COPPA is definitely the real deal (and the equivalent is currently being rolled out in the EU). However the reference to COPPA by @glassbottommeg actually isn't correct. COPPA is about data collection on kids without parental permission (e.g ad tracking etc.), not about content restrictions.
Otherwise it would be called COPPPA (Children's Online Privacy, Protection and Penis Act).
That said, COPPA concerns will almost certainly come into consideration here. It's not just data storage, but ways that Personally Identifying Information (PII) might be shared through a product, and whether that sharing is approved by a responsible adult, etc.
User generated content is almost always a candidate for PII leakage; for example in a block building game, you might reasonably expect a player to proudly build their full name in huge letters for all the world to see. If other players in game can see it, and a legal guardian hasn't approved that kind of behaviour (and been unambiguously informed that their child can do that) then you've got a COPPA violation. And COPPA violations are routinely prosecuted, so you need to pay attention when making a product explicitly targeted at under 13s. It makes it remarkably hard to design games for kids that are both creative and social.
It feels very bureaucratic, but despite that I still very much believe it's worth having legal safeguards like COPPA; we're still in an era where society is changing drastically in response to the internet and I wouldn't want to see the more vulnerable members of it open to exploitation.
> It feels very bureaucratic, but despite that I still very much believe it's worth having legal safeguards like COPPA; we're still in an era where society is changing drastically in response to the internet
Surely that's an argument for not having COPPA? Social standards are changing but laws, once enacted, almost never do - they tend to freeze an arbitrary set of moral judgements in place and prevent people exploring any alternatives. As you note, would Minecraft exist in Notch had lived in the USA and a friend had helpfully informed him about COPPA early on? Perhaps the risk of letting people build anything with no age verification would have seemed too risky, yet the cost and overhead of age verification + subsequent retarded user based growth would have seemed to make the project not worthwhile.
I've yet to see any real evidence based studies that show COPPA solves any real problem. It appears to be a classic case of "something must be done, this is something, therefore it must be done".
I don't think so - it certainly doesn't feel like security theatre to me. Minecraft never had to worry about COPPA; Notch never set out to create a game targeted explicitly at children (it's just since found a huge market there) and player tend to host Minecraft servers themselves, which neatly side-steps a lot of the issues.
I work in an area of the industry that does regularly make multiplayer games and apps for kids. A number of clients have commissioned MMO style games through us, but their visions are usually optimistic and centred around letting kids play and explore freely. Without extensive guidance from us, they'd often want to allow things like free chat within a game world without getting explicit parental consent first - which is great for building a community of players and allowing them to interact, but a nightmare to police adequately. It requires a lot of moderation overhead, which comes with technology and staffing costs that might not be otherwise expected.
This isn't just another "think of the children!" style blanket statement with no real thought behind it. There is a real threat here. Most users in an young online community are kids who interact constructively. There might be occasional bits of swearing or abuse, but that's not really a problem. Kids enjoy breaking social taboos because it's naughty and funny. I really don't think that poses a danger in any way, although it can do damage to a brand if it becomes prevalent and public enough.
There are though a small number of adult sexual offenders that attempt to target and exploit children using these services. They do exist, and they are persistent and very difficult to defend against. I've worked closely with a number of companies that provide third party moderation tools that attempt to profile and flag such offenders through fairly sophisticated language profiling. It's difficult; there are certain otherwise innocuous words that offenders use to avoid writing anything directly incriminating. I don't worry too much about children shouting out "Penis!" in a chat room. I do worry about them divulging their home address, or agreeing to a meet somewhere, or (more commonly) being coerced into a webcam chat.
We don't need studies to attempt to see where lack of thought in this area can lead; we have actual events. There's a famous example in Habbo Hotel, where lack of adequate moderation led to a scandal the ended up with the owners turning off chat entirely (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18424400). Had there been protection laws enforced in that example, Habbo might not have ended up in that situation and its young players might not have been sexually exploited (http://www.brentwoodgazette.co.uk/Billericay-sports-coach-Ma...).
I'm sure the law will be (as usual) slow to react to change. But I'd rather it there than have no protection at all. It doesn't take malice to expose children to danger - just careless product design. There needs to be some legal liability to provide pressure to stop that happening.
> Minecraft never had to worry about COPPA; Notch never set out to create a game targeted explicitly at children
Does not matter. COPPA affects all websites or services even if you don't target them at children. All it requires is that children use the service and that you have knowledge of that fact somehow. Obviously, Notch cannot claim ignorance that children play Minecraft. Indeed, COPPA is extra-territorial so Notch theoretically has to worry about it anyway - though whether the third party server thing changes stuff is unclear (I'd hope it would but I don't have a whole lot of confidence in US law enforcement in this regard).
Re: sex offenders. COPPA isn't about that, is it? I don't see how providing chat is careless product design. I remember when I was a young teenager everyone used MSN Messenger, but the notion that Microsoft was responsible for every case of child grooming that happened through it hadn't taken hold back then. This stuff comes about because governments want to outsource the cost of enforcing the law onto random third parties instead of doing it themselves. A neat way to create invisible taxes but ultimately harmful. If there are people doing bad things on public chat services, then the police should go onto there and try to catch them (and they do). I see no reason why services themselves should have to try and do this or even shut down.
> COPPA affects all websites or services even if you don't target them at children.
I don't believe this to be true. I am not in anyway a lawyer (so please consult one before taking my advice), but I've got a fair degree of experience making COPPA compliant products. For a site or service to fall under COPPA rules, it must explicitly be "directed to children" (https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/com...). There's a little ambiguity about this term (which is ultimately resolved in court, I suppose), but you can read a little more on that FTC FAQ. It seems to be quite reasonably applied. I also believe if kids self-host their own servers in a Minecraft game, Mojang/Microsoft can't reasonably be accused of storing or sharing PII. It doesn't get near any company owned servers.
I also used IM services and chat rooms as a child, and came to no particular harm. Many, many children use those services everyday and also don't come to harm. Some do. I don't think that has much to do with COPPA. COPPA shouldn't apply to MSN and generic IM services. MSN and the like aren't directed at children; at least I can't see any evidence that would lead someone to believe that children under the 13 are the "primary target audience" for MSN, which triggers the COPPA requirements.
> Re: sex offenders. COPPA isn't about that, is it?
I think it is, yes, amongst other things. One of those P's is 'protection' - whether that's protection from exploitative marketing or groomers, it's about keeping children safe online. Making something explicitly for use by children is very different from making something for use by the general population, and you have a different kind of responsibility as part of that.
