The Family Online Safety Institute, or FOSI, is an international non-profit organization. It is registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity in the United States and a registered charity in the United Kingdom. FOSI was founded in February of 2007 by Stephen Balkam, who previously created the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA).^[1] FOSI's primary focus is on increasing education regarding online safety. FOSI often serves as a unifying agent, working with both governmental and corporate partners. Programs such as W3C and ICRA further the goals of FOSI by providing the necessary tools and information to better ensure the safety of children online.

Programs

The primary objective of FOSI is to make the online world safer for children and their families. FOSI uses its position as a trusted convener to bring together the three major sectors involved in this mission: government, corporate, and non-profit. FOSI often hosts roundtables that encourage conversation about progress in the field on online safety. FOSI hosts an annual conference that brings together major players in the field of online safety.

FOSI serves as a member/participant in several projects related to online safety. FOSI is a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and takes part in POWDER activities. Through its participation in the W3C, FOSI works to ensure that safety issues are raised and addressed as new software standards are developed.

Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA)

In 2007, FOSI was created and subsumed the Internet Content Rating Association and its day-to-day operations. ICRA developed and implemented a content labelling system that allows webmasters to clearly and accurately label their websites. These labels identify content in accordance with criteria developed by an independent third party. In accordance with FOSI goals, ICRA does not serve to rate the content of websites. ICRA provides the labelling system and encourages content providers to self-rate.^[2]

Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER)

POWDER's working group is open to W3C members and invited experts.^[3] The group meets once per week via phone and quarterly in person. The mission of the group is to develop a way for structured metadate to be authenticated and applied to web resources. It will allow users to access the descriptions of resources without actually accessing the resources themselves.^[4]

QUATRO Plus

QUATRO Plus is a two year project serving as a follow-up to the QUATRO project.^[5] QUATRO developed a universal machine-readable labelling platform. QUATRO Plus aims to improve the labelling platform through a series of goals, including:

1. making the processes more secure and increasing functionality of LADI and Viq tools;
2. allowing end users to record and share their opinions in a discussion format about a label's description;
3. allowing end users to create personalized labels for their own use;
4. combining all current user-generated labels and opinions into an open data source;
5. developing easy to use tools for label creation;
6. demonstrating the benefits and potential value of authenticated machine-readable labels to commercial groups across Europe.^[6]

Membership

Since the Family Online Safety Institute is a membership-based organization, members pay an annual stipend to FOSI. In turn FOSI uses this funding for its general operation and to further its goals and mission. Some of the FOSI members also have representatives on the Board of Directors^[7].

Full and associate members of FOSI include prominent American and British companies. In North America, members include AOL, AT&T, Blue Coat Systems, Cisco, CompTIA, Comcast, Fox Interactive Media (Parent company of Myspace)^[8], Google, Loopt, Microsoft, MPower Media, Privo, RuleSpace, Sentinel, TELMEX, The Wireless Foundation and Verizon.^[9] European members include companies such as BT Retail, Crisp Thinking, GSM Association, Telefónica, France Telecom and Kingston Communications.^[10] Though associate members are not represented on the Board of Directors for FOSI, they are able to display an insignia on their websites signifying their commitment to the organization's ideals. ^[11]

Past events

2007

The official United States launch of FOSI was held on February 13, 2007 at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, D.C.. The event drew attendees from the government, online industry, NGOs, academics, and think tanks. Some of the attendees included Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Deborah Tate^[12], Amanda Lenhart from Pew Internet and American Life Project^[13] (a division of the Pew Research Center), and Adam Thierer from the Progress and Freedom Foundation^[14]. The event included several welcome addresses and two roundtables, entitled "The Chicken or the Egg - Which comes first: technology or public policy?" and "Educating the Lost Generation: Reaching today's parents with relevant online safety messages".^[15] The roundtables were chaired by Thierer and Anne Collier of Net Family News^[16], respectively. ^[17]

The official European launch of FOSI was held on February 22, 2007 at the House of Commons in London. The event also drew attendees from the government, online industry, NGOs, academics, and think tanks. Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker gave a welcome speech at the event.^[18]

On June 13, 2007, FOSI held a Mexican conference in Mexico City, hosted by Telmex. Mexico's first lady Margarita Zavala was among the speakers.^[19]

On September 26, 2007, Telefonica and FOSI co-hosted several educational training workshops entitled "Interactive Generations: Growing Up In a Virtual World".^[20] The events drew participants from government, industry, NGOs, and others, who all discussed their views on new technology on children and family life. The workshops, which coincided with Telefonica becoming a member of FOSI, were hosted by Arturo Canalda, the Madrid Children's Rights Ombudsman.^[21]

2008

On March 20, 2008, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Google, and FOSI co-hosted the Washington, D.C. launch for Professor Jonathan Zittrain's book, "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It"^[22]. Zittrain, a professor of Internet Law at both the Berkman Center and the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford spoke to the over 100 attendees, which included representatives from government, NGO, and the corporate sector. Professor Larry Lessig of Stanford University also spoke to the group and Stephen Balkam of FOSI led the group in a question and answer session. ^[23]

On April 7, 2008, FOSI and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) hosted a special screening of the PBS Frontline Documentary 'Growing Up Online'^[24]. After the screening, 'Growing Up Online' producer Rachel Dretzin^[25][26] and Stephen Balkam took questions from the audience^[27]. Following the question and answer session, FOSI hosted a roundtable to discuss the state of online safety education.

On June 12, 2008, FOSI and the Oxford Internet Institute cohosted a lecture and reception entitled 'Beyond Byron - Towards a New Culture of Responsibility'. At this lecture, Dr. Tanya Byron and Professor John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society spoke. Dr. Byron spoke about the Byron Review, the report commissioned by Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown released on March 27, 2008.

On June 13, 2008, FOSI and the Oxford Internet Institute cohosted a roundtable entitled 'Educating Rita 2.0 - Effective Methods and Messages in Online Safety Education'. This was the second part in FOSI's Online Safety Education Initiative roundtable series. Being held in the UK, it allowed FOSI to hear about the European and international perspective on online safety education. Dr. Tanya Byron opened the event. Notable panelists included Robin Blake, Media Literacy Manager of the Office of Communications (OfCom) in the UK and Claudine Menashe-Jones of the Childcare Division of the Department for Children, Schools and Families of the British Government.^[28]

Annual conferences

2007 Conference

FOSI held its inaugural annual conference on December 6, 2007 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.^[29] The conference was covered by C-SPAN.^[30] Over 200 attendees joined together to raise awareness about the challenges facing our society to keep children safe in the new digital world.^[31] The participants paid particular attention to currently evolving solutions.

The conference consisted of roundtable discussions during the morning (entitled 'Aspen Institute Roundtable' and 'What the Research is Telling Us') and breakout sessions in the afternoon (entitled 'Companies or government - Which should do more to protect children online?' moderated by Larry Magid, 'Education - What methods and messages do we need to effectively reach parents, teachers and children?' moderated by Tim Lordan, 'Technology - What are the latest trends in online safety technology' moderated by Adam Thierer, and 'New Challenges - How do we protect kids in a world of social networking sites and the mobile web?' moderated by David Diggs).

Notable speakers included Google Vice President and Chief Internal Evangelist Vint Cerf, U.S. Ambassador David Gross, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Deborah Tate and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras.^[32]

Reports published at the conference

FOSI published the annual 'State of Online Safety Report' for 2008, which designated a unique chapter for each country willing to provide an entry. The chapters and their respective authors were: (I) United States by Adam Thiere; (II) United Kingdom by Chris Holder; (III) Germany by Thomas Rickert; (IV) Australia by the Australian Communications and Media Authority; (V) Canada by Merlyn Horton & Jay Thomson; (VI) Austria by Michael Eisenriegler & Romana Cravos; (VII) Netherlands by Marjolijn Bonthuis & Marjolijn Durinck; (VIII) Belgium & Europe by Rudi Vanscnik; and (IX); Mexico by Armando Novoa & Marie-Claire Hernandez.

The Aspen Institute Institute published a report entitled 'Media, Creativity and the Public Good'. This report was based on a roundtable entitled 'Leadership and the Media'.

2008 Conference

FOSI's second annual conference is scheduled for December 11, 2008.^[33] The event, entitled 'Safe at Any Speed: Online safety tools, rules and public policies' will be held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

References

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