Congress Reconsiders Dot-Kids

Congress is considering H.R. 2417, a bill with the related goal of establishing a "dot-kids" domain—resurrecting a previously unsuccessful idea. The Internet Commission for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an international group that manages the way addresses are used on the Internet, rejected an effort to establish a dot-kids domain last year. But the bill seeks to force ICANN to establish such a domain anyway.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chair of the House Commerce Subcommittee, said during a November hearing, "Just like dot-com, or dot-gov, or dot-org, a dot-kids should be created, which would be a safe place devoted solely to material which is appropriate for kids—where parents could choose to send their kids." Because of the difficulty of forcing an international body to bend to the will of the U.S. government, a proposed amendment would merely require that the Commerce Department establish a "kids.us" domain—similar to the geographically based domains of many public schools and public libraries—to serve the same purpose. The Washington Post reported that ICANN Chief Policy Officer Andrew McLaughlin favored the kids.us compromise, saying that such a compromise would "ease concerns about ICANN losing respect in the world community" by appearing to be coerced by the U.S. government.

Jerry Kuntz, an electronic resources consultant for the Ramapo Catskill Library System, NY, and creator of KidsClick!, a web directory for young people, feels that the dot-kids proposal doesn't make sense. He is concerned that some schools and libraries serving younger children might be forced to set filters to exclude everything but dot-kids sites. "There is an enormous amount of web content designed for general audiences that kids should have access to," Kuntz says. "More than half of the sites cataloged in KidsClick!, for instance, were not designed specifically for children yet are pertinent to their interests and studies. Why would anyone give those sites a dot-kids domain?"