Subvert Privacy Protection"

This post used to have a link to a story from CBC about how kids actively subvert privacy protection on Club Penguin and other kid-oriented websites.

This post used to have quotes from the CBC story showing how kids got around the rules of the kids sites - even to the point of using rhyming words like mine for nine in order to ask age questions - because the sites software would filter numbers in chat sessions.

This post used to encourage you to go to CBC and read their quality content.

Except now, the CBC has hired an American firm to hunt down people who quote the CBC. As I learned from the blog "Buckdog", I could get fined or sued for quoting the CBC:

"The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web (these are the same jokers who sell you a "license" to quote 5 words from the AP)" - BoingBoing

Buckdog also provided a link to a facebook page: Canadians against CBC's iCopyright DRM

So I will be pulling all CBC derived content from this blog, and not using or linking to any CBC content until this is all settled.

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[the editorial from the original post]

EDITORIAL COMMENT: I'VE NEVER TRUSTED NETWORK BLOCKERS OF ANY VARIETY

Remember - these are nine, ten, eleven, twelve year old kids...

I have never trusted network blockers or filters. I have always tried to be around my kids when they are online and to encourage an open dialogue on what they encounter. I have been shocked at some of the material they have seen and shared with me that they have seen, because they are still my kids, but there is little choice - their ability to get around network blocks that I might throw into place is fairly good. I have taught them about computers and the internet since a very young age. I know that they can crack or get around most anything I put up if they really want. I would literally have to padlock/steel enclosure our household network access to even be able to try to limit their access. Except they would use any of a number of encrypted proxy tunneling services to get around even that...

So the better path, in my opinion, and my case, is to try to discuss what they have seen and to help them interpret it and guide them through the ugly rather than block it.

I should also note that many of their friends have unblocked networks because of lack of skill and will on the part of their friends' parents - so my kids would have access elsewhere anyway (just like when I was a kid my parents wouldn't let us play with toy guns - so we did it at our friends' places).

For better or for worse...