Two years ago I was consulting for the CBC (Canada's national broadcaster) doing user research as part of an effort to revamp their online services for kids. That meant spending a lot of time at kids' (9-12 year olds) houses and in classrooms, watching them use their computers in context, seeing who they used the computer with, who drove, which games they played, which sites they visited, which applications they knew how to use.

And when you get past the veneer of "I want to have fun!" or "I like to play games!", what kids really want to use the internet for is ... talking to other kids. And, of course, that's the one thing that is not allowed.

MSN's decision earlier this week to close its chat rooms in most countries generated a lot of press (e.g., stories on CNN (another) and the BBC (another; reaction). MSN cited concerns about spam and, more importantly, child safety. The Economist insightfully asked whether it was about "Morals or money?" but in many cases the two are intertwined, given the potential liabilities involved.

In 1998 the first rev of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was passed into law in the U.S. The intention was good: regulate the collection of personal information from people (kids) who are unlikely to have a sufficiently sophisticated understandings of the relationship they enter into with site operators or the significance of the information they are handing over to give informed consent.

The effect of the legislation is manifest in the standard compliance procedures adopted by most companies offering any kind of service or product online which could be used by a childen (ever remember being asked if you are 13 or over when installing software, clicking through a user agreement or registering with a site?). And most of it is good.

But one of the results (and one that is not obvious from the FTC's compliance guide) is that no operator can offer the ability for a kid to free type anything that another user will see, without either pre-screening by an adult staff member (a huge barrier for the operator) or having the parents give permission —and in this case, email assent is considered not good enough: the parent's have to fill out a printed form and either fax or post it in (a huge barrier for the kids and their parents —it's a pretty scary form to fill out).

Yet at the margins, site operators who just ignore COPPA allowed easy registrations and unmoderated chat. Many go far beyond dubious (like www.kidschat.ws, complete with ads for Russian brides in the preteen section (and note that results two and three on a Google search for "tween chat" are for phonesex lines.

I am not a parent so pehaps don't have the protective reflexes which would prevent me from thinking otherwise, but the current situation strikes me as a mess. Assuming that communication with other kids is a big positive, we've come to a situation where providing a service where that communication can take place is made quite difficult or expensive for operators or for the kids and their families.

And at the same time, completely open and unmoderated environments abound. And even in the case of those operators who do require the full blown parental permission, the whole thing smacks of liability reduction: signing up with a hotmail address and faxing from a 7-11 is a small impediment for the determined pedophile.

But like many crimes, the murder, abduction and physical and sexual abuse of children is overwhelmingly more likely to be carried out by family members than it is by strangers. (PDFs with stats and analysis:1, 2). And there are schools and playgrounds and fairs and malls in every city; the internet is just one small method among many for pedophiles to get aat kids. (Though perhaps a relevant difference here is that an adult is easy to spot in a schoolyard or playground, whereas they can difficult or impossible to spot in a chatroom.)

Given the increasing early ages at which kids start using computers, and their desire to use the net as a communication medium (some notes on 'netgen', 12-24 year olds who are heavy into IM), we've gotten ourselves into a weird situation. And this is an incredibly heated topic for most people.

There is even a site called perverted-justice.com (how apt!) which seems to be a fetish site for those who are turned on by those who are attracted on by children, in the guise of vigiliante-style exposing of the "pedos". (See MetaFilter discussion on this site.)

The nets great assest is its openness. And, of course, that is also its great liability, and one that we all have been feeling the burden of more and more over the last few years. I can't imagine the liability ever outweighing the benefit here, but managing it all calls for very well-reasoned approaches to the problems which openness bring us. Good luck.