There’s a book out now that has a chapter I contributed. The book is Settlers of the New Virtual Worlds, and my chapter is called Kids and Digital Ownership.

Here’s an excerpt from my chapter:

Managing Youth Creativity

What is the value of a digital creation, and who owns it? Particularly among the young, the line between creator and consumer has blurred, as has the question of ownership.

Some companies claim full ownership of content created with their tools or stored on their servers, while others take a more hands-off approach. When it comes to kids, neither strategy is ultimately effective.

The hands-off approach, whereby the company denies responsibility for and ownership of user-generated content, is not compatible with laws and standards that are in place to protect young people. For example, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) makes it difficult for website operators to allow children to share freely, and when the website is monitored, the operator can’t deny knowledge of a problematic piece of content.

And using an online contract such as a Terms of Service or an End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) to claim ownership of user-generated content does not work with children, and such digital contracts end up being worth the paper they’re written on.

The solution, however, is not to shut the gates to children. Today’s youth are the ones who will build and manage tomorrow’s virtual worlds as well as enact policies that govern those virtual spaces. The manner in which we address their needs today will have a direct impact on tomorrow’s virtual cultures, laws, and best practices.

Go here to learn more about the project:

http://www.bettereula.com/wp/settlers/

First, from the Association of Virtual Worlds, The Blue Book: A Consumer’s Guide to Virtual Worlds. It’s basically a directory of social networks and virtual worlds, including some that are in development.

Next, Wave 3 of a report from Universal McCann on Social Media.

Some highlights:

• China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42 million bloggers, more than the US and Western Europe combined.
• While blog readership in the U.S. has decreased by 2% since September 2006, globally it has increased by 23%, with a 57% increase in the Philippines.
• Brazil leads in terms of frequency of reading blogs. 52% read them daily, compared to 23% in the U.S.
• Percentage-wise, South Korea is the top country for starting blogs, and Mexico is number 5 (and the U.S. is way the heck down on the list).
• 56% of Brazilians manage their social networking profiles daily, and France is at the bottom of the list for creating profiles.
• BRIC markets lead in adoption of RSS, all 50% plus adoption (BRIC = Brazil, Russia, India, China)