A 2005 California law bans those under 18 from buying or renting violent videogames that appeal to “a deviant or morbid interest in minors.” Lower courts struck down the law, under precedent authorizing government to restrict youth from only one type of material, obscene sexual content.

In seeking the law’s reinstatement, Zackery Morazzini, a deputy state attorney general, told the court: “California is no less concerned with a minor’s access to the deviant level of violence that is presented in a certain category of video games” than it is with sexually explicit material.

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There are tools for dealing with the problem, most commonly, filtering software that attempts to bar sexual, violent and other objectionable material. But these can frustrate kids and parents, by either blocking too many things or not blocking enough.

Avatars help guide users

Some other approaches, such as the parental controls built right into the latest Windows (MSFT) and Macintosh (AAPL) operating systems, offer parents more control by allowing them to specify what Web sites a child can access. But that requires close and constant involvement by the parent as the child seeks access to more Web sites.

This week marks the launch of a parental-control service with a somewhat different approach. It’s called KidZui, and it aims to offer kids a safe subset of the Internet where they can roam freely without triggering parental worry. KidZui, for children ages 3 to 12, hopes to emphasize the positive, rather than the negative.

The service, from a San Diego company of the same name, claims to encompass 500,000 safe sites, photos and videos, ranging from pop culture to science, comics and games to history. You can watch the latest “American Idol” contestant, learn about dinosaurs, delve into history or visit popular kids’ sites, such as Webkinz and Club Penguin.

The sites, photos and videos included in KidZui are approved by a team of about 200 parents and teachers across the country, and are ranked by age, so that a site that might be right for an 11-year-old isn’t served up to a 4-year-old.

While a child can establish a list of friends in KidZui, and can share content with them, there is no instant-messaging or email function.

KidZui isn’t free, and it can’t be accessed via a regular Web browser. Instead, you must download a special KidZui browser, from kidzui.com, that runs on either Windows or Macintosh computers. I tested it on both platforms, and it downloaded quickly and installed smoothly.

The service nominally costs $99.95 a year, or $9.95 a month, but there is a 30-day free trial and an introductory rate of $49.95 a year, or $4.95 a month. It has no ads, other than those already present on Web sites kids visit.

A key selling point of the service is that busy parents can simply set up KidZui and trust that their kids will be safe online. To that end, the program can be optionally configured, so that a child can’t escape from it to use the computer’s standard browser, for example. A parent can set KidZui to launch when the computer starts up, in full-screen mode. In this mode, KidZui automatically disables or hides the common keystrokes, icons, commands and techniques that allow users to switch to, or to start up, other programs.

In addition, when KidZui is running in this locked-down mode, the child can be barred from quitting KidZui without a parent’s password. In my tests over the past week, I found some loopholes in this lockdown system, but the company plugged each leak I turned up. I can’t swear that a clever kid won’t be able to escape from KidZui, but the program blocks most obvious exits.

Inside the software, the company has tried to create a fun, lighthearted world. Each child is represented by a “Zui,” a cartoon-like character that can be customized with hair, clothing and other features. There are lots of sound effects, and kids can rate content with illustrated tags ranging from “best” and “cool” to “boring” or “gross.”

When a child types in a term like “ocean” KidZui offers a list of related terms as well, to guide further exploration. If a child types in a search term or a Web address that has been banned from the KidZui universe, a message appears saying “This page isn’t available on KidZui, but your parents can add it for you.” This applies not only to terms typed into KidZui’s own search bar, but also to terms a child enters at sites like Wikipedia or in the search boxes embedded in other sites. The main pages of Google and Yahoo can’t be summoned.

If a search or Web address is new to KidZui, a different message appears promising that it will be reviewed.

I did find some holes in this system. For instance, I was able to get to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site and do an internal search on “Spitzer,” which turned up a story on the former New York governor’s sex scandal.

Parents can get detailed reports about the KidZui activities of each of their children and can tweak the content they can see by adding specific types of material, such as “athletic violence,” and approving or blocking specific Web sites.

For parents who want to allow limited Web use by their young children without constantly micromanaging their online activities, KidZui may be worth a try, but don’t expect it to be perfect.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

But that was back in 1948, long before Tamagotchi and Sony’s robotic dog AIBO recalibrated the objects of human affection. And desire. Long before artificial intelligence researcher and international chess master David Levy cast a randy eye on Furby and Tickle Me Elmo and began dreaming up all the lascivious possibilities. Because, according to Levy, within a decade or so robots will be so humanlike in their appearance, functionality and expression of emotions, that we’ll be falling in love with them, having sex with them and even marrying them–Defense of Marriage Act, ahem, permitting.

“It may sound a little weird, but it isn’t,” said Levy, who explores the idea at length in his Ph.D. thesis “Intimate Relationships With Artificial Partners,” concluding that “Love and sex with robots are inevitable.”

Levy argues that there are roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love, and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships. “For instance,” he explains, “one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that’s programmable too.”

Sounds like a possible new story arc for “Tell Me You Love Me” …

And what of the consummation vows and the marital bed? The human-robot sexual relationship? Silicone “love dolls” have already done some of the heavy lifting there. And there are folks hard at work developing the technology that may someday make coitus roboticus a real possibility. Consider this patent for “Simulated Human Interaction Systems”:

In a simplified form the mannequin or doll could be replaced with devices being artificial versions of human body parts used in sexual activities, for example artificial male or female genitalia as well as or replaced by devices for use in simulating oral sexual activities.

“Most preferably, however, the invention is applied using a mannequin or doll and preferably sensors are provided to be responsive to touch to various portions of the doll, whereby the control system can cause the visual output to correspond but in addition sensors responsive to movement, temperature and pressure and motion can be provided to initiate a physical reaction in the mannequin.”

(Above image courtesy Worth1000.com)

In an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said that within days of setting up fake profiles for 12- to 14-year-old users, investigators “received numerous sexual solicitations from adults sent to several of the underage profiles.” Worse, when the investigators complained to the company, it often responded lethargically or failed to act at all. Which belies Facebook’s portrayal of itself as a safer alternative to MySpace.

“The OAG [Office of the Attorney General] is concerned that in Facebook’s efforts to grow, the company may be giving a lower priority to the safety and welfare of its users, and in particular, underage users,” Cuomo wrote. “To be clear, within the constraints of the law, Facebook has the right to operate any type of Web site it deems fit. However, it does not have the right to represent that its site is safe and that it promptly responds to complaints when such statements are not accurate.”

And so the New York AG’s office has subpoenaed information about Facebook’s safety and security measures. Which was apparently enough to rouse the company from its $15 billion valuation reveries.

“We take the concerns of the Office of the New York Attorney General very seriously,” said Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker. “As our service continues to grow, so does our responsibility to our users to empower them with the tools necessary to communicate efficiently and safely. We strive to uphold our high standards for privacy on Facebook and are constantly working on processes and technologies that will further improve safety and user control on the site. We are committed to working closely with all the state attorneys general to maintain a trusted environment for all Facebook users and to demonstrate the efficacy of these efforts.”