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Last Updated: Jan 20th, 2009 - 05:59:07
KidZui - Proceed with Caution
By Cynthia Kirkeby
Jun 3, 2008, 11:32 PST
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There are constantly sites appearing and disappearing online, dedicated to children, families, and other specialized groups. When it comes to children, however, we must be more careful. A recent entry to the kids market is a group called KidZui. According to a recent release, "kids can independently access over 600,000 websites, games, pictures and videos, all reviewed and approved by trained editors, so parents don’t have to worry about what they might see."
The company has only been officially launched for 2 months, so it seems completely impossible to us to imagine their site has independently reviewed all 600,000 sites, pictures, and videos before and since their launch online.
KidZui is going to an open, fee-free format as of June 4th, and we have not been able to enter their site to review their formating at this time, however, they did send us a press image that is a screen shot of their site. As you can see below, the KidZui page shows the Miniclip Home Page. Although we love the Miniclip games, (we even use some of the Miniclip games on ClassBrain) however, a large percentage of the games from Miniclip are not appropriate for 3-12 year olds! ClassBrain rejects most of them as inappropriate for K-12 students.
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| Detail from KidZui showing Miniclip home page |
This takes us back to the original question: How did the editors of KidZui supposedly review and approve 600,000 pieces of content for 3 to 12 year olds since they developed their site content. According to WHOIS, their site was obtained on November 10, 2006. 19 months is not much time to review 600,000 pieces of content.
The second issue is whether or not KidZui has obtained permission from all of the sites in question to frame their content. Under the Millennium Copyright Law, framing a site's content without permission is not allowed. Linking without permission in most cases is an infringement of the site's content.
ClassBrain would simply remind parents and teachers to proceed with caution. When something sounds to good to be true, it frequently is.
© Copyright 2008 by Classbrain.com
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