Ah, election year politics. In a measure appropriately called (DOPA) Deleting Online Predators Act, the House of Representatives has proposed a bill on May 9 that block complete access to social networks and other interactive sites in the majority of federally funded schools and libraries.
This is in response to criticism for making it easy for teens and children to be contacted by predators.
The problem with the bill is that it really doesn't effectively do anything helpful, and as in many cases of government interference, does more harm. Even groups advocating child online safety oppose it.
Markham Erickson, general council of the Net Coalition, a Washington lobby representing Internet companies says "The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) defines the restricted areas as those that allow users to create Web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users" and offer "a mechanism of communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, e-mail, or instant messenger."
Essentially this is everything that has been moving the online business innovation boom called Web 2.0. It could even end up eliminating Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG) content.
The problem with legislation like this is it makes everybody look like the bad guy who opposes it. No decent person would oppose protecting children, but to introduce legislation like this is setting up for failure, opposition and frustration.
Obviously the lawmakers have no idea whatsoever in relationship to this issue and the Web. This legislation really needs to be gutted and started over if re-introduced at all. While it may look good from the protection standpoint and the government, most kids are already saying that they already know how to get around all of that through other means.
The other issue is that for the most part the schools and libraries are secondary choices of students involvment with these sites in the first place.
This really is a much more important issue than a lot of people realize. The ramifications of this bill if passed in its current form would be devastating to the growth of the Internet.
To me the social-networking companies are at fault for being so lazy with all of this. The war drums have been beating quite awhile about this and they still don't attempt to stop things at the gate but rather wait until they're already online and than take care of it. Then it is too late.
Now on the other side of the issue, people could be lulled into thinking these places are safe if this legislation passes, not knowing that it doesn't do very much at all to truly protect the children it was meant to.
We really need to speak out about this and let our representatives know that this must be dropped. What do you think about it passing and doing so much harm to the Internet?
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