Would you leave a child alone in the midst of a highway? – ALCEI”™s relation to the European Parliament
On December 11th, on the premises of the european parliament in Strasbourg, has been held a meeting organised by the CONSUMER FORUM INTERGROUP, chaired by the english deputy Mr. Withehead and with the participation of many european deputies, having as its subject: “Children and the Internet”.

Some of the relators were:

– ALCEI – Electronic Frontiers Italia
– DG XIII – Information Market Policy
– Microsoft – Corporate Attorney

1) The problem of protecting the minor is dramatically present, and this is demonstrated by the numerous events reported with unusual punctiliousness by the whole world”™s media. To be specific, there might have been a series of grave episodes against children, who might have been lured by means of the Internet.

This has evidenced with great seriousness the problem of regulamenting the contents of the net and the activity on it. Many parties have invoked restrictive measures and new laws to regulamentate this “new medium”, source of many and unspeakable dangers, on the undemonstrated premise of a generic fallacy of existing norms.

2) Internet – in this moment it is not necessary to define it – is just a tool and, thus, it isn”™t more dangerous than a car or a kitchen knife, but it is definitely less dangerous. It is obvious to point out that no parent with good sense would leave his/her own child alone in the middle of a road or with a kitchen knife in the hands; perhaps it is less obvious that the same care should be taken in worrying for a minor”™s well-being when switching from a common tool to a television or a computer.

While Internet exists as a mass phenomenon only very recently, television and telephone have been continuously – and keep continuing to be – sad protagonists of criminous events: it is enough to think, with reference to Italy, to the grave episodes of violence on minors which have forced the Mail and Telecommunications Ministry to emit a restrictive edict about the modalities of offering of the 144 services. However, nobody would ever dream of switching off televisors or unplugging telephones: it should be the same for Internet.
But it is not!

Requests for restrictive norms specifically conceived for the net and for indiscriminate censorship are coming from many sides, in the hope that, with exemplar punishments, the problem will be solved. But is it really so?

3) The cases of abuse inflicted upon children lured on the road or by phone have a common element: the family”™s absence, which increasingly delegates to surrogates, even electronic ones, the management of the children”™s time.

In the case of Internet, the families have an even greater responsibility.

If, indeed, telephone and television are easily accessible and simple to use, a computer (connected to the net) doesn”™t have any of these characteristics but is instead:

* Expensive (the price of a computer in Italy is approximately about three millions of lire).
* Hard to use: the pre-installed software (if there is any) isn”™t enough, it is necessary to implement some setup procedures that aren”™t within grasp of everyone. This is especially true of Internet.
* It requests the subscription of a contract with an ISP (and a minor, even if therà©s economical availability, isn”™t legally allowed to sign such contracts).
* It requests at least a minimal knowledge of at least two operative systems.

Confront what is requested of a child to use the telephone to make an international call and what skills and abilities the child should have in order to connect on its own to the net! So, if a parent puts in the hands of his/her own child a computer and a modem, the parent has the duty to teach the child how to use it in the best way.

4) The terms of the question don”™t change when we look at the diffusion of material that might leave a mark in the child”™s frail psyche. I won”™t recall in this occasion how much and what is being said in relation to the responsibility of television because it is not a subject of debate. In relation to the assigned topic, it is unavoidable to expose the strong perplexity felt in the proposals for solving this second problem, with particular reference to the PICS system. With a rating system of web pages and various kinds of filters – so it is said – it is possible to limit the access to certain kinds of material particularly offensive or indecent, thus safeguarding both adults and minors.
This idea is a trojan horse: it hides in its inside a subtle and sneaky boobytrap. On one side the criminals or, anyway, the malicious will find the way to override this or that filtering system. On the other side the parents, blindly trusting the technology, will lower the guard, certain that nothing bad can happen”¦ it”™s up to you to draw the conclusions.

Let”™s make it clear that paedophiles and criminals must be found and prosecuted, so welcome to PICS and all the kinds of helpers of this world, but without forgetting that, at the center of all this, there should be always the human relationship.
5) It remains now, at this point, to examine the position of those invoking new norms conceived specifically for the net.

To tell the truth, this would be the occasion to ask oneself instead which norms have been concretely applied to the net and where those norms weren”™t eventually enough. In other words, the misunderstanding lying at the basement of all this is the confusion between the sanction and its effective application. Actually, if we use as an example the italian penal system, there are many norms that can be utilized to protect the minors: private violence, personal lesions, circumvention of incapable, and so on.

The problem is different: the law alone isn”™t enough, it is necessary that there be someone to punish, meaning that inquiries must be conducted. During the proceedings of a symposium organised by ALCEI on 26th July 1996, it has been demonstrated practically, in front of a judge and of many members of the law enforcement, how easy it is to pinpoint subjects doing illicit activities of various kinds on the net.

Please allow me to point out polemically: How many cases of telematic paedophilia have been documented so far? How many have been put in court? Which are the juridical issues that have arisen? Nobody has really thought about that. Before issuing new laws (doomed to practical unapplicability) and, anyway, while waiting for the case, it is necessary to use the many tools at disposal.

What are doing the inquirers? If paedophilia on the net is a problem that arises a social alarm, instead of wasting statal funds in the chase of students posing as hackers, why don”™t they look at the many IRC channels where it is really easy to exchange “certain kinds of material”?

6) This collective hysteria, which seems to have contaminated indiscriminately the whole world, has been provoked mainly by the mass-medià s biased and unfair method of information. Almost every time that Internet is cited on newspapers or in television it is to put in evidence its mean and murky facets. The result is to scare away the average people, while giving a bad service to the development of the new communication systems.

If the objective is the Dark Age we”™re on the right way to it.