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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.'"
Why not just kick them in the face while you're at it?
-Eric (former poor kid)
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Obviously this law just screams out to be abused. Who defines when a site is social? Does the Democratic party have a forum? I bet that makes them social enough to be blocked. On the other hand though they are blocking MySpace, so this law does have some redeeming qualities.
Philosophy.
We desperately need the current generation of senior citizens to die off. That, or we need to make voting significantly more accessible to informed people who have shit to do.
These boneheaded politicians have fucked our country in so many ways in the past 6 years alone it's almost inconceivable, and there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
Apparently no bill is too stupid if it's for the sake of the children...
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.'
People might also get together and discuss anything else, including unpopular wars, politics (including bills to viloate privacy, violate basic civil rights and interfer with the 'free market' and communications) or the corporate predators who back them.
i welcome you to the new america. leave your conscience at the door.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This won't survive a court challenge.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
While most admins (including me) will be disgusted at the "protecting us from ourselves" aspect, as well as taking away free choice, this will really help the schools and libraries with their bandwith consumption. Some of the school and Library admins I know say that Myspace.com now accounts for over 50% of their traffic, with its stupid embedded music/videos.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
I think a more appropriate quote would be, "They who don't pay attention to what their kids do on the Internet, deserve neither kids nor the Internet."
Why don't they just ban housing. That's where most child abuse takes place.
Seriously, though, the abuse, etc. should be a criminal offense, not something that might be related in some way. For example, guns should be legal; murder should not be. Credit cards should be legal; fraud should not be.
Indeed, his inability to understand the meaning of simple English words does make me wonder what he's doing making legislation for the most powerful country in the world.
"Social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids,"
Does anyone have any figures for how many kids have actually been solicited compared to those who are molested by family etc?
Doesn't this kind of interfere with the whole freedom of association thing?
And, banning Amazon is kinda silly -- so many things on the web link to Amazon for information about books and the like. Why include Amazon in this?
Are they even going to be able to enforce this? What about as people add new social sites, are libraries going to be required to know all of the things they should be censoring, or will someone give them a list?
I'm kinda hoping the librarians fight them on this and get it shot down as unconstitutional. To me, this sounds about as insane as barring Baptists or some other group from meeting in any number than two in a public area -- it's both insane and unenforceable.
It scares me how much they are willing to curtail everyone else's liberties in order to suport this witch hunt which allegedly is supposed to help the children. Very scary indeed. I'm just waiting until US authorities start arresting people who run sites in foreign countries because they accepted logins from Americans.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How is trying to block access to the 'social' internet as part of law NOT in very important ways a roadblock to free speech? If I add a Wiki or a chat function to a website, is it then a danger to children because anyone can access the site, and communicate freely to children using that tool?
That's a default system of banning speech in public, on a scale far worse than any indecency bill. It's akin to banning phone calls to private residences on public phones, in order to protect children from free communication.
What kind of idiotic message does this send to children anyway? The majority of our legislatures in the house seem to think that free communication is too dangerous a thing for children to do now. "Don't talk with strangers" is perhaps a way to get children to think defensively about the messages they get... but speaking with strangers is the only way to learn about the world outside your own little bubble. Sure - the boogey man of the Internet child predator has some reality to it, but the Internet is still one of the safest place for children to learn about the opinions of the rest of humanity outside their small environment. Banning such access in public libraries is telling children that they can't be trusted with even the possibility of such communication. I aknowledge that children can't be trusted with all the rights of adults, but our public infrastructure seems to be producing another generation of sheltered dropouts, each less qualified to enter college than the last.
This is an immoral bill, in my mind, and one I hope is found unconstitutional.
Ryan Fenton
Here's how it works: News program has time to fill and ratings to keep up, produces a piece about pedophiles stalking children on MySpace. Grannie, who votes religiously like a real patriot, watches news.
Congressman running for office, addressing an audience with grannie in attendance, says, "And to protect the children of America, which are our future, I have introduced legislation to ban access to web sites frequented by predators and pedophiles in our public schools and libraries."
Lather, rinse, repeat and watch all our freedoms slowly spin down the drain.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Write and call your senators letting them know exactly why this is a bad idea. If enough people
make their opposition clear, we may still have a chance of getting it stopped there.
Oh, and to add to this...
c.1821 Heinrich Heine wrote "Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings."
Where they sensor social networking sites, they will end in silencing the people. - russ1337
Dear People of the World,
It has come to our attantion that it is a LOT more difficult to keep you all under our control when you are well educateed and well connected. As such, we, the corrupt career politicials (that really have only our own interests at heart), all 410 of us, have decided to stop letting you connect with each other so easily.
We've decided that it would be best if the big corporations decide how much people should pay to have access over the shared global computer networks. We've decided that public services that offer Internet connections should restrict sites that allow people to connect and share information. You see, when all you "people" (plebs) out there keep sharing information and educating each other (for free) about what we're doing -- it makes us look REALLY bad. It erodes our ability to craft the message we want you to hear. It prevents us from keeping the food locked up and you worried about how to survive, so that you'll work real hard.
We're not going to stop this pattern. Each time it looks like the people have too much freedom, understand the world too well, or have too much information about how the state operates, we are going to pass more laws that try to keep ourselves in power. We're not even going to consider rational debate on how we should be paid, or really who we work for - we work for our own self interest!
Sincerely Yours,
The Senators and Representatives, leaders and crooks, cronies and career jackashers who have the world by the balls and have no interest in letting go...
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Clearly you have fallen hard from your turnip truck and struck your head quite forcefully. I see you as a complete apologist for those who are happy to legislate our freedoms into oblivion. Perhaps when they take away something you treasure you might at least grunt coherently before rolling over anyway. Not I.
The concept of fighting these sorts of violations of basic rights in court, rather then defeating in in committee or vote before house and/or senate is far more desireable as it eliminates the period of suppression prior to overturning, futher it eliminates any artifacts which may remain in place (as this will affect programmings, filtering and structure of information access) after subsequent overturn by a court. In these cases an ounce of prevention is truly worth more than a pound of cure.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...think "I wonder what liberties will be gone today?" when they first awake?
This doesn't really affect me - yet - but who knows how far this will go. Is this the beginning of a system where the would-be victim is punished for the would-be crime?