Slashdot Mirror
Illinois Bill Would Ban Social Networking Sites
AlexDV writes "Library blogger Michael Stephens is reporting that an Illinois state senator, Matt Murphy (R-27, Palatine), has filed a bill that 'Creates the Social Networking Web site Prohibition Act. Provides that each public library must prohibit access to social networking Web sites on all computers made available to the public in the library. Provides that each public school must prohibit access to social networking Web sites on all computers made available to students in the school.' Here is the bill's full text."
This local effort harks back to an attempt last May to get federal legislation banning school and library use of social networking sites (Wikipedia summary here). The DOPA bill passed the House but died in the Senate.
States can have laws that ratchet freedom further, but they can't decrease your rights any more than the federal government Constitutionally is able to.
The headline chosen by kdawson was "llinois Bill Would Ban Social Networking Sites", which is a ludicrous distortion.
The bill goes on to define the key terminology it uses: administrative unit, computer, public library, school, and school board.
All well and good? Well, they never define what constitutes a "social networking website"! Which of these do you think would qualify: Slashdot? Reddit? Digg? Evite? Delicious? Blogger? We could debate this to death. (In fact, it probably is being debated at some Web 2.0 conference.) Without a clear definition of the most crucial term in the bill, how are schools supposed to know how to enforce it? How are the rest of us supposed to know what's allowed and what's not?
If a legislator took the effort to become knowledgable about the Internet, understand how it operates, and then proposed some carefully-crafted regulation, I wouldn't get so emotionally angry about it. Instead we get Ted Stevens' rant about tubes, and crap like this, because people don't take the time to understand what they're talking about. We should expect more out of our elected officials. They wield significant power, and it's ridiculous that they choose to use it without thinking.
Ryan
I work for a public library, and this is exactly what we do now. Every day when school gets out, we're inundated with junior high kids coming in to monopolize our computers for their daily MySpace, RuneScape, and AIM fix. The solution that we've come up with is to reserve one third of our computers for "non recreational use." Specifically, this means no social networking sites, recreational IM, MMORPGs, or games of any kind. Basically, it's at the discretion of the staff to determine when this policy is being violated, and to discus it with the patron.
In short, we've already solved this problem without any help from our meddling "representatives" in Springfield. Same goes for porn. We don't filter our Internet access, but we do reserve the right to ask people to avoid sites that include explicit content, because the computers are all in a publicly viewable area. This is part of our own Internet Use Agreement, not some piece of legislation dreamed up by Senators with nothing better to do. In other words, we're perfectly capable of handling most of the perceived problems with public access computers without any interference from the government.
That's easy. Just whitelist all the pages which are not social networking pages.
And that would be porn, with a few slides of usable content.
Many a /.er treats /. as a social nw site where you might try to build karma, bitch about MS etc etc.
You've just nailed (accidentally or not) what I see as the second biggest problem here (after the blatant unconstitutionality of the proposed legislation)...
What does count as a "social networking" site? Would SlashDot count? Would most blogs that allow comment posting? Would USENET, for that matter? The full text of the bill basically sounds like it violates Free (online) Assembly rather than Free Speech.
The concept of "social networking", as used here, really has no meaning except by example. When you outlaw meaningless ideas, you open the door for overly aggressive AGs and DAs to start creatively interpreting the law to apply in areas not even the most paranoid of the beanie-wearing crowd could have predicted. Case in point, the DOJ (in)famously held a series of lectures on how to apply the patriot act and subsequent antiterrorism legislation to your friendly neighborhood weed dealer. Riiiiiiiight, protection from Osama.
But, but, but... Think of the children!
Well, for one thing, we pay for public libraries. They are meant to provide a service for us. And if enough people are using public library computers to visit social sites, then clearly that's a service for which there is demand. As someone who's on the board of a foundation that's trying to get computers into the hands of people who can't afford them, I can tell you with certainty that there are people out there who don't have the money to buy a computer or pay for broadband. If a social site is valuable enough for YOU to use then it's of value to them as well. And, believe it or not, we build public libraries for poor people to use, too.
Your argument is like saying that if people are requesting that the library carry a certain book or magazine, the answer is that they should just go out and buy the book themselves. That sort of defeats the purpose of public libraries, though, no?
I guess no matter how affluent the United States gets, there will always be people who think that poor people shouldn't get things like access to health care, access to public libraries, access to government. It's a pretty fucked up way to think.
You are welcome on my lawn.