goblin cartoons

Maya of Mobilize.org wrote me and asked to spread the word about fighting DOPA. Here’s what she said:

Mobilize.org is launching a new campaign in response to Congress’ attempt to
censor the communication of our generation. We have created the action alert
below and built a website, www.mobilize.org/SOS. We are hoping to get as
much grassroots action as possible around this important issue, especially
from the online community.

Breaking News:

Legislation introduced this week will ban social networking, even sites used
for educational and professional opportunities. What’s next? HR5319 will
censor the communication of our generation and tell us who we can talk to,
when and how. Tell Congress that social networking is a movement that we
built, a movement that we are going to fight for.

Visit www.mobilize.org/SOS, take action, tell your friends and get mad.

—

The bill blocks the use of these sites in public libraries, which is for
many, the only access that they have to a computer. Our hope is to be able
to amend the bill to take these facts into consideration. We agree that
there need to be safeguards put in place for “sexual predators” and any of
other crimes that might occur because of the accessibility of information on
these sites, but to ban them in schools (including using school computers
afterschool) and public libraries, is for many - banning social networking.

Thanks, Maya, for letting me know about this! This is a stupid bill, folks. Let’s fight it as tenaciously as we can.

In the comments of my last post, Iris made a suggestion based on DOPA’s dope logic. Over in her own blog, she’s taken the idea and run with it. The result is quite amusing. Go give it a read.

Great news! Our well-paid politicians in Washington have introduced a bill into Congress, with the oh-so-appropriate acronym of DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act). The law would require any schools and libraries that receive federal E-Rate money to block any social networking sites from their computers.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Wait a goshdarn minute! This sounds somewhat brainless and misdirected!” And you’d be wrong. It’s a whole lot of brainless and misdirected. Here are just a few reasons why:

1) The text of the bill defines “social network site” so broadly, it would include not just MySpace, Friendster and FaceBook but forums for cancer information, mental health, and the discussion of tabletop role-playing games.

2) The bill won’t actually delete online predators, or any other kind of predators. It will only keep people of all ages from accessing social internet sites at schools and libraries. At internet caf?s? Nothing. At home? Nada.

3) Is there any easy way to set filters to block any and all social network sites? I don’t know of any. Would schools and libraries really have to enter the addresses for each and every site prohibited by the law in order to comply?

4) Does anyone really believe that this law would keep kids or predators from being on the same social network sites?

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the back, hammering nails into my nose.

Meanwhile, on the internet social networking front, Meredith Farkas has written the most thorough look at libraries and social network sites I’ve seen in one blog post, and it should be required reading for any and all librarians who have anything to do with the internet and/or anyone under the age of 30.

See, here’s the thing: sites like MySpace or FaceBook may be fads (or they may not be), but the internet is inherently social, and it’s not going away anytime soon. It’s not like TV, it’s not like radio, it’s not like telephones. Librarians and teachers and politicians and parents have to stop treating it like it’s any of those. This isn’t about being cool or hip or intoxicated on technology, this is about understanding how human beings interact with each other. Legislation like DOPA just shows how utterly clueless people can be about both technology and human interaction.

One of the downsides of living in Kansas is the bad press the state usually gets. People associate Kansas with Intelligent Design and Fred Phelps more often than with, say, Kathleen Sebelius.

So, just to further dispel the image that Kansas is a state of backwards, closed-minded fundementalists, I present a blog post by the State Librarian of Kansas on censorship that makes me proud to be a librarian and a Kansan.

What’s my position on filtering websites? Let me answer that question with…

…a naked man:

“Will someone please think of the children?”