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House Passes Ban on Social Site Access
Krishna Dagli writes to mention a C|Net story covering a House of Representatives vote on restricting access to social sites on public terminals. The bill, which passed the House in a 410-15 vote, would bar users from accessing sites like Amazon, MySpace, or Slashdot from terminals in libraries and schools. Adults would be able to 'ask permission' to access such sites. From the article: "'Social networking sites, best known by the popular examples of MySpace, Friendster and Facebook, have literally exploded in popularity in just a few short years,' said Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican and one of DOPA's original sponsors. Now, he added, those Web sites 'have become a haven for online sexual predators who have made these corners of the Web their own virtual hunting ground.'"
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
Your argument is inane and pointless. If you'd bothered to read the bill (what a novel idea, a person becoming informed before shouting about foul play), you'd know that if a case can be made for the educational value of an otherwise blocked site, the site is to be unblocked.
Slashdot would very likely fall under that category, so unlike what the LIES of the reactionary buffoons say, places like Slashdot would very likely not be blocked.
If you haven't foed me yet, what are you waiting for?
They'd achieve far more if they instead spent some money on awareness campaigns to teach people the most common signs of abuse, and to make people aware that strangers isn't the greatest risk to their children.
There's a bit of a difference between modification over time and the complete reversal of meaning in this case, though.
"Literally" in the sense of "metaphorically" can be traced back to the 1760s, and futile prescriptivist whining about it can be traced back to the early 20th century (source). So given that this is an example of modification over time, how exactly is it different?
Uh, Republicans are the ones who want parents to raise their own kids. Dems are the ones that want all children to be raised by the federal government...and this law is just another way they're making that happen.
410 voted for. 15 voted against.
Republicans control the house.
Several of the 15 votes against were democrats.
Are you bad at politics, or math?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Here are the representatives who voted against the bill:
Conyers, John; Michigan, 14th
Grijalva, Raul M.; Arizona, 7th
Hinchey, Maurice D.; New York, 22nd
Honda, Michael M.; California, 15th
Kucinich, Dennis J.; Ohio, 10th
Lee, Barbara; California, 9th
Lofgren, Zoe; California, 16th
McDermott, Jim; Washington, 7th
Payne, Donald M.; New Jersey, 10th
Schakowsky, Janice D.; Illinois, 9th
Scott, Robert C.; Virginia, 3rd
Serrano, Jose E.; New York, 16th
Stark, Fortney Pete; California, 13th
Watson, Diane E.; California, 33rd
Woolsey, Lynn C.; California, 6th
All Democrats, I believe. If your representative's name isn't on the list, it's time for you to make a phone call.
ARGH!
The attitude expressed in your statement is really simplistic to the point of banality. Who is to say myspace isn't a productive use of resources? I would have said the same thing about classmates.com, until I discovered my old college roommate there a few weeks ago.
Just because YOU don't use that resource doesn't mean it isn't useful or helpful to someone else.
Well, jackass, *I* WAS in charge of IT in a library. Sure, we had rules in place as to what made for proper use of equipment, but we didn't block content at all. As for kids, it was only when the feds started writing restrictive laws re.: filtering that we began to limit kiddie use, and only then by saying they could only use the net with their parents' supervision.
As far as "good" academic search sites... HAH! Wikipedia is convenient, but as far as academic research goes, it fails on several marks. I wouldn't block it, though, just because it doesn't appeal to my high-fallutin' academic ways. Blocking out Gmail, yahoo, etc., would place a fundamental cluster-fuck on communications for a GREAT many people, INCLUDING those doing legit research. You may not LIKE people communicating on library computers, but research is, well, based on communication.
It's probably just as annoying to need to get a quick email out to a research collaborator when some "asshole" is sitting there posting to Slashdot, too. I wouldn;t block Slashdot, though. And I wouldn't prevent an asshole like you from doing what-the-hell-ever he or she wanted to do, so long as they didn't break any laws.
Really, people with your views need to walk a mile in the shoes of the average library user. And the average user is NOT you or me. It is the poor student, the poor worker, the elderly person, etc., who don't have the resources available to them privately. Take a chill pill, buddy, and let sleeping dogs lie.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
I was surprised (and more than a little bit disappointed) to see Ron Paul vote for this. You'd think his opinion (even though he's a social conservative) would've been that this is outside the constitutional limits of the federal government.
Sigh. Maybe he's down with a cold.
Well, if MySpace is problematic at the library/workplace where you administer, just start dropping packets to that particular destination to keep your bandwidth in reins. If you think that other traffic is more important, simply throttle the unimportant stuff. Drop just enough packets for the browsers to display *some* stuff, but in a way that would look like the website is having some capacity problems. Maybe those hooked on MySpace will go to a different library. Problem solved.
Where there heck is the good old practical approach to problems? I'm serious.
Cheers, Kuba
This provides some stats, although the methods are a bit dodgy, I think.
Also, this
It isn't clear to me what fraction of kids get solicited by adult predators (rather than fellow teens near their own ages), nor is it clear what fraction actually have any real trouble with it beyond just blocking the person. But do note that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be "sexually exploited" overall.
So is, "Virtually," which actually does mean, "although what follows is unlikely, it is exactly what I mean without metaphor."
Sort of.
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
With all the assorted bitching on here about this bill, people need to realize something....
The Senate IS NOT going to bother with this bill.
The Senate takes alot longer to do things. _maybe_ 10% of what the House passes is ever brought up on the floor. Add to that the short time Congress is in session before they all go home to campaign and the real purpose becomes clear.
1. the Senate too slow to take time with frivolous legislation.
2. there are only a few days left of the session before everyone goes home to campaign.
3. therefore the House is free to pass any kind of retarded crap it wants, knowing it will die on the way down the hall.
4. therefore House members are totally free to vote for blatantly unconstitutional AND retarded bills so they can say they support protecting our children from the boogeyman.
5. tout said dumb bill in campaign commercials
6. win
7. ??? (think duke cunningham)
8. profit!
There was a rash of news stories a few months back up here in the Great White North. Some poor kid got abducted and as it was a slow news day (WWIII hadn't broken out yet), the media was awash with abduction stories.
Apparenly last year in Canada there were something like 30,000 cases of child abduction. Might not be the exact number, but it was in the tens of thousdands. OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!! The news stories focussed on what laws we need, how we can save the children, how the Internet is a bad place, don't let your chilren do anything in public without you, blah blah blah.
In only ONE of the news stories did ANYONE talk about just who was doing the abducting. Of course, it was pretty much always the parents or some other family member. This story had a very short summary of how many kids in Canada last year were abducted by complete strangers:
5.
That's right, FIVE. We're about to re-write our laws, do some stupid reactionary crap, demonize the Internet, lock our kids in protective bubbles, because 5 kids got abducted. Never mind the 29,995 taken by their parents, we don't have to worry about those!
Incidentally, we just had our first Amber Alert(TM) here in Calgary. The city used the Emergency Broadcast System for this. Considering we've had several tornado warnings lately, it scared the hell out of me to hear that blaring from the TV.
Turns out, the kid was abducted by her mother, and as almost always happens in these cases, was returned safely. *sigh* I remember the days when the EBS was used for things like incoming nukes or earthquakes.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Big government should definitely back off but this was hardly a Republican only, party line bill. Since you obviously missed it:
It sure looks like a bunch of your Democrat buddies voted for it too.
The bill only affects access to commercial social networking sites. This is regulation under the commerce clause, so Congress is limited to regulating businesses.
This will be a boost for non-commercial sites like free-association.net, which was founded by Tribe members unhappy with the Murdoch buyout and subsequent censorship. It doesn't take a company. After all, the users are providing all the content.
Actually, if he had read the bill carefully, he would have seen that the bill does not allow for unblocking of sites with educational value. It allows for the blocking to be disabled by request for a minor with adult supervision for educational purposes. This is quite different from not blocking sites with educational value.