Is a minor bound to an agreement with the operator fo website where such minor promises to waive liability, to refrain from conduct that may lead to liability, or to other terms of using the website? What does this mean for Youth Commons?
What terms are common among websites with minor users? What are some terms we would recommend Youth Commons include in its user agreement?
What are the reuirements of the Children’s Online Protection Act (”COPPA”) and the Chid Online Protection Act (”COPA”) that Youth Commons must follow?
read entire summary Download YouthCommonsTermsofUseHansonKnight.doc
Entry Filed under: legal and privacy
January 10th, 2008 at 10:55am
Chris Tugwell
Permalink
Any website featuring content posted by both the site administrators and users should be aware of their tort liability; YouthCommons is no exception. This memo focuses on the tort of defamation under Wash. State law and the related Federal law, including brief description of both. Although the users of YouthCommons may be liable for content posted on the site, as a neutral service provider, YouthCommons itself is probably protected by the federal law described below… read entire document
Download YouthCommonsTortLiabilityHallRingland.doc
Entry Filed under: legal and privacy
January 10th, 2008 at 10:51am
Chris Tugwell
Permalink
Hi all,
This is a relevant thread from Sam’s DigitalAid site which I am reposting to the blog for posterity. ~DEEN
—Hello there.
Digital
cameras store, in addition to photographs themselves, some metadata
about the photographs. This metadata is often embedded with the image
itself. This can provide interesting data about a photograph. But it
can also be a privacy issue. Here is a post about this issue: http://netzreport.googlepages.com/hidden_data_in_jpeg_files.html
Question for you:
- Should
we strip this data? (no guarantees that all the data would get
stripped, but there is a Drupal contributed module that attempts to
strip this data; this applies only to those photos uploaded to the
site, not any pulled in from Flickr or other 3rd parties).
- Should
we print this data along with the photo? (there’s another Drupal module
that does this so it shouldn’t have much impact on cost/time)
- Should we do what 99% of the world does, which is neither? (don’t print it, don’t strip it)
- Or should we ask the youth what they want us to do?
Lemme know!
-Sam (more…)
Entry Filed under: PSO website development, legal and privacy
January 4th, 2008 at 09:52am
Deen Freelon
Permalink
CONTENT POLICY
Puget Sound Off (PSO) is designed to provide youth with a forum for discussion, artistic expression, and action as a way to empower and encourage youth voice. PSO aims to be a catalyst for increasing youth involvement and engagement within the community. We desire to build community by encouraging expression of one’s beliefs while maintaining respect for others.
Important issues may sometimes require the addition of controversial or sensitive content, but good taste must come first in PSO’s content. PSO will be inclusive and respect the rights and feelings of others. In order to attain this goal, the following content is prohibited on Puget Sound Off:
· Content that is obscene, pornographic, or sexually explicit;
· Content that is violent;
· Post or share any personally identifiable or private information of any third party;
- Content that is or may be deemed to be grossly offensive to the online; community, including but not limited to, blatant expressions of bigotry, prejudice, racism, hatred and profanity;
- Content promoting or providing instructional information about illegal activities.
- Content portraying or describing cruelty to animals
· Harm members in any way;
· Collect or store personal data about other users.
· Stalk or otherwise harass another;
- Content or other material that contains viruses, corrupted files, or any other similar software or programs that may damage the operation of Puget Sound Off servers or another users computer;
- Upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letter,” “pyramid schemes,” or any other form of solicitation;
· Engage in any predatory or stalking behavior.
Postings, blogs, photos, videos, or other content are not necessarily reviewed or approved by PSO or does the content reflect the views of PSO. Failure to adhere to this code of conduct may result, among other things, in the termination of your account and the deletion of content that you have posted on Puget Sound Off, with or without notice. PSO may reject content that, in its judgment, is deemed inappropriate.
This Code of Content is subject to change at any time at Puget Sound Off’s sole discretion.
Entry Filed under: legal and privacy
January 3rd, 2008 at 06:20pm
Chris Tugwell
Permalink
Given our goals with this site, the civic engagement vision, and the concerns Amber expressed in our last meeting, I am re-thinking the idea of sending youth to YouTube to upload their video.
And we’re all in agreement that providing video streaming on this site, at least initially, may not be desirable because it may make the server requirements too expensive.
I’ve done some research on this topic and wanted to share what I have learned. Let me also say that this need not have an impact on cost for web development so let’s not worry about that for now.
This is an awesome explanation of the issues and options:
Prepping and Posting your Video to the Web
Which of the many video sharing sites should you use? The answer really depends on your goals for the video.
http://www.nefilm.com/news/archives/2007/05/web2.htm
I would like to suggest using Blip.tv for the following reasons:
- They don’t take over ownership of the content. From their Terms of Service page: Blip.tv does not claim ownership of the materials you post, upload, input or submit to the Blip.tv site. Full terms here: http://winelibrarytv.blip.tv/tos/
- They don’t advertise their service, send people to other unrelated videos, etc.
- They’re just not YouTube.
- The quality is better and there are more options; for instance videos aren’t limited to 10 minutes in length
- Kids choose their licensing model when using Blip.tv
Also for the site, regardless of the YouTube / Blip.tv issue, I will be using a module that actually makes it possible to embed video content from any of the following (see below) providers by just posting the URL to the video.
Note that we can disable any of these we wish, and the specifics are a little different for each, so I may later want to disable some of these for greater consistency between the various videos on the site. Or if any of you know any reason to disallow any of these, we can do that too.
- YouTube,
- Google,
- Revver,
- MySpace,
- MetaCafe,
- JumpCut,
- BrightCove,
- SevenLoad,
- iFilm,
- Blip.TV,
- Live Video
Thoughts??
Best,
-Samantha
Entry Filed under: PSO website development
December 24th, 2007 at 11:30am
Sam
Permalink
Here is a rough draft of my blogging curriculum in MS Word format. It makes perfect sense
to me, but I suspect some parts might not be entirely intelligible to
others, so please send any feedback you may have.
A brief note about executing this curriculum—I wrote it with a classroom-based instructional style in mind. In this it borrows much from Howard Rheingold’s digital skills exercises, with two major exceptions: 1) my curriculum assumes less civic foreknowledge and initiative on the part of students, and 2) it attempts to leverage peer feedback as an evaluation mechanism that lets students know whether their messages are being conveyed successfully. The classroom approach is superior to placing the curriculum exclusively online primarily because it is very difficult to inculcate civic interests via the web—that is, I don’t imagine that many kids will come to the PSO site in
search of instructions on how to blog deliberatively. Rather, I believe
that skills such as these are better discussed and taught in person and
among peers whenever possible. That said, I think the technical
how-to’s of blogging would be good to place on the site in a “Help” or
“How to use this site” section, and I also think that some of the video
PSAs might be able to address some of the more normative aspects of my
curriculum. But generally speaking, it’s probably not a great idea to rely on the web site as our primary medium for imparting
civic skills to kids. The learning goals my curriculum aims to fulfill—public voice, issue definition, deliberation, active listening—aren’t the sorts of skills most teenagers can (or would necessarily think to) teach themselves. Actualized citizens will find PSO on
their own and do great things with it, but their less-engaged peers would best
benefit from as much direct civic instruction as we can provide them.
Download YVO-blogcurriculum.doc
Entry Filed under: digital learning skills
December 14th, 2007 at 04:59pm
Deen Freelon
Permalink
I talked to Michael at Power of Hope today, and they are very interested in partnering with us! Michael brought up a lot of good questions about safeguards against predators and youth contact information protection. These are profiled in the post about safeguards below.
He has emailed Jennifer Parker, an old time friend of his at the Y, for more information. I’ve sent him Chris Tugwell’s contact information so he can get on our list for March 15th content posting testers. He and I talked about the idea of doing some curriculum bits on how youth can protect themselves on the internet. I told him I’d file that idea with the group.
The Power of Hope website (designed by Sam too) will be going up in April, so he said that the timeline could work really well for partnering on this front.
Also, to summarize our lengthy email exchange that resulted from my contact with Michael, it sounds liek we’ve decided to have a small group of internal testers (at the Y, for example) work with the February 15th test site, and then we’ll open up testing to partners like Artworks and Power of Hope for the March 15th test launch. It sounds like starting a mailing list for testing partners with a pugetsoundoff-specific email address is an idea that everyone is on board with. It also sounds like MacArthur experts can weigh in on the website after the March 15th test launch, but that they may be presented with some wireframes and site explanation before that test launch.
I’ll leave contact with these partners in Chris Tugwell’s hands after
the end of the quarter so that he can get in touch with test partners
with Sam’s instructions and information.
We’re really moving forward with this! It’s exciting to have some enthusiastic partners on board.
Entry Filed under: partner strategy
December 6th, 2007 at 12:41pm
Toby Campbell
Permalink
Do we have these guys on our radar yet as partners? One of the kids in Amber’s class told us about TSB yesterday, and they seem like ideal partners for us. Have a look . . .
In 1994, a young snowboarder named Jay Bateman
was killed in a tragic, drug-related murder. Community members saw this
tragic event as a call to action: no longer could we sit by while kids
grew up absorbing only the messages of consumption and competition. A
group of local activists decided to create a program where young people
could come together to laugh, dream, think, and explore the true
meaning of community: The Service Board was born.
Hard work paid off, and in January of 1995 we opened our doors to
high-school students from across Seattle. Since our inaugural class,
the number of teenage participants, adult mentors and small business
sponsors has grown each year. In fact, growing demand for tSB from
students, parents, and schools led us to launch a pilot program based
in the neighborhood of White Center in January 2005, serving an area
that is among the most culturally diverse in the region, with one of
the highest per capita populations of young people.
http://www.theserviceboard.org/index.html
Entry Filed under: partner strategy
December 4th, 2007 at 11:56am
Deen Freelon
Permalink
I received an email from Michael at Power of Hope about getting some content from their organization for the launch of our site. He responded with interest:
“I’m about to go in to a meeting with my team here, and will discuss your proposal and get back to you right away. One main thing to consider - in our field we are very protective of contact info for our youth participants, to keep them safe. Is there a safeguard built in to your system that keeps their contact info hidden? Naturally we understand that a safeguard of this kind adds a layer of complexity and ‘web monitor’ time to someone’s plate.”
I wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page with an answer to this important question. Sam’s response was:
“* Email addresses will not be published
* Contact info will not be published other than neighborhood and/or zip code
* IF we want to enable one-on-one email correspondence between site users then we can give youth a contact form that people can use to send them email messages. Not sure if this is desirable. This is not on the feature list but it’s about 2 clicks to set up so it would be easy to add.
* In a wireframe I’d suggested having IM usernames but this was a dumb suggestion given the youth audience; we’re not doing that.”
Let me know if you have anything to add here, as this is a question I imagine we will receive from potential new partners often.
Thanks!
Entry Filed under: legal and privacy, partner strategy
December 4th, 2007 at 10:38am
Toby Campbell
Permalink
I spoke with Terry Pottmeyer, the Executive Director of Artworks, this morning. She said that they would be happy to share image files of some of the murals their youth have created with us. She asked whether the images would be accompanied by a little blurb about who created it and where, with a link to their organization. I said I thought there would be something like this, although I’m not sure exactly how it will work.
I told her I would follow up via email to let her know specifications of file size, what kind of a blurb we’ll need, and dates when we would need the information by and have it up on the site. We should talk about these things so that we can give a consistent set of information to interested organizations.
Before we spoke, I sent Terry our PSO information page, and the I explained a bit more about the project to her over the phone. She asked why youth would want to use our site over something like myspace. I emphasized the local component and the ability for youth to organize around local issues and/or organize local music/art events. I’m aware that we may want to continue to talk about this so that we can be prepared with a compelling and thorough answer to that question because I suspect it will come up a lot.
So, we’ve got one organization on board to contribute a bit of content for the launch! It sounded like Terry was open to having more conversations as we get rolling and can specify more ways we might be able to collaborate as well.
Entry Filed under: partner strategy
November 30th, 2007 at 12:26pm
Toby Campbell
Permalink
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