The United States approves a .kids.us domain but the surrounding discussion illustrates some of the difficulties in legislating specific cultural preferences into internet architecture. "Nancy Willard, director of the Responsible Netizen Project of the University of Oregon’s Center for Advanced Technology in Education, doubts that a dot-kids domain will protect kids from marketing predators, which she asserts are just as harmful as sexual predators. CRLF'The major problem with this approach is that a dot-kids domain will rapidly become dot-Kids-R-Us,' Willard said. CRLFCompanies marketing to children 'use the same techniques as sexual predators,' she said. 'They establish relationships with children for the purpose of convincing [them] to engage in specific behavior. Far too many parents will think that this location is a safe location for their children, not recognizing what the companies are doing.'" Another column on the same issue (http://isp-planet.com/hosting/2002/dot-kids-dot-us.html) points out that the .kids domain provides no protection at all if there's no way to keep the adults out: "The problem computers—the ones at libraries, cyber cafes and other public facilities—cannot be controlled without limiting access to the rest of the adult population."
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