"kids.us" Domain Looks Good To Go

The idea of a dot-kids area on the web gained momentum when the House Telecommunications Subcommittee approved a bill March 7 that would create a "safe zone" on the Internet for children. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), one of the bill's 14 cosponsors, said the new "kids.us" domain would resemble "a safe playground with fences around it." A better analogy might be the children's section in a public library. If adopted by Congress, the domain could go live as early as July.

Under the proposal, qualified companies and organizations—from Toys R Us and Kellogg's to the Girl Scouts—would be limited to posting online materials suitable for kids ages 13 and under. Parents who want to restrict what their children see on home computers would set their Internet browsers exclusively to those web sites with a kids.us designation. NeuStar, the company that oversees kids.us, plans to create an independent committee to establish specific criteria for inclusion in the new domain, said spokeswoman Barbara Blackwell.

The idea of a safe place on the Internet for kids originated in the fall of 2000, when several Internet domain-management companies applied to operate a global dot-kids domain. But the request was denied by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international group that approves Internet domain names, owing to the difficulty of establishing rules that would apply worldwide. A House bill forcing ICANN to establish such a domain was debated in 2001, but it proved unworkable.

In the end, the House decided to create a domain for the United States, on the recommendation of Nancy Victory of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce. The kids.us domain, she told representatives, wouldn't require the involvement of ICANN. Many members of Congress like the idea. "There's tremendous goodwill and support for the bill on both sides of the aisle," and House and Senate approval is expected this summer, said Mike Walderon, a spokesman for Representative Upton.