Politicians Target Social Sites For Restrictions

cnet-declan writes "Politicians are looking for reasons to convince citizens to vote in November, and polls say suburban parents are worried about the internet. Wednesday top House Republicans announced a bill to make 'social' Web sites unreachable from schools and libraries. The bill is intended to go after MySpace, but the actual text of the legislation covers sites that let users 'create profiles' and have a 'forum' for conversations -- which would include Slashdot and many blog sites. House Speaker Dennis Hastert claims it's necessary to stop 'dangerous predators' out here on the Interweb."

Comments

Re:Targeted at minors not adults

[GuloGulo2]

My library has two types of cards, one for adults, one for minors.

You have no point at all.

Re: I typically prefer Libertarian

[falconwolf]

The only way voting would mean anything to me is if we could vote to have no government at all. As long as there is someone in charge making laws over us it violates our natural rights and makes us slaves, as beautifully said by Lysander Spooner.

Agreed! That's one reason I support FIJA, Fully Informed Jury, as well as Jury Rights & Jury Nullification.

Falcon

This is an old problem

[Mycroft Holmes IV]

ask anyone from the BBS days.

The Internet makes solutions a little more difficult. Some BBS used to use a call-back routine to verify that you had a known good phone number. Better ones would call you personally....giving a known voice to the number as well.

Trouble is that calling Austrialia or Japan or even England from the US can get expensive. But then you could validate that there was a live person at the other end. (Validating a person's identity is nearly impossibly - witness the explosive growth of identity theft).

However, in my opinion, the problem issue isn't validating an identify...it's showing that anonymousity on the BBS is gone. (Behave yourself...and who cares if what name your care to call yourself. Be bad...and we start digging.)

Re:So the purpose of the government..

[grimwell]

Guns. Lots of guns.

You might want to ask David Koresh how that worked out for him... or the folk at Ruby Ridge

Violence only begets more violence. A well educated populace that is active in their community and politics is the only long term defense against corruption & tyranny. Teach your children well.

Or maybe more to the point a violent uprising to gov't only plays into their hands by justifying their use of overwhelming force. The US people would not stand for a Tiananmen Square style crackdown on US soil. Look to the civil rights movement of the 60s. Freedom Riders being attacked on National TV forced JFK to send in the troops. Or look at the Kent State Massacre.

Re:Classroom colaboration

[Proteus]

Blackboard, an excellent and widely-used online education tool at every level of education (K-12, college, even the US Military Academy at WestPoint) would be blocked if the current wording of this bill were to become law.

"Complete and udder stupidity" doesn't even begin to cover this...