Slashdot Mirror
No Space for MySpace?
conq writes "BusinessWeek looks at the flaws in the bill proposed by the House of Representatives that would block access to social networks and Internet chat rooms in most federally funded schools and libraries. One big problem with their bill is it is much too vague, it 'could rule out content from any number of Internet companies, including Yahoo! and Google.' What's more, DOPA would prohibit sites that enable users to create their own content and share it. That covers a wide swath of the online world, known colloquially as Web 2.0, where users actively create everything from blogs to videos to news-page collections." This is analysis of a bill we covered yesterday.
There's something "Freedom of Speechish" about that that doesn't sound quite right. What's the argument going to be? "No, we aren't preventing speech about topic X -- we're preventing all speech". Riiiiight.
You could've hired me.
Why not just call it DOPY, so we get a better picture of what the politicians are thinking.
That's it! I'm moving to China.
Oh crap, my constituents are upset again about something. Let's knee-jerk a bill together that is ill-defined and problematic. God knows it won't ever pass, but it looks like we did something!
So Congress gets to bask in the glow of the "protect the children" big lie, AND deal a significant blow to that pesky "blogger" problem. This bill is like a politicians' wet dream.
So it is perfectly legal to view porn in the public library, and they will even give you a special screen to do it... but not myspace?
The vast majority of high schools and elementary schools in the US (i.e. those with funding to hire someone who knows how to use the internet) already do extensive blocking of this sort of material. The problem is that with proxy sites and other work-arounds this legislation will be no more effective than the policies which are already in place. The flip side is that those teachers who have found innovative ways to use blogging, wiki-ing, and other interactive web media in their teaching won't just be able to go to local officials to clear ideas.
You'd think with the amount of computer literacy children are growing up with these days, they'd have an inkling of paranoia about meeting people from MySpace and other sources. I imagine AOL deals with stuff like this on a daily basis.
I guess Devo was right, society really is devolving and people are getting dumber overall rather than smarter. Just because a monkey can use a stick to fish ants out of an anthill we think the monkey is smart. But this is the same monkey you can trap by putting food in a glass jar. Therefore, children may appear smarter because they're typing LOL on their computers, but they're still morons at the end of the day.