babble

Teenage Veronica would not be happy with mid-twenties Veronica. Not only because mid-twenties Veronica can’t have more than two cocktails before calling it a night, but because it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea to me to block MySpace/social networking sites from schools and libraries. Apparently the government agrees, and so they passed the DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act) bill in the House. Makes sense at first glance, right? Keep bad people from contacting kids through these sites on school time (doesn’t do much for protecting them at home, but that’s for another post).

But wait a sec. Lets take a look at this bill. From Ars Technica:

Here’s how DOPA defines social networking sites:
(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
(v) enables communication among users.’.

Goodbye LiveJournal. Goodbye Blogger. Goodbye forums of any kind. Oh, and CNET, because we allow members to make profiles. This not only blocks kids and teens from accessing and contributing to educational forums, but also from expressing themselves. This is a blanket rule that has the possibility of doing more harm than good. I think schools have the right to block MySpace/Friendster/Orkut, etc. on the grounds that they can be dangerous, but where does it stop?

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Two things… this reminds me a lot of how schools would attempt to block sexually explicit material using web-filtering software, and therefore prevent students from seeing information on safe sex, anatomy, ART, anything that the filter decided was “explicit.”

Also, my title was not intentionally funny until I looked at it again. “DOPA means”? Dopamine? Maybe if they just pumped people full of dopamine they’d be happy to let this bill pass. Har har!