My article last week on the House of Representatives approving DOPA by a lopsided 410-15 vote: http://news.com.com/Chat+rooms+could+face+expulsion/2100-1028_3-6099414.html As written, DOPA would cover more than chat rooms and MySpace.com; its category of "social networking sites" includes ones that permit public profiles. Some examples: The list could include Slashdot, which permits public profiles; Amazon, which allows author profiles and personal lists; and blogs like RedState.com that show public profiles. In addition, many media companies, such as News.com publisher CNET Networks, permit users to create profiles of favorite games and music. -Declan -------- Original Message -------- Subject: For Politech: Thoughts on DOPA Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 11:53:22 -0700 (PDT) From: David Burt <davidburt2000@private> To: declan@private Hi Declan. While I now work at Microsoft on areas unrelated to Internet access and filtering, I thought I'd provde my thoughts on DOPA considering my longtime involvement with CIPA, and filtering and public libraries generally, and because Im a former librarian, filtering activist, and filtering company spokesperson. I) Legality Recall that in the oral arguments on ALA v. U.S., the case that decided CIPA, the American Library Associations attorney conceded that it would likely be legal for a library to filter all chat rooms: QUESTION: Why isn't that selective access? I -- we don't want chat rooms. And it's not a total free-for-all, anybody wants to come in and talk. No, we don't want chat rooms. MR. SMITH: Maybe chat rooms are okay because the question is whether that's a content-based exclusion. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/02-361.pdf II) Technical issues Chat rooms are typically categorized by filtering companies altogether in one Chat category. Social networking sites are not as clearly categorized, often in categories like Personal Pages which block Geocities.com, Xanga.com and other sites as well. The filtering companies would need to fine tune Social Networking into a new category to target this more accurately, and they may already be doing this. (For example, Myspace.com is classified by SurfControl as Personals and Dating http://mtas.surfcontrol.com/mtas/MTAS.asp and by SmartFilter as Dating/Social http://www.smartfilterwhere.com III) Policy issues Blocking chat and social networking sites is probably already consistent with most existing school policies. My recollection from working with schools at N2H2 was that most schools were already blocking this stuff before CIPA, so there is likely little impact here. Libraries are different, since most libraries do allow users to access social networking and chat sites, though there are certainly some that exclude them. You have to have some concerns about the impact this would have on some teens that are struggling with highly personal problems, and using these sites as an outlet. Many teens dont feel comfortable talking with peers, school counselors, etc. about a lot of issues, such as sexuality, drug use, abuse, etc., and these websites are likely the only outlet many of these kids have to discuss some of this stuff. David Burt _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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