Debate over COPPA is revived as three sites are charged under the year-old law.

The move last week by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is drawing a strong reaction from the Web sites singled out for violating children's privacy protection rules. Spokespeople from those Web sites said they believe the FTC's policy enforcement is "aggressive" and say that the wording of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is too vague. The FTC, meanwhile, claims that its actions have been a successful step in protecting the privacy of Web-surfing kids. The FTC's battle to regulate the privacy of children online, and the difficulty some Web operators have faced in complying with the regulations, perhaps only foreshadow the roadblocks operators and regulators face in dealing with privacy issues for a medium as far-reaching as the Web. Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the COPPA rule, the FTC settled with three Web operators last Thursday, charging Monarch Services and Girls' Life, the operators of GirlsLife.com; Nolan Quan, the operator of BigMailbox.com; and LookSmart a combined $100,000 in civil penalties for violating COPPA.The Web operators offered children access to services such as chat rooms, free e-mail, bulletin boards, and advice columns. The FTC claims that the sites, which are the first to be charged under COPPA, failed to post privacy policies and illegally collected telephone numbers, home addresses, e-mail addresses, and other information from children under the age of 13. Under COPPA, which went into effect April 21, 2000, commercial Web sites are prohibited from soliciting personal information from kids under 13 without directly notifying parents of collection practices and then obtaining permission to solicit personal information from the minors.