Richard Weil of Cartoon Network and Rebecca Newton of CrispThinking.com follow up on their 2008 GDC Austin presentation, which I did not attend.

11:00am  Rich Weil is the community director for Fusion Fall.  They plan to talk about regulatory changes in the last year.  Rebecca Newton is in charge of safety at CrispThinking, which monitors children's online behavior.

Rebecca starts us off.  COPPA changes as of Oct 2008.  Tell a Friend system- no email addresses or real names revealed.  No more than 10 characters in From field to prevent most full first and last names.  Email collection from <13 kids: You must notify parents if kids' email is in "retrievable form".  Any PII gathered and retained, parents must be notified.  See COPPA FAQ.  CyberBullying laws vary by state.  45 states have laws or pending laws on CyberStalking.

Self harm is a common theme in kids online interaction.  Guidelines / terms of service on sites should define self injury or self harm as inappropriate behavior, and point users to proper authorities for help.  (selfharm.net)  Suicide threats online are a misdemeanor "inducing panic" in Ohio!  Sexting is a common problem because children exchanging nude pictures with each other via text or email is child pornography legally.  Vermont just decriminalized it in July 09.  Ohio intriduced legislation to decriminalize it in April 09.  Helpful guidelines for child abuse and child pornography are available here.  (My note: The Oprah Winfrey Show did a mind blowing episode on child pornography this year.  Here's a detailed episode runthrough.)

11:23am Rich Weil takes over.  Boys spend 7% more time online than girls.  Girls viewed 9% more webpages.  (Boys go to the same sites over and over again.)  Top Ten Kids Gaming Sites traffic has gone down.  Rich attributes this to traffic spreading out among many sites.  Top sites include miniclips.com and clubpenguin.com.  Kids still play more games on the computer than anywhere else, including consoles.  (My note: But this could be because they measured different popular consoles separately.)

Rebecca: You should do a criminal background check on all employees who interact with children or children's data online.  Check out http://www.export.gov/safeharbor to learn more about compliance with customer data.  Review ethics and code of conduct with your staff periodically, every 6 months or so.

11:39am Rich: Several children's online virtual worlds do not keep logs.  On Fusion Fall, they do.  It's defensive to track all users, let them know and let people feel safer.

Advertising is decreasing as an online revenue source in kids' sites.  Product placement is a gray area legally.  People aren't doing much of it yet.  Parents are vary wary of recurring charges.  There are too many sites out there that kids want to play with, and it's too much to have subscriptions to all of them.  Business model updates: microtransactions, freemium, mix and match models.  It's all over the map right now.  (My note: Parents must find all this variety confusing and overwhelming!)  'Free' attracts kids!  Habbo, Webkinz and Club Penguin are the big three, but it's hard to get specific data on traffic and success.

11:49am Maine pushed an act to prevent predatory marketing to children, but it is not going through.  Follow Rebecca on Twitter for updates. 

Someone asked about data for what kids do within games.  Rich says they do have some data in Fusion Fall.  They have 2 people on staff for metrics.

Someone asked when we'll reach the point where there are so many regulations that we can't successfully do children's games online.  Rebecca doesn't see that happening in the next 8 to 10 years.  She says government wants it all to be credit card based, so we can know that a parent approves.  Legislators currently aren't too familar with child behaviors online.  Studies show predatory behavior offline is much higher than online.  Statistically, children are in more danger from predators at school or on playground.