[Chapter-delegates] Safe internet campaign

[Alejandro Pisanty]

Hi Rimon, and all,

"safe Internet campaigns" are a valuable effort but are also fraught with 
some serious potential complications. A word of care here:

It is very usual, and easy, for people to get fired up about "safe 
navigation for kids" on the grounds of easy access to pornographic content 
and of horror stories of harassment, pedophilia, and worse. A lot of it 
comes from parents who think of the Internet as the Web and are barely 
aware, if at all, of what actually goes on.

This, combined with technophobia, luddism, etc. can easily feed campaigns, 
or campaigners, who immediately lean toward content control, filtering, 
censorship, etc. (we are seeing one example develop right now in Mexico 
and there have been many others.)

So it is very important to do as you are doing in Israel, that is, to 
promote the positive aspects of the Internet, and to be frank and open 
about the risks and their real size. And to emphasize that safe navigation 
is not something that the Net will solve for you - parents and teachers 
cannot abdicate from their responsibilities to their children in educating 
them to navigate the Internet safely, the same way they teach them to 
navigate through streets, schools, and life in general.

A former ISOC member, Ms. Parry Aftab, has created excellent contents for 
these campaigns, and is very open to all sorts of collaboration for this 
purpose - keeping the Internet open at the same time! See 
http://www.aftab.com for more. She was in Mexico recently, as the ISOC 
contribution to a conference on Internet security, and really created a 
splash. She has most recently licensed comics from Marvel Comics to use 
them for children safety on the Internet, and published a neat, useful 
guide to fight cyberbullying.

In Mexico we have created (in UNAM, my university) a home-user site with 
information and tips, and also some comics-like characters which are used 
in magazines. We'll be glad to share.

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty


.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  .
      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
Director General de Servicios de Computo Academico
UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
Tel. (+52-55) 5622-8541, 5622-8542 Fax 5622-8540
http://www.dgsca.unam.mx
*
---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
  Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


On Fri, 27 Jul 2007, Rimon Levy wrote:

> Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:22:11 +0300
> From: Rimon Levy <Rimon at sapir.ac.il>
> Reply-To: rimon at isoc.org.il
> To: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> Subject: [Chapter-delegates] Safe internet campaign
> 
> At ISOC-IL we are planning to launch a campaign on safe internet for
> kids. We found that parents are worried about the risks (widely
> publicized by the media) of kids using the internet , and from the other
> side are not very acquainted to the internet, or  do not access the
> Internet at all. So we want to reach them by other channels, diferent
> from a web site.
> The idea is to launch a campaign stressing the good things that can be
> achieved trought the use of the Internet, along with tips to parents and
> childrens how to minimize the risks.
> Something like
> http://www.pta.org/archive_article_details_1153866875015.html
>
> If some of you have information about similar campaigns in your country,
> we will be glad to get a reference to it. This could help us to  can
> learn about others experience and  use the references to demonstrate
> what we have in mind to decision makers in Government and private
> sector, so we can convince them to support the initiative.
>
> Rimon Levy, President
> ISOC-IL
>