Welcome speech by Stephen Balkam
CEO, Family Online Safety Institute
Delivered at FOSI's annual conference: "Rights and Responsibility: Child Protection in a Web 2.0 World, " Washington, D.C., 6th December 2007
Good morning and welcome to the first, annual, Family Online Safety Institute Conference and Exhibition. I am delighted to see so many of you - old friends and new acquaintances alike - as well as those who have traveled great distances to be with us today.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge and thank our generous conference sponsors who made today possible through their financial, moral and material support. In particular, Verizon and AT&T, our Platinum sponsors and the GSM Association, our Gold sponsor. And here is a list of all our sponsors. Thank you all very much!
We launched FOSI in February of this year - first at the Kaiser Family Foundation here in DC, then a week later at the House of Commons in London. Our vision is to increase the safety, decrease the fear and expand the benefits of our networked world, particularly for children. We do this by identifying and promoting best practice, tools and methods in the field of online safety. We have created a unique international space where policy, technology and education leaders come together to create innovative solutions to the many challenges created by our online world.
Since our launch events, we've run a hugely successful conference in June with Telmex in Mexico City attended by the First Lady, Margarita Zavala. Next we went to Madrid in September and held a joint event with Telefonica. We played a very active role in the UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro last month and throughout the year, FOSI has led the World Wide Web Consortium POWDER working group, received further funding from the EU's Safer Internet Plus program and we've compiled and published today, our first FOSI publication, the State of Online Safety Report 2008. This report, which began as a snapshot of the online safety landscape of five countries has grown to twice that many as more contributors came forward as word of our pending report came out. No doubt, next year's publication could well be larger still as the spread of child protection efforts continues to grow - particularly in developing countries.
I commend this report to you as an indispensable tool for comparison, inspiration and, dare I say it, things to avoid, in your own country, industry or academic institution. My hearty thanks to all the contributors of this report and to Adam Thierer, who provided so much early guidance and help.
I also want to acknowledge the Aspen Institute and, particularly, Charlie Firestone, for agreeing to work with us to make this conference a success. We are excited that Aspen has decided to use this event to launch their report Media, Creativity and the Public Good based on a three-day seminar earlier this year, which I participated in. Indeed, it was the final discussion of that event that inspired the title of our conference today - Rights and Responsibilities: Child Protection in a Web 2.0 World.
We talk a good deal about our rights to free speech and free expression. In this country those rights are enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. In Europe, they are guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights. Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, "Every one has the right to freedom of opinion and expression". And so when this new medium came along, we moved our presumptions of free expression, rightly, onto the web.
In the US, this right has been famously applied to a number of Congressional attempts to legislate online porn and other potentially harmful content. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was overturned a year later by the Supreme Court stating that not only did it fall foul of the First Amendment, it also impinged on parents' rights to decide what their children could or couldn't see. Two years later, the Child Online Protection Act was introduced and it has twice been to the Supreme Court and both times it has been blocked for violating the rights of adults to "adult" content.
So, in the West at least, there is a very broad and encompassing feeling of freedom on the Internet. Because of this, many see a wild, wild, west and that is borne out by a search of just about any kind of (barely) legal content you could think of. Normal rules do not seem to apply. Live sex video feeds. Spectacularly gruesome depictions of violence. Foul language. Descriptions of depraved behavior. All of these things are easily and simply available if you know where to look.
Now, when you put kids into this picture, you slam up against one of the most intractable problems in our brave, new digital world. The challenge for governments is how to protect what the US Supreme Court called this "unique medium" while being mindful of the impact of harmful content that knows no boundaries.
So how are we to respond? My belief is that we need a four-pronged approach that emphasizes:
- robust and comprehensive industry self-regulation
- reasonable government oversight and support
- and relevant & timely online safety education and awareness training for parents, children, teachers and policy makers
So what is needed to balance the rights we hold so dear, is, what I call, a New Culture of Responsibility.
It's new because we have never encountered a medium like the Internet before. And just as we think we know what it is, a new device, a new platform, a new, strange meeting place emerges to upend our notions of what we thought it was.
So what would this new culture of responsibility look like? Well, it would take on a "multi-stakeholder" appearance, much like the recent Internet Governance Forum in Rio where government officials, industry leaders, NGO advocates, researchers, academics and journalists come together to put the challenges on the table and begin to collaborate on finding workable solutions - much like we are doing here today.
It would involve parents, teachers and the kids themselves taking on their own unique responsibilities. Parents must not abdicate their role of guardian and protector, even if they feel at a disadvantage when it comes to knowledge and experience of the Internet. While I often say, the kids are fearless and the parents are clueless — this should not be used as an excuse to do nothing. Adults have greater powers of discernment and judgment even if they are lacking in complete understanding of the digital devices and the latest social networking site.
Teachers have a critical role to play in forming comprehensive Web 2.0 educational curriculum that avoids taking a fear-based approach, but looks to reduce risk, detect concerns and respond quickly and effectively, while highlighting and exploiting the extraordinary educational resources and methods of collaboration that are now available.
And let's not leave the kids out of this picture. We must respect their experience and expertise and stress the importance of looking out for their peers and the younger ones in the digital meeting places and social networking sites. And we must not overreact when they tell us about some disturbing image, video or posting they've seen, but treat it as a teaching moment - a way to keep the lines of communication open between us, the digital tourists and them, the digital natives.
The new culture of responsibility would, of course, incorporate the extraordinary developments and efforts that exist and continue to flow from the Internet industry, itself. There are excellent examples of these to be seen in the exhibition hall and you will hear of others from our speakers and panelists today. Of course, more can be and should be done. There are still ISPs in different parts of the world, that do not take this issue seriously. Adult content providers that do not label their sites or provide some means to shield kids with a warning page. Cyber cafés in developing countries where kids go to get online with no filters or adult supervision. The broader industry has much to do to respond to the ever evolving issues thrown up by their products and services.
So where does this leave government? Well there are some shining examples of responsible oversight here in this room today. We'll here from the UK experience and their ground-breaking, multi-stakeholder Internet Task Force. In a video presentation from Commissioner Viviane Reding, we'll learn more of the exemplary Internet Action Plan that was launched eight years ago and continues to innovate and encourage collaboration across sectors and the European states to act responsibly.
And what of the US government? Frankly, there has been a lack of leadership at the highest levels on this issue. That governance void has encouraged a slew of Congressional attempts to legislate in this area, with mixed results. What we would like to see, and this may have to wait for the next Administration, is an Executive Branch initiative that brings together the many departments and agencies, Justice, Commerce, Education, the FTC and FCC into a more unified program of action.
There should be an annual White House Summit, chaired by the President, using his or her bully pulpit, to bring together the industry and NGO leaders to create greater awareness and unity of purpose on this issue, while urging all concerned to redouble their efforts. This needs to be backed up by sufficient funding, developed criteria, evaluation and research.
Make no mistake; this is the work of a generation.
We will have to constantly review, alter, modify and re-create our technologies, our messages and our methods.
We will have to constantly assess our efforts against an international back-drop, as digital content knows no boundaries.
We will need to connect national policies and initiatives with state and local efforts where the real work gets done.
We will have to create nothing less than a new culture of behavior, of awareness and understanding. It will not be easy. But it must be done.
Today, I can announce our commitment to the creation of a Family Online Safety Education Initiative in 2008 that will involve parents, students, educators and policy makers about the opportunities, risks and responsibilities along with the Best Practices and Tools available to them. It will begin with a survey of what already exists here in the US and move on to a series of quarterly roundtables where we will gather the leading folk in the field and move on to recommendations for future action. And I will be seeking your help in this initiative.
So let's use today's discussions to build greater understanding of the challenges and of the emerging innovations in public policy, technology, education and the new challenges thrown up by social networking sites and the mobile web.
Make sure you get your hands on the remarkable range of tools and services on display in the exhibition hall.
And I invite you to join us in this journey. FOSI is a membership organization and I would encourage you to consider becoming a member. Join us in our events and efforts going forward into next year and let us hear from you what issues and initiatives you would like to see us address or collaborate on.
And finally, I would invite you to come back in a year's time, for our second annual conference and exhibition, in a year's time and work with us in the meantime to make the online world safer for our kids and our families. Thank you.
