Information Technology Act Paper
Shirley Richardson
BIS/220
July 7, 2013
David Martin

Children’s Internet Protection Act, 2000
As the internet grows and become a vast part of how the world communicates. The world is bombarded with the existence of the dangers and threats, especially involving the younger generation. Because of the vast danger and threats, a great need for filtering software has become the center of attraction, world-wide concerning the debate about children, sex, and the internet. In December 2000, Congress passed the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which is a law that places a demand on every school, library, museum, and all public related facilities to ensure there are some form of filtering application in place so, that they can continue receiving Federal funding for computers and internet accessibility.
Entangled within the vast talked about dilemma of the internet and its dangers, as it pertains to children’s sexuality, internet filtering software takes up a wide spread of issues resulting in anxiety and fear. The matter that pose a major issue to parents are what the children are being exposed too, such as pornography, sexual images, sexual experience and sexual information, all of these things and more are discovered. The only way to protect the children from these obscenities and the dangers that the children are faced with, will be to educate our children, the responsibility does not fall on the distributors alone but the parents should be aware of what their children are doing, what sites they go too, limit them to what is acceptable and what is not and use pass word and parental permission to enter certain sites. This probably will not end the dangers completely but it can help prevent some of the dangers.

The advances in information technology that resulted in new ethical issues necessitating the creation of each act? Every advancement in information technically is accommodated by at least one ethical dilemma. From dating profiles, Facebook to email updates, computer users are not aware of the thin balance amongst ethics and profit stricken by providers. Software developers, as well as business and individuals must consider the rights and wrongs of using information technology every day. The fundaments of these issues situated beneath the world of information are the end result of user’s expectancies of privacy and there providers, ethical duties to utilizing these applications responsibly.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), 1998
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released the final rule pertaining to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (COPPA, 15 U.S.C. 6501, et seq. 16 C.F.R. Part 312). This rule came into effect on April 21, 2000, which inclines that those who are in control of these web sites and other online services to abhor direct guidelines in honoring the collection, use, and its delivery of individually, detectable information from children under the age of 13.
The rule directly indicates two particularly web sites and other online services (collecting, sites): the first one is the sites pertaining to children; the other is on the actual knowledge that the information received is from a child. The rules conducting these sites are described as follows: these sites must make mention of how they distribute, utilization, of information collected from children, secondly parents or guardians permission to collect personal identifying information from children, along with verification of consent prior to collection of use of information disclosed.
Parents are given a chance to oversee personal identifying information of their children used by a site, parents are also allowed to delete and input a site to stop collecting further information from a child. The rule also stipulates perimeters that will be used to pinpoint rather the distributer of a site directed towards an audience in general are knowledgeable that an individual quest is a child, in the way of FTC: examples of these findings are the age or grade a child is in through the registry/ concerned parent about the site being visited by a child.
Even though COPPA does not investigate the age or grade directly, questions are asked about where they are in their education, be grammar school, middle school, high school, or college, through these questions the operator are to be able to indicate the age of the user.
The advances in information technology that resulted in new ethical issues necessitating the creation of the COPPA of April 21, 2000 pertains to the online collection of personal information by people or anything existing under the U.S. jurisdiction from children under the age of 13. It includes what a website provider must input in a privacy policy, the whens and how’s of seeking consent that can be verified from a parent or guardian, the responsibilities the providers have on ensuring the children’s privacy and safety online activities, along with restrictions on marketing to those under the age of 13.
Because of the dangers of lawsuits and other legal allegations many websites do not allow under age children to use their sites. However it is good that the laws were established to protect all children under age from a wide variety of dangers that stems from visiting certain websites, there is still room for improvement. Because of technology and its advances children are still able to visit certain websites that are not permissible, by falsifying information, having parents that are either too busy or just in denial about what their children are really doing when visiting any website, and because this matter is not investigated properly, children are still at risk of the dangers of the internet, and much more should be done to ensure the safety of our children.

Richman, A. (2006). Technical Difficulties: Youth, Sex, and the Discourse of the Dangerous Internet
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA)' 2000, Journal Of Internet Law, 3, 7, p. 22, Computers & Applied Sciences Complete, EBSCO host, viewed 11 July 2013.