No, COPPA doesn't basically make it illegal for children under thirteen to be on the Internet. It doesn't restrict what children under thirteen can do in any wa

No, COPPA doesn't basically make it illegal for children under thirteen to be on the Internet. It doesn't restrict what children under thirteen can do in any way. COPPA restricts what websites can do–they can't collect certain information about users without asking whether they're over thirteen. Sure, you can make a case that we shouldn't burden the web with these sorts of rules. Or that we shouldn't have to differentiate between adults and young children. (You'll lose that argument.) That's not my point. My point is that legislation that differentiates between online and offline activities—and the information we collect about them—will become increasingly nonsensical as online and offline activities become less distinct. When COPPA was passed in 1998, Target wasn't data-mining customers' purchase histories. Only websites were doing that sort of thing (or so the story went). Fast forward to today and offline activities (what you buy at the grocery store, where and when you get on the bus) are now being tracked in the same way that online activities have been for the last decade. Whatever limits you believe should (or shouldn't) be placed on tracking these activities, it's apparent that customer/user privacy is no longer an "online" issue. There will be no "online" issues in the future because the distinction between online and offline is quickly disappearing.