Comments on: COPPA: What happens when a generation ignores a law? http://www.ojr.org/p2013/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=p2013 Focusing on the future of digital journalism Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:43:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Robert Niles http://www.ojr.org/p2013/#comment-2759 Robert Niles Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:25:50 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=2013#comment-2759 Hey, I’m all for the data tracking and solicitation restrictions in COPPA – that’s why I focused my criticisms to particular elements of the law.

But it cannot be denied that COPPA also has taught a generation of Americans that the way to connect with people online is to lie and break rules. If you don’t see a problem with that, then you’re willing to lose a war to win a skirmish.

]]> By: 108.18.244.70 http://www.ojr.org/p2013/#comment-2758 108.18.244.70 Wed, 21 Sep 2011 04:59:25 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=2013#comment-2758 COPPA has been a huge success, protecting the privacy of children under 13. Kids are the only group in the U.S. who have legal safeguards to prevent the digital data tracking, profiling and online targeting that occurs online today. COPPA works. The kind of digital data collection that a user routinely faces online, involving their financial, health, racial and social behaviors, doesn’t happen in the children’s market because there is a privacy law. Once you turn 13 in the US, you are fair game for data collection. COPPA was designed to also be a safeguard against kids being unfairly targeted comnmercially. If you want to see what happens to teens because they don’t have a privacy law, see my site on teen junk food digital targeting at http://www.digitalads.org.

As the person who co-led the campaign to have Congress pass COPPA–and is leading the effort to have the FTC to ensure it covers mobile and other tracking devices–I would hope that the author would do a better job placing in the issue in context.

Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy

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