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Sen. Ted Stevens Introduces "Son of DOPA"
DJCacophony writes "Ted 'series of tubes' Stevens has introduced a bill, going by the interim name S.49, that aims to block access to interactive websites from schools and libraries. The wording of the bill is vague enough to apply to Wikipedia, MySpace (and other social networking sites), and potentially even to blogs. The bill is apparently so similar to the failed Deleting Online Predators Act of last year that it has been termed 'Son of DOPA' by some." Stevens introduced S.49, the text of which is not yet available, on the opening day of the legislative session.
Dammit Alaska, will y'all do something about that guy sometime soon?
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It's right here (PDF).
Do the Slashdot editors not know how to find stuff on Al Gore's Tubes of Internets?
...he engaged his mouth before using his brain.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Yeah, because the bandwidth from all these interweb pages is clogging the tubes. I mean, just yesterday, my staff sent me an internet...
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Well we wouldn't want anyone actually LEARNING but using the Internet, would we? I particularly find it offensive when non-porn, sexually-related material is blocked from the very people who could use that information the most.
Hope it passes. After someone adds an amendment stating that it only applies to Alaska.
[Insert pithy quote here]
It will be the end of Flash advertisements, javascript and other "interactive" tools. Heck, I won't have to waste hours and hours learning AJAX for Web 2.0 because I would want my sites to be able to be seen in schools and libraries.
Wait...my local library has an interactive catalog. Would they have to block themselves? They probably should already turn themselves in. They have a subscription to Playboy and I'm sure there are countless books that have "porn" in them teaching kids about sex.
...under the guise of protecting children. Bloody typical. The fact that anyone can walk into a public library and post their uncensored views of the government, politicians, policy, business, etc... is "dangerous". This is why the internet is destined to become just another medium like television where you only consume and are limited in what you can produce and how many hearts and minds you can reach. Unless you fight things like Son of DOPA. This is the typical approach in many segments today. Take something that you REALLY want to enforce on people that they would likely balk at if they really understood it, then attach it to some "noble cause". Make sure that the noble cause is something that makes it easy to paint the opposition as "pro-evil". And you win.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Return of the son of Deleting Online Predators Act.
Nice to see the feds aren't immune to the same bullshit stunts Illinois and Georgia tried to pull.
...when politicians come up with laws restricting... well, anything.
I just wonder why there's so much support for laws restricting freedom in the land of the free. Or was that rewritten and nobody told me?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can't find a "Ted Stephens blocked my tubes!" t-shirt on Thinkgeek yet.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Ever heard of the Tenth Amendment, Ted? Just goes to show that the GOP is no longer the party of smaller constitutional government.
This wont be mandatory. The article states that only if you get money from the government would you have to do this. Some Libraries (like the one i work for) dont get money from the government or the state government so it wont apply to us. please read the article before going crazy.
I understand a lot of child molesters use public washrooms to attack kids in, so we should ban access to public washrooms. Come to think of it, most kids are molested by members of their own families, so clearly we should ban families. Heck, I once heard that a molester drove a volkswagen, so hell, lets ban them too.
Life needs more saving throws.
The library here in La Jolla is already halfway there thanks to a little program called CyberSitter. 90% of everything I click on results in "IE cannot display this page" though, sometimes, if I click reload enough times I'm able to recieve enough page text and click stop before CyberSitter receives whatever part of the page it is which causes the page to be dumped.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Every time this old crank or any of his fellow Senators wastes time with these fake "child protection" systems that screw adults instead of actually protecting children, they leave children actually exposed to the real threats. And their sneaky smokescreens using children as "human shields" from criticism of their sweeping attacks on American liberty makes it even harder to trust any plan offered to actually protect these people.
All they do is damage everyone. Delete Stevens and his technocrat cronies.
--
make install -not war
I'm in a Government Program Called Job Corps, I'm in Comp Tech to get my A+ Cert, so i can get a good job, thing is that bill is insane! that would block our main info for computer parts, try finding (in the same place) what the 8086 was and the meaning to DDR2..... Oh well, Proxys around here are so common, i can just use those
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
...some sort of mechanism to have a computer automatically read the contents of a page that was in the Tubes of the Intarweb, and then create indexes on the words contained therein, and then allow users to access those indexes via another page on the Interweb, and look for pages which contain those words.
I'll be back later, I need to go to the Patent Office.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Most news sites have polls, blogs, comments, and messageboards. This bill would block students form going to their local newspapers site or the big sites like cnn and msnbc. Politicians are stupid.
...i think i will send a letter to my state senator asking he draft a bill blocking Ted Stevens from introducing ANY legislation regarding the Internet.
Nice troll, but I'll bite anyway. The problem isn't that the law targets sites like that, but that its scope is too broad. It would also apparently block access to legitimate sites like Wikipedia and weblogs. This is unacceptable, our government should never be allowed to expand its own powers with the promise that it will only use them for good. Doing so invites tyranny.
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Alaska's pork should be reduced in 2007 for two reasons:
1. Uncle Ted Stevens is a Republican, and the Dems have the majority in the Senate (49+1+1=51 vs. 49). Therefore, Uncle Ted isn't in the majority, and he can't use his majority status to ram things through appropriations.
2. The Senate has "eliminated" pork, known as earmarks, for this budget cycle (source). I'm sure it won't be a 100% freeze, but given that the amount of earmarked appropriations skyrocketed under the GOP-led Congress (60% increase in the past five years), it's reasonable to expect that it will be reduced dramatically -- especially to states with two Republican Senators and a Republican Representative, such as Alaska.
So, with Uncle Ted presumably bringing in less pork for the foreseeable future, will Alaskans react by electing a Dem, or will they re-elect Uncle Ted in the hopes that the GOP recapture the senate and Stevens' seniority becomes valuable locally again?
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Not really. Libraries may be public but they are still owned and operated by the government. That means it's their call as to what goes on there. It's not violating your rights because you can still access whatever you want anywhere else.
Even if they somehow blocked a website for everyone it still wouldn't be a violation of your rights but rather the rights of the person running the website being blocked. Even that would be questionable because they aren't actually stopping you from saying something(freedom of speech intact) but they may as well be.
Dunno what universe you live in, but here in the US, "Owned and operated by the government" MEANS "public."
And it's called censorship when the government decides what someone can and cannot read/hear/view.
A private company (like your employer) is well within their rights to block any and all Internet traffic it deems inappropriate, in much the same way they can say, "No porno mags in the bathroom." No, this is not censorship, as it's not the government doing this.
Of course this leads right into the Net Neutrality debate, as the tubes are owned and operated by private companies who are arguing that they can do anything they want with their property. This differs from the airwaves (broadcast radio and TV), which are actually owned by the public, and an agency operating in the public trust (the FCC) grants a monopoly on the usage (transmission) to whoever can pony up enough dough for a license. The FCC (the government) also retains the right to censor broadcasts (hence big fines for profanity and wardrobe malfunctions).
So with all of these contradictions, my head is spinning ...
A better method might be the D'Hondt method (a.k.a. Jeffeson's method), I know it is used for committee seats in Denmark. It is hard to understand, rather messy, but rarely questioned, as the results are basically fair.
That's ok, neither did the submitter. The phrase "interactive site" doesn't even appear in the bill.
`(J) COMMERCIAL SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES; CHAT ROOMS- Within 120 days after the date of enactment of the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006, the Commission shall by rule define the terms `social networking website' and `chat room' for purposes of this subsection. In determining the definition of a social networking website, the Commission shall take into consideration the extent to which a website--
`(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
`(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
`(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
`(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
`(v) enables communication among users.'.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
I'd vote for the DESESE (Deleting Senile Senators) act, forcing mandatory retirement for people who behave like this. I mean, the guy is incapable of even reading out a speech prepared for him by his handlers. People like Ted Stevens shouldn't be in politics anymore, they should be in an institution.
I'm not sure if this has been said already, but I attend a high school that blocks wikipedia, myspace, gmail, hotmail... the list goes on. Even the teachers can't access these sites. I assumed it was already standard procedure to block pages that might contain something "bad" (what's ironic, however, is the fact that we can get to nazi-propaganda sites...)
/first slashdot post ever
Is it me, or are our tubes a lot stricter than others'?
Uh, 20% of the Democratic Caucus is conservative democrats right now... and Sen. Webb is a Republican, or at least was until he got annoyed with Bush and the Iraq war, and it's unclear where he'll stand after the Iraq war. Dean did an AMAZING job of turning the Democratic Party back into a national party (read Zell Miller's book for how bizarre they got at writing off the South -- don't attack him, he makes a LOT of good points), but it's not a 99.8% string up the Republicans party... if it was, it wouldn't win many elections...
But the comment you've misreading isn't "punish Bush," it's the "punish Bush states."
The Daily Kos crew, and other "politics isn't a contact sport, it's a battle to the death sport" wants the Democratic Party to ATTACK government funding goals that help Republican states. You wouldn't be very happy if the Democrats first action was to pull all highway funding, social spending, etc., for the state of Georgia, while leaving it for the rest of the states.
The implication that Uncle Ted can't deliver the bacon because he's in the minority and all his projects will be cut is probably wrong, and somewhat dangerous. I'd love to see the corruption rooted out of Washington with ALL appropriations, but punishing your opponents and rewarding your friends TOO extremely is just a bad scene.