Politicians Target Social Sites For Restrictions 497
cnet-declan writes "Politicians are looking for reasons to convince citizens to vote in November, and polls say suburban parents are worried about the internet. Wednesday top House Republicans announced a bill to make 'social' Web sites unreachable from schools and libraries. The bill is intended to go after MySpace, but the actual text of the legislation covers sites that let users 'create profiles' and have a 'forum' for conversations -- which would include Slashdot and many blog sites. House Speaker Dennis Hastert claims it's necessary to stop 'dangerous predators' out here on the Interweb."
So the purpose of the government.. (Score:2, Interesting)
So who protects the people from their government?
Overreaching (Score:3, Interesting)
These people are trying to pander to the old reliable "think of the children!" crap because they can't come up with anything that would actually improve the lives of their consituents, so they have to play to their constituents' insecurities and fears.
WTF? O.o (Score:5, Interesting)
Families are practically becoming prison camps for kids... and you're telling me that the greatest danger are sexual predators on the internet? Are you f*cking kidding me?
Interesting concept. (Score:1, Interesting)
Welcome to "Ask the White House". This online interactive forum, the first of its kind in politics, allows you to interact with Bush administration officials and friends of the White House.
Everyone thank your congressman or congresswoman they ARE trying to protect you.
Is it all or nothing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Evolution? Textbook Domination? Loss of Wikipedia? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been slowly working on a project called the Free Textbook Project that I'd liek to target at schools. As well as something called the Piaget project, which is a collaborative and interactive mathematics learning environment. Others at the MIT Media Lab are doing similar things. These would all be banned, as well as Wikipedia, as far as I can tell. GMail is banned, and really, most any other internet technologies. I don't see how one can find appropriate language on a national level.
This should be up to the school . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is a community driven site has no way to properly police and identify it's members.
I ran a community based website for 8 years where users could create profiles, message each other, participate in tree style board discussions and it became very popular with high school age children. I went through most of the steps that would have made the site COPPA compliant (though it was unneeded) using email based multi-opt in methods to verify the user. The site was policed regularly for content that would have been inappropriate for underage users, erring on the side of caution. I didn't regulate what users sent privately to each other, though there were jobs that ran on the backend that would watch for things that should send up a red flag (ie, adults talking about 'plane tickets' with minors). It wasn't perfect, and most of the time the flags were false positives that I just ignored. Users were aware of the monitoring and generally approved.
I shut the site down about 10-12 months ago because I couldn't handle dealing with the child predators anymore. One of my monitors had gone off and upon investigation I found not just one but three different adults (30+ males) that were all attempting to 'hook up' with girls 13-16... I am not in position to judge, make laws, or anything of that nature. However, this activity is explicitly not what I wanted on my site (and since all parties were in the US, they all were beneath the laws of this country and their respective states). I attempted reporting these activities to the states the individuals were from (California and Indiana in this instance), was given the run around for a while and eventually just told in a round about way that nothing I could submit or do would effect anything. No investigation, no extra monitoring, no research into these individuals who were quite knowingly breaking laws and endangering a child (from at least the law books perspective).
I searched for ways I could as a small website operator (~20000 members) validate a users identity. I figured I could at least prevent some of these activities if users knew without a doubt that their accounts were tied to their real identity (even if it was hidden to other users). I hit a brick wall. I could not find any means to accomplish this and queries on solutions were left unanswered (though my Ask Slashdot question is still in Pending state and has been for the last many months).
I don't see this issue as being something that laws preventing children from getting on these sites is the solution. I *do* however feel the schools should have the right to block access to any sites they don't deem as needed for the education process. I happily blocked access to my site on my side at the request of school administrators that didn't have the technical wherewithall to block it on their side. Social networking websites have as much place in a classroom as cell phones and instant messaging devices. So blocking them I approve of, but at the school administrations discretion.
My biggest point here is the problem: "Sexual predators preying on children" is not solved by their solution "Block access to myspace while at school and put the load on the site delivering the service, not on the site accessing the service".
Most social networking sites ignore the fact that they KNOW their sites are/will be used by predators. Some of us let the guilt get to us and shut down.
Re:So the purpose of the government.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that's comforting....problem is, we're under it, and when it collapses, it's gonna hurt.
As a father... (Score:4, Interesting)
If kids can't get the attention they need from their parents, they'll look for it elsewhere.
You can't legislate that. Parents just have to pull their heads out of their asses and be parents.
Politicians are reactionary organisms that will do anything to please the masses so they can get re-elected. Bills like this are merely placebos that make the government appear that they're doing something about a problem that should be addressed at home.
This is a waste of time and a distraction from REAL issues. But I don't have any stong opinions about it
Re:Targeted at minors not adults (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly what the problem is (Score:3, Interesting)
I have watched coverage more closely since then and this seems to be universally true. I have only seen child predators caught when it's law enforcement posing as the girl and luring the man in (there was a video on the front page of cnn.com for this yesterday even...).
I am not saying it doesn't happen via other methods, but I've not seen anything other than sting operations and parent/guardians filing reports as being the catalyst to get something done about predators preying on children...
Re:As a father... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Targeted at minors not adults (Score:5, Interesting)
Depending on your viewpoint, it's rather creepy to "check in" with someone when you want to access "inappropriate" content at all. On the plus side, librarians, and the ALA [ala.org] in particular, are generally quite opposed to censorship of any kind. You can bet that they'll have something to say about this. Libraries already have all sorts of trouble being compliant with the very vague law that is CIPA, and this will only muddy the water further.
I found a very interesting article [firstmonday.org] (linked to from the ALA website) that goes over the problems that libraries face with internet filtering. Make no mistake; they hate it. Particularly alarming is the librarian from Singapore that wasn't that concerned about censorship:
She casually replied, "Oh yes, we get overblocking all the time. Last week I was helping a patron look for motor vehicle forms but they were blocked, probably because it has a box to check for SEX 'Male/Female.'"
There was something about her casual tone that tripped me up. I usually hear librarians give overblocking examples in tones alternating between outrage, bitterness and amusement. I heard none of that in her voice. Just a relaxed answer, perhaps befitting our tranquil setting.
Nevertheless, I prodded, "As a librarian, doesn't that bother you?"
"No, not really," she said. Noticing the surprised look on my face, she continued, "You don't understand. Everything in Singapore is censored ... our books, our movies. You get used to it. Internet filters are nothing special."
This is purely redundant legislation to collect mindshare for an election year, and will only be used to restrict us further. Once people get used to it, they cease to care. It must be fought.
Re:So the purpose of the government.. (Score:3, Interesting)
It takes a lot of men with courage first... The lot of guns helps, but wont do dick against the airforce
Or do you think that hunting rifle can shoot down a tomahawk missle?
Re:Does not compute (Score:2, Interesting)
Requirements are the ability to create a profile (Yahoo! - personals etc.) and a forum for communication. ANY Linux forum would be banned, simply because most of them allow "swearing" - depends on the board, but then what becomes obscene. "Obscene" is not defined, either, and the Supreme Court of the US has refused to hear cases because what is obscene in one state may be permitted under the laws of another.
This legislation should be thrown out on its face, due to the simple fact that "obscene" is not defined, and in fact the states have the right to define that, not the federal government.
While I'm not in favor of child pornography in the least, this smacks of what several other posters are alluding to in their comparison to the Yahoo!/China debaucle. Contact your Senator TODAY and let them know this should not go through. This is ridiculous.
Jackass and elephant manure (Score:3, Interesting)
One, we already block this content. So this is purely campaign crap to get extra votes. And every school system, at least here in Virginia, is required to provide an Internet filter to protect students from accessing certain sites. Our public libraries do the same.
Two, what content we do not block, is for educational purposes. For example, Slashdot. Well, if Slashdot now fits the profile of a site that needs to be banned, then school systems across the nation will be required to sacrifice some sites that are essential to teachers' methods of teaching.
And three, why make the Internet more restrictive through more legislation? The Internet is a public forum for open communication and collaboration. Don't stifle innovation just because parents can't raise their children properly. I know from experience that parents like to point the finger at everyone except when it goes in their general direction. "Their kids didn't do anything wrong, it's obviously the school's fault."
Once, I had a student with animal porn on his school-issued laptop. We found it when he brought it to our helpdesk for repairs. We called in his parents because they just had to see it. They couldn't believe their 15-year-old son would do such a thing. Well, when I spun that laptop around with a picture of a girl and a horse on-screen, all his mom could say was, "[student name], what the hell am I looking at?" And the lesson of this little story is this: I can't keep him from getting it on this SCHOOL computer. If a hormonal little teen wants porn, he/she will find a way to get it; no matter what their odd tastes may be. I can take the floppy drive away, the cd drive, disable USB, etc. All I've done is locked a machine down so tight, it's now good for nothing. No amount of bill and legislation promotion are going to keep things like this from getting to kids because the kids (and their rearing) are the source of the problem, not the content. And I'm not condoning the predators or saying they're not at fault, but if children were taught/disciplined to be more aware of what's out there, maybe they wouldn't be so "stupid" to put themselves in a situation to be preyed upon.
That's my two cents. Thanks.