After years of sometimes bitter and almost always closed-door debate, direct-marketing industry representatives today told a U.S. Senate panel they were willing to submit to laws designed to protect the privacy of children online.

Though couched in terms that were often tentative, the declarations seemed clear enough: U.S. Congress and the U.S. FTC now seem certain to get their way on at least some privacy protections.

"Although we usually support self-regulation of electronic commerce, we believe it may be appropriate to consider targeted legislation in this area," said Arthur Sackler, vice-president for law and public policy at Time Warner and a representative of the Direct Marketing Association.

Sharp change in attitude
Sackler's testimony was part of the hearings on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, a bill that would forbid online and Internet operators from collecting personal information from children 12 years and younger without their parents' written permission. The bill would also require sites to disclose what information they gather and what they do with it afterwards. It would also give parents the right to examine and correct information gathered about their kids at will. Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., is chief sponsor of the bill, which is slated for a subcommittee vote next week.

The attitude contrasts starkly with that previously espoused by Sackler and others. At Federal Trade Commission workshops in 1996 and 1997, representatives from Time-Warner, the Direct Marketing Association and other advertising groups told federal officials they could regulate themselves without outside interference by the government. Just last July, the industry repeated its call for self-regulation through groups like the Online Privacy Alliance. As OPA Spokeswoman and former FTC Commissioner Christine Varney said then, "laws don't work." The Administration took a wait-and-see attitude.

Public critical of marketers
But a raft of public opinion surveys panning online merchants together with an FTC study critical of Web sites' actual privacy practices have changed that arrangement for good. As FTC Chair Robert Pitofsky told Subcommittee members this morning, Web sites that adequately disclose what information they collect from visitors and what they do with it are still few and far between. As a result, he said, the FTC drafted legislation last June to require industry to set binding rules to protect children's privacy online with the proviso that the FTC would have the final say in any rules drafted.

The Bryan bill is the Senate's attempt to deal with that proposal.

In addition to Sackler and Pitofsky, representatives of America Online, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Center for Media Education weighed in on the proposal.

What age to stop?
None disputed the need to get parental permission for children under the age of 13. At the same time, all disagreed with another provision which would require that Web sites visited by children between the ages of 13 and 15 notify their parents. The reasons for disagreeing varied, however.

Rather than notifying the parents of adolescents, Center for Media Education President Kathryn Montgomery recommended the subcommittee create a special class of notification for teenagers so that the teens, rather than their parents, would have the same rights to notification while also being able to examine and correct information held about them.

Deirdre Mulligan, staff attorney for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the subcommittee that parental notification could hamper teens' First Amendment rights. In addition, she said, the bill should contain some provisions for some sites where parental notification could interfere with work at school or access to other sites useful in, say, a library setting.

Witnesses also seemed open to exceptions for one-time email messages sent to sites for further information on topics not contained on a Web site. Even so, Montgomery said, her group said it was concerned that such an exception not turn into a loophole for abuse by unscrupulous Web site operators.

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