Commercial Alert Urges Parents to Fight Market Spies in Schools

[Gary Ruskin]

Commercial Alert			July 11, 2001

Following is Commercial Alert's statement on NetworkNext, a new
school-based marketing company.

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release:		For More Information Contact:
Wednesday, July 11, 2001	Gary Ruskin (503) 235-8012

Commercial Alert Urges Parents to Fight Market Spies in Schools

Commercial Alert warned parents today about a new corporate predator,
NetworkNext, which uses high schools to gather market research from
teenagers, and pitch products to them, without parental consent.  

The company boasts to advertisers of an "audience of one million teens
in 1,000 schools," and the ability to "test the impact of changes in
online interactive marketing variables" on high school students which
"puts business and marketing decision information at your fingertips."
With its mobile computer and projection equipment that it provides to
schools, the company says it displays banner ads in classrooms
"continuously...for the entire class to view."

"NetworkNext wants to turn the schools into billboards, shopping malls
and market research extractors," said Gary Ruskin, executive director of
Commercial Alert, a group that opposes commercialism. "This company
shows how corporate America will stoop to anything to shake loose a few
more dollars from the nation's kids.  Schools are for learning, not
commercial bombardment or corporate spying."

The company, which says it is "in the e-commerce and Internet
advertising business," tells advertisers that they can receive "Total
online purchase behavior of teens," including the ability to "track the
dynamics of online consumer purchasing" by students.  It boasts of a
"unique viewing environment" – the schools – "that helps sponsors
increase awareness, usage and purchase intent."

"These invasive advertising and market research practices have no place
in schools," Ruskin said. "We urge parents to swiftly eject this company
from the schools."

The company features, among other things, an iCanCharge.com debit card. 
"It is not the proper role of the schools to promote charge cards and
materialism to impressionable teenagers," Ruskin said. 

According to an article in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the company
plans its "national rollout" in September.

NetworkNext is following a string of failed high-tech strategies for
commercial exploitation of schoolchildren.  Commercial Alert, Obligation
Inc. and Junkbusters ran a campaign that helped lead to the demise of
the ZapMe! Corp., a similar company that advertised and gathered market
research from schoolchildren.  Similar public outrage forced another
company, N2H2 Inc., to announce that it would stop gathering market
research from schoolchildren.  A third company, HiFusion, stopped
collecting market research from schoolchildren and was purchased by
Mindsurf.
 
On June 14th, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the "Student Privacy
Protection Act," sponsored by Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL) and
Christopher Dodd (D-CT), that would require parental consent before a
company could extract market research from a child in school.  The
measure is pending in a House-Senate conference committee.

NetworkNext says it has "participating schools" in Atlanta, Baltimore,
Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston,
Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia,
Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St.
Louis, Tampa, and Washington DC.

Commercial Alert's mission is to keep the commercial culture within its
proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting
the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and
democracy.

Commercial Alert's website is at <http://www.commercialalert.org>.

<----release ends here----> 

Ralph Nader founded Commercial Alert in 1998 to keep the commercial
culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting
children and subverting the higher values of family, community,
environmental integrity and democracy. 

For more information about Commercial Alert, see our website at
<http://www.commercialalert.org>.

Commercial Alert's materials are distributed electronically via our
mailing list <commercial-alert@lists.essential.org>. To subscribe, go to
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PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
-- 
Gary Ruskin | gary@essential.org 
Commercial Alert | Congressional Accountability Project
http://www.commercialalert.org | http://www.congressproject.org
phone: 503.235.8012