In case you haven't heard, Xanga, an on-line blogging/social network was fined US$ 1 million for failing to comply with the Child Privacy Act. Basically, a company can't accept users to sign up or collect data about users that are less than 13 years old.
This only matters if users can sign up to your site. And, the legal requirements are quite simple: Either you ask the users to agree with the Terms of Use or Terms of Service of your site when they sign up, or you ask them their age and reject them if they are 13 or less. Apparently, Xanga didn't do any of those.
For a relatively small company, being fined $1M is a lot of dough. Somebody should be fired over there, at minimum the legal counsel.
Now, to my next topic... Evan Williams (Blogger creator) new company is called Odeo. Some type of podcast site or something.
The first time I visited Odeo I was in awe at how simple their sign up was. Just asking for a Name, Email and Password.... Wait a second.... What about the Terms of Use?
Bang! That is the hit on Odeo's forehead when they get slapped with a lawsuit since it is not part of the sign up agreement to have to agree to the Terms of Use.
Here is a tip for your company. For such a fundamental thing, check with your lawyer what you can and can't do online. The Child Privacy Act is just one of the things that can get you in serious trouble!
Actually, I think this lawsuit was unwarranted. Xanga did have a glitch in their system, admittedly, but it wasn't as bad as described above. To create a Xanga account, you had to be 13 years of age. So every person who created a Xanga site agreed to those terms and entered an age of 13 or above. So Xanga basically got sued because many of those kids lied to create an account, as they were able to enter ther real birthdates after creating their accounts. That's all that the glitch was, and Xanga unfortunately paid dearly for trusting that people were honest on the initial questionaires. They also trusted that kid's parents were also involved in their children's lives, which unfortunately was also not the case.
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, an on-line blogging/social network was fined US$ 1 million for failing to comply with the Child Privacy Act. Basically, a company can't accept users to sign up or collect data about users that are less than 13 years old.
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October, 2007