6th year (2012)

Personal Data Protection Day 2012
Competition for children and youth
“My Privacy! Don’t look, don’t poke about!”
Sixth Year

    One of the main issues linked to placing information on the internet involves the loss of control over that information. As soon as it becomes public it becomes accessible to search engines. It can be registered and forwarded by means of web tools such as social networking sites.

    What does the young generation think of this? Children to 18 can use their imaginations to create two stories touching on the issue. They can write a short story, essay, film treatment or screenplay, or they can take their story and turn it into a video short or a comic strip, and send it to the Office for Personal Data Protection by 15th of April. The best entry will win a prize that will be presented in June, as is now traditional, at the International Film Festival for Children and Youth in Zlín.

    All entries will be made accessible to the public and published in a brochure.

Story no. 1:
What happened when…

    Marcela got gorgeous underwear from her mother for her 15th birthday. In the evening her parents went out and Marcela was allowed to throw a party in the family flat for her friends. Things got lively and they started to dance. The girls persuaded Marcela to put on a show like a go-go dancer and she changed into her mum’s present… Petr took out his mobile and sent a few photos to Honza, who was home with a sore throat. Bored, and PC crazy, he immediately put the pics onto his computer and prepared a presentation that he sent to Marcela as a birthday present. It raised a big laugh because Honza added funny comments about how the professionals were developing at their school. A link to the presentation – which was after all on the internet – spread around the school.

    Time passed and Marcela studied law. She was very ambitious, a star student, and applied for several lucrative and prestigious positions, including at international firms. But what happened when her internet present from Honza appeared among the materials that a selection commission had found on her online…

Story no. 2:
What happened when…

    Milan’s parents had been waiting a long time before their son was born and when it happened they treated him as a bit of a pet. They recorded his every baby step in a diary, but also in photos and videos. They sent the pictures and recorded “scenes” from their son’s life to grandmothers and friends, as well as posting them on the internet in the form of a blog dedicated to their child’s development. A naked Milan posed on a fur rug, in sand and at the pool. He laughed, cried, sat and learned to use a potty… He was cute, and growing…

    At school he was a good pupil. He liked learning and was a decent piano player. He was popular and never had any conflict with teachers. He thought he would be accepted at the conservatory. But he was given to nerves and didn’t manage to pass the test. In the end he decided to go to grammar school and then teaching school, where he would become a teacher of music and Czech. It worked out. But because he was good with people, and a capable teacher and organiser, he let his colleagues persuade him to enter a selection process for school director. That also worked out. The school was running fine, but… One day pictures downloaded from the internet appeared on the notice-board: the naked baby Milan posed on a fur rug, learned to use a potty, but this time the photos accompanied by comments about the school director… And then they began to circulate on the internet…

Partners of the competition: