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.'"

Comments

Most sexual predators are KNOWN to the children

[vidarh]

I guess politicians don't bother reading any research before they make their minds up. The vast majority of sexual abuse is carried out by parents, relatives and friends of the family. A few years ago a survey by the NSPCC (National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children) in the UK published a research report documenting that 75% of all abusers fell in those groups. Of the remainder, only a small percentage met their victims online.

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.

Re:Yet another way the poor kids get left out

[pjt48108]

Disadvantage? A computer in a library used to access Myspace?

Honestly, these computers should be used for something a bit more productive than wasting time on myspace.com anyway.

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.

Personally, if I were in charge of a library's IT, I would white list sites like Wikipedia and *.edu and a bunch of good academic research sites. I would block out Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc. Libraries are for reading and learning, not checking email and making posts on myspace.

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 annoying when you want to do some real research on a library computer and some asshole in front of you is chatting on web messenger or checking their email.

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.

Canadian statistics

[freeweed]

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.