This Christmas there has been a lot of publicity about iPods and other personal recorders - but where are your children getting hold of the music? I was recently asked by a work colleague who was worried that her daughter might be doing something wrong on her PC.  Sometimes the daughter would ask her mother to leave (!) while downloading files.  The daughter appeared to be exploiting my colleague’s lack of confidence and understanding about computers.  I dug out some advice that has been offered by the music industry as somewhere to start to understand what is going on.  I share that with you here.

Dear A,

I knew I had seen something of a campaign to help parents understand and deal with their children's use of the internet in a safe and legal way.

Here are a few links that you might want to read at your leisure and some software downloads that may help keep things clean.

http://www.childnet-int.org/music/press.html - this page links to an overall description of what "file sharing" is - and why it can be a problem.  I am pretty sure that your daughter must be doing this and she may be using a rogue-dialer that uses premium telephone numbers to do it?   This website has links to a TV interview of a woman fined £2,500 for her son's activities.  There are also some readable links to newspaper articles that will help you.

A very good starting place is to print off a parent's guide using this address - http://www.pro-music.org/guide/pdf-youngpeople-english.pdf  (You will need the free Acrobat Reader to read this file).  I found it very readable - it tells you what the fuss is about and what you can do about it.  The booklet helps you with the kind of questions you can ask to see if that helps your daughter recognise that what she is doing may be wrong or, if it isn't, she can explain by answering your questions. This first step may mean you don't have to try and 'block' her on-line activities and, possibly, drive her 'underground' to homes of her friends to continue the activity.

And just in case your daughter complains about 'restricting her freedom' (never mind that her freedom might affect your freedom and certainly puts your wallet at risk!), you can point to over 200 legitimate websites where downloading is legal - and you pay for what you get! http://www.pro-music.org/musiconline.htm .  Specific list for Europe, including the UK, can be found here - http://www.pro-music.org/musiconline/tracker-region-europe.htm .  There are literally millions of tracks and CDs that can be fetched from several websites - some websites allow visitors to sample their tracks before buying too. But ultimately the artist who created them will want to be rewarded - so payment is not unreasonable!  Failure to do this is just like shoplifting.

The Music Industry has also offered a free tool that you can download to your PC that will help check and control what is being done.  This can be found from this link - http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/antipiracy/digital-file-check.html .  Read what is on that page and then press "Download Digital File Check" - this is safe both to download and to run on your computer.  If you download and install this software - your daughter and you will be glad to hear that the checks it makes do not 'blow a whistle' on anything that is illegal - what it does is tell you what is on your PC so you can do something about it.

Provided you have up-to-date virus checking software, the worst kind of mistakes about downloading (that can leave your PC in shreds) can be prevented.  The trick is to make sure it is up-to-date - which can be achieved by ticking "automatic updates" option in your software.  This is especially easy as you are on broadband.  A good website to start with on understanding spyware is http://www.getnetwise.org/ .    If your computer has been getting more sluggish or you have been getting more pop-ups than you can shake a stick at, then here is a list of symptoms that may indicate spyware has (unwittingly?) been downloaded onto your computer - http://spotlight.getnetwise.org/spyware/tips/symptoms .

GetNetwise offers a short list of paid-for spyware programmes, but I have found several popular free spyware packages that are very powerful at cleaning up all sorts of problems:  

(a) Ad-Aware website is here - http://www.lavasoft.de/  - from the Home Page, click on "Ad-Aware Personal" in the left-hand side of the page for the free personal user version. 
(b) Spybot Search & Destroy can be downloaded from - http://www.spybot.info/en/download/index.html  - you can download this for free, although the website invites you to pay a donation; and 
(c) Spyware Blaster 3.4 can be downloaded from - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html .  They also ask for donations but this is not essential while you work out if this programme is for you.  I confess I have all three loaded onto my PC, update and run them all regularly.  Although any one of them would do.

I hope this gives you a place to start your discussions with your daughter,

N