Protecting Our Children on the Internet: Towards a New Culture of Responsibility

The Internet offers many new possibilities in communications, business, and entertainment. At the same time, the cross-cultural flow of data requires new responsibilities for media providers, users, and law enforcement authorities (in the case of criminal content). The Bertelsmann Foundation and renowned experts have developed a set of recommendations to effectively secure responsibility, and to protect children from illegal and harmful content. This self-regulatory system is based on four pillars: self-regulation, self-rating and filtering, hotlines, and law enforcement as supplement to self-regulation. The publication also presents the results of a representative, tri-national (Australia, Germany, USA) Internet-user survey on self-regulation and protection of minors. In addition, it contains a detailed bibliography of important publications on Internet regulation, youth protection, and self-regulation.