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Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act: DOPA Jr, DOPA Extra, or Just Dopey
by Senator Ted Stevens, who last entered our radar screen when he described the internet as a series of tubes, has introduced Senate Bill 49 which appears to encompass everything we objected to about DOPA, plus more. DOPA, after passing with an overwhelming majority in the House then died from stagnation in the Senate with the end of the Congressional session.Though some are calling it DOPA, JR, it might be more aptly name DOPA Extra since it goes well beyond DOPA.
The Bill's stated purpose is, "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prevent the carriage of child pornography by video service providers, to protect children from online predators, and to restrict the sale or purchase of children's personal information in interstate commerce." It is broken down into three sections"
Title 1: Requires that those distributing adult online content not include the adult content on their homepage and that each page of the site include a warning that it contains sexually explicit content. It only applies to content producers in the US and does not cover content producers distributing pornography from overseas. So, the thought seems good, the execution may be lacking.
Title 2: Which is very much like DOPA. In fact it is titled Deleting On-line Predators 2007. It limits access to social networks in schools (only those receiving Federal subsidies via the E-Rate Program ) and seems to encompass the same sites as DOPA, everything from MySpace to Wikipedia; additionally the schools would be required to monitor, or perhaps track, the online activities of students if not supervised by faculty. Also included in this section is a mandate for the FTC to set up a site to warn of the dangers of social networking and interactive sites.
My original objections to DOPA still stand: The Internet is a wonderful source of knowledge and learning for children; restricting this will not eliminate on-line predators.
Title 3: Is about protecting the privacy of children. It makes it illegal for anyone to purchase or sell private data about someone they know to be a child. Can't object to that.
As noted previously, MySpace is set to introduce Zephyr, to alert parents about the ages and other information their children are using on their social networking profiles. Although it seems that MySpace has been unable to find the technology to verify ages of users, it seems that Anheuser-Busch has age verification on Bud-TV visitors. Perhaps they should share their toys.
Andy Carvin at PBS who is covering this extensively and impressively points to GovTrack.us, a legistlative website "independently tracking the US government" where you can subscribe via RSS and track it yourself. This is a fascinating site.
Linda Braun at YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) provides in PDF, 30 Positive Uses os Social Networking Compilation plus 1.
Tags: Media 2.0, DOPA, Protecting Children in the 21st Century, DOPAJr, MySpace, YALSA, Andy Carvin, Social Networks, Senate Bill 49, Anheuser-Busch, Bud-Tv, Wikipedia, Ted Stevens
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Scare Tactics Don’t Work
If the government restricts students’ access to social platforms while they are in the schools and public libraries, how are these children going to be instructed to use social software responsibly? How can they learn to use these tools creatively and constructively? How are they going to compete in the future with students from other cultures, who are taught and who learn in collaborative environments?
There is just no indication that prohibiting something (in this case access to information and communication) will diminish the dangers (risk of contact with sex predators). Contrarily, it might make the whole situation more attractive in the eyes of children sitting, unsupervised, at their computers at home. It is the responsibility of not only parents but also the teaching community to guide and supervise our children in the proper use of Web 2.0.
USA is often a role model for other countries. It would be a shame for your government to use scare tactics as a way of coping the threat of sex predators.
lia from luebeck, germany
Author of the media safe 101 page on the Red Tent Blog and the personal yum yum cafe
You are so right...
it is a shameless scare tactic...and the true statistics for sexual predators (available on line, of course) do not support this course of action anyway. The majority of sexual predators are family and "friends".
Marianne
Marianne Richmond
resonancepartnership
Although it seems that
This is statement is somewhat disingenuous. Verifying ages for 21 year olds has been a solved problem for a long time on and off the Internet. Verifying ages for 14-18 year olds is on the order of very difficult to impossible. When it is forced on MySpace, the most likely way they will comply is by verifying parents ages who can vouch in their children. This is still not an easy problem to solve.
On a related note, the whole Ted Stevens, "The Internet is a series of tubes," joke is really getting old, and I find that he really only gets made fun of by people who don't understand what he was talking about. As someone who deals with Internet technology daily, I've often used the same metaphor, along with the multi-lane highway metaphor. However, I'm very interested to know how you would explain QoS and DSCP to a room full of sexagenarians who don't know the difference between a packet and a datagram, and still believe that that the Internet is a passing fad.
I'm all for making fun of people who come up with stupid laws, but it'd be really nice if people could stick to debating issues.
Did you listen to him talk ?
I listened to this all the way through and if Stevens didn't sound like someone who didn't have a clue about what he was talking about, I don't know who does.
And I feel very strongly that DOPA and all of the efforts to inhibit access to the wealth of knowledge available on the Internet in the name of stopping sexual predators are aimed at the wrong target; predators should be the target, not their prey.
Marianne
publicknowledge
Marianne Richmond
resonancepartnership