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Deleting Online Predators Act - R.I.P.

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jan 05, 2007 04:03 PM
from the myspace-just-a-little-bit-safer dept.
Government Education Politics
elearning 2.0 writes "It looks like the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has died a slow death. DOPA was proposed during the height of last year's moral panic around the issue of child safety and sites like MySpace. The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries which receive federal IT funding — therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space."
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[+] Illinois Bill Would Ban Social Networking Sites 293 comments
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.
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  • Destroying Terroristic Buzzwords Act (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2007, @04:05PM (#17480122)
    e-learning 2.0 space

    In any just society, whoever wrote that would swing next to Saddam, Idi Amin, and the guy who invented clamshell packaging.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LWATCDR (28044)
      Along with all producers of "Reality" TV show?
    • Thank you, AC, for saving me from having to type that in, cause it is what I was thinking when I clicked the link.

        • >"We were the first to thermoform polycarbonate (PCEE); we invented the locking "clamshell" package and continue to serve up unique, custom solutions to your packaging needs."

          Unless your needs happen to include having your customers actually get at your product without serious injury and/or bloodloss. These people should die the death of a thousand thermoform polycarbonate cuts, preferably administered by Sadam's executioners.

  • But... (Score:2, Informative)

    by r3st2 (987153)
    Most schools already have those kind of sites banned.
    • I was going to say the same thing. It's a pity, because a lot of teachers would use social networking sites if they could do so from work. I'm a network technician for a school district, and half of my contacts on Facebook are students at the schools I work frequently.
    • But they're not banned hard enough.

    • Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lukas84 (912874) on Friday January 05 2007, @06:45PM (#17482700) Homepage
      Yeah. Like that is going to accomplish much.

      They'll find other ways to waste time.

      The problem is that the whole approach is wrong. If you want to prevent Students surfing on Myspace using School Equipment, make sure they have something to lose. But our society is no longer able to hand out a "YOU SUCK, GET TO WORK DAMMIT" to children and students who don't do their job right.

      You can't prevent by banning every distraction they find - you have to motivate them by making sure there are consequences when you're bad at school. Encouraging at first, but if you're no good, you get disqualified and can start flipping burgers. No need to waste money on people who don't try to learn.

      And the whole predator perspective is just stupid. Honestly. You can't rape or harass people over the internet. You can't damage them.
  • "e-learning 2.0"? Is this a subset of Web 2.0?

  • WTF? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2007, @04:08PM (#17480178)
    therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space

    Banning MySpace is undermining much of the pioneering work of what?

    I must be missing something.

    • Banning MySpace is undermining much of the pioneering work of what?

      I must be missing something.

      It would have banned, by particular feature sets, social networking sites. MySpace, of course, is one of the more well-known ones that would have been affected, but there is a lot more to social networking than MySpace, and there are certainly applications of similar technology that have been applied in education that would have been banned by the act.

    • If I recall correctly, the definition of social networking sites used in the act caused it to include an absurd variety of sites, including most bug tracking sites, Slashdot, Wikipedia and all other wikis, nearly all forums, many blog sites, some mainstream news sites, Amazon, Yahoo, and so on.

      In essence, any site which is commercially operated, and allows users to create profiles or web pages and communicate with other users, would be restricted in schools and libraries. In addition, any site allowing re

    • I dunno, I've seen some very pioneering typography on MySpace.

  • Yikes (Score:3, Funny)

    by finkployd (12902) on Friday January 05 2007, @04:08PM (#17480182) Homepage
    pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space

    I was mildly interested until that. Then my "pretentious, meaningless buzzword" alarm went off.

    I hope they are at least leveraging their e-synergies and fully embracing AJAX and SOAP in that 2.0 space.

    Finkployd

    • Re:Yikes (Score:4, Funny)

      by MBGMorden (803437) on Friday January 05 2007, @04:58PM (#17481106)
      What's worse: my boss (like many I'm sure) actually falls for the buzzword of the week.

      We'll bring in one group doing demo or webex of some software product, and they'll claim that their product does "Super hyper-relative process optimization". It'll be some common-sense obvious crap that they decided to tag that name onto.

      The bad part comes when Vendor #2 comes in and demo's their product. He'll (with a straight and shockingly confident face) raise his hand in the middle and ask "Does this support Super hyper-relative process optimization?". When they have no idea what he's talking about he's already looking at me like "OMG. They don't even do super hyper-relative process optimization. Why did you even let these people in the door?". About this time I'm ready to just shake my head in embarrassment.

  • It will be back (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kaufmanmoore (930593) on Friday January 05 2007, @04:10PM (#17480214)
    We will see it again just in time for the 2008 campaign cause theres nothing like flashing the mug shots of creepy old men across the tv with ominous music while stating that ur opponent supports child predators.

      • I doubt it. At this point, there would be no real political mileage in doing so.

        If the dems did, the reps could trade barbs with them about Barney Frank, ad nauseum. It was pressure from the conservatives, not the liberals, that caused Foley to resign. He is gone, the dems took congress, mission accomplished.

        Furthermore, raising the issue will almost always segue into societal issues concerning homosexuality, which neither side really wants to address.

  • Not only is elearning 2.0 a really poor attempt at piggybacking the Web 2.0 buzzword trend, the submitter seems to have some sort of investment in it as well (look at the name). E-learning 2.0 seems to be teaching using so-called Web 2.0 sites and tools, which is a good concept, but not one that needs its own buzzword. Why not just call it online learning or online social education, as those are more descriptive? Let's lay off the stupid buzzwords (Web 2.0, E-Learning 2.0, etc).

  • WTF is "e-learning 2.0 space"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheWoozle (984500) on Friday January 05 2007, @04:14PM (#17480280)
    WARNING: You have exceeded your buzzword quota for the day. Any future buzzword emissions will result in fines from the EPA.

  • huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by User 956 (568564) on Friday January 05 2007, @04:17PM (#17480348) Homepage
    It looks like the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has died a slow death. DOPA was proposed during the height of last year's moral panic around the issue of child safety

    What do you mean "last year's" panic about child safety? The whole "child safety" cliche is every politician's trump card. I don't think it went out of style when we began 2007.
      • Pretty much each year sees one of these become a "major" story that represents "an urgent new danger to children". In reality nothing changes, but society is always coming back to these. Somebody that has studied sociology probably knows more about this phenomenon.

        Or somebody that has studied history:

        "But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a

  • Oh well, back to the parents then... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pandrijeczko (588093) on Friday January 05 2007, @04:17PM (#17480354)
    ...who are going to have to unvelcro themselves from their armchairs in front of their HDTVs and actually go and spend some time educating and spending time with their kids in order to show them how to behave responsibly - both online and offline.

    Parents need to start financing their own kids rather than expecting the rest of us to pay for them - via taxes for the salaries of politicians to make this unnecessary rubbish up.

    • I agree the parents need to get off their lazy asses, but according to the article "The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries"... that says nothing about the kids homelife, 25 years ago my parents didnt go with me to the library... the librarys also didnt have computers
      • Sorry, but it *ALL* begins at home...

        The role of teachers and schools is to educate kids and reinforce the knowledge of right and wrong that should be being taught by the parents in the first place.

        I do a lot of work fixing PCs for friends and family, especially when the PCs have been trashed by the kids accidentally downloading viruses from the Internet - yes, if they're paying for my services (not always) then they're probably from fairly well-off respectable families anyway; but the fact is I'm amaze

        • yes, it does all begin at home, but there are bad elements out there that try and pry your darling away from your upbringing.
          That being said some things do not belong in school... MySpace is one of them
      • But then they would only have ONE CAR!

        You say that sarcastically, but in much of the states it is impossible to hold a job without a car, even if you're just working part time to allow time for your children. Companies rarely provide carpool vans, the bus system is a joke in most cities, and few subways exist beyond the eastcoast. Out here on the westcoast trains are ridiculously expensive, and not viable options for daily transportation (even with the daily commuter discounts). One of my college near-mini

  • Although I'm strongly in favor of deleting sexual predators- either the online or offline type, DOPA just didn't do the job that it was purported to do.

    The folowing is stolen from wikipedia ( and abridged slightly ):
    ... The Youth Internet Safety Survey from the University of New Hampshire... found two cases of rape/sexual assault through Internet solicitation in its two surveys covering 3,001 children ages 10 to 17. According to the FBI's criminal victimization tables' national rate for sexual assault,

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chris Burke (6130)
      Just more data that shows that this and just about every similar measure whether in cyberspace or meatspace is ignoring the fundamental problem:

      Children are vastly more likely to be victimized by someone they know than by a random stranger online or otherwise. Your typical sexual predator does not search for victims online, they look for victims down the hall.

      All of this hand-wringing and legislating is just a way to avoid recoginizing this admittedly sad and disturbing fact.

        • If it had been you, that was raped at a very young age, I am sure you would have appreciated adults making sure you were safe from predators.

          Yes, I would have, if they had done so by trying to address the real problem, which is children abused by family, friends, and authorities instead of something useless like banning MySpace in libraries (which won't stop kids from using it). Where is your empathy for those children, the much larger group of children?

          Think of the children is not an empty phrase just bec

    • However, children ages 10 to 17 report more harassment and bullying online -- largely from their peers, not strangers.

      How do you harass someone online?

      I mean, really. If you don't like talking to someone, there's a variety of filter possibilities in every fucking IM/IRC software, and in every web2.0ish application.

      And last time i checked, it was also impossible to rape someone over the internet. Well. If it really was a series of tubes, and you listened to all the spam.. Maybe.

  • How is myspace educational? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nganju (821034) on Friday January 05 2007, @04:29PM (#17480568)

    Aside from the obvious problems with the sentence "pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space", how does banning myspace et. al. prevent learning? Are teachers seriously encouraging kids to get on myspace during class time for educational purposes?

    I don't see anything wrong with banning social network sites inside school libraries. Wikipedia, Nasa, etc. are legitimate learning sites, I don't see how myspace compares to these.

    • Aside from the obvious problems with the sentence "pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space", how does banning myspace et. al. prevent learning? Are teachers seriously encouraging kids to get on myspace during class time for educational purposes?

      No, probably not on MySpace, per se. OTOH, yes, social networking websites and internet chat rooms are used for educational purposes, and the proposed law covered "commercial social networking websites" and "internet chat rooms", generally

    • People are also overlooking the fact that it did not just apply to schools or school libraries, but also to any library that wanted to receive its federal technology funding, and it's so broadly written as to require age checks and parental permission for kids to access things like slashdot or wikipedia or, hell, parts of Yahoo.

      So the end result would be your public librarian (that's me) having to age check everyone who looked under the age of 25 and check for parent permission for them to use the Internet.
    • There are plenty of legitimate educational uses for sites like MySpace (not necessarily MS itself, but it's not the only thing that would have been banned).

      A few possibilities:

      • Connecting your students with students in other states or countries studying the same thing, to look at the issue from many perspectives.
      • Keeping students engaged in learning while they're at home, where they can post questions about the homework or have side discussions about things brought up in class.
      • Giving students a place to
      • And we all know how informative Slashdot is.
        Where would they get their truly important news? From a news source?!?! HA!
  • Why can't there be a law like this... If you use any media to attempt to meet a minor for nefarious purposes, then you are guilty of gross criminal indecency. Leave it to the courts to decide what nefarious means, it's a good litmus test. hun? why not. The all the teachers and people doing good work have no reason to get screwed over, and the pedophiles can be put in jail. "oh Mr. Convict, Did we mention Jim was a pedophile?" Have fun in general population. You'll get everything you deserve.

  • Absolute Bullshit (Score:3)

    by gnu-sucks (561404) on Friday January 05 2007, @05:48PM (#17481938) Homepage Journal
    The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries which receive federal IT funding -- therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space.

    Every time I walk into the library at my university, I have to actually force some myspace addict off the computer so I can write a paper or do actual research. The school's library has over 300 computers, and there are additional computer labs on campus too.

    "undermining"!?!? What the FUCK! Would legislation to block large distractions and bandwidth wasting really "undermine" anyone's "pioneering" work on a school's IT policy and/or hardware/software?

    Freespeech sure - if you really need to use myspace for school, ask your "pioneering" IT staff for special access.

    While we're at it, can we please block hotmail and ebay? Most schools provide a local email account for students anyway...

    So do I have this thing totally wrong? Or am I right in believing that there are some educators out there that believe government-funded schools shouldn't stop students from wasting their bandwidth? Pioneering!?!? WTF!

    • Or am I right in believing that there are some educators out there that believe government-funded schools shouldn't stop students from wasting their bandwidth?

      It depends on where we are talking about. For children--that is, definitely K-8 and probably even all the way through high school--it should be the school's prerogative as to what they filter or not. In other words, they should absolutely have the right to determine what "wasting their bandwidth" means.

      The example you give, being in a university

  • e-learning 2.0 space (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Acy James Stapp (1005) on Friday January 05 2007, @05:54PM (#17482044)
    I'd like to see you say that to my face, buddy. I'll pop you right in the jaw. We speak English in these parts.

  • No Brainer. (Score:3)

    by BaldingByMicrosoft (585534) on Friday January 05 2007, @06:36PM (#17482624)
    Encouraging peer communication and collaboration in a learning environment? Good.

    Using the fetid cesspool of MySpace, et al to accomplish it? Silly, if not completely irresponsible.

    We upgraded our filtering device last summer, with the main impetus being effective blocking of MySpace. This is for several K-12 school districts. Why the hell would you even consider MySpace for education, when there's Moodle and other products you could choose?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rubycodez (864176)
      I seriously doubt blocking myspace at libraries and schools will make any dent in the number of teens using it, and any rule about proxies is just a challenge
      • I seriously doubt blocking myspace at libraries and schools will make any dent in the number of teens using it

        I suggest taking off and nuking its servers from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
      • beg to differ, given a competent admin it can be made sufficiently difficult to keep any student from wanting to go to any site you want. It just so happens that in my experience, HS network admins are barely competent enough to keep the routers up let alone filter anything. Most I know are either IT wannabes who couldn't hack it in a corporate environment, some poor SOB who was a math teacher and got all the responsibility pushed on them, or a person with illusions of grandeur after they set up their hom
    • The fact is, adding another Federal Law for schools to be in compliance with uses up vast amount of resources. It is one thing if the school IT guy blocks myspace on the school network... it is another thing for it to be a federal law, with greatly adds to the responsiblities, oversight, and beurocratic aparatus involved in implementing it.
    • I seriously doubt banning MySpace in schools would hamper learning.


      Yes, and if the law would have applied only to MySpace, that might be relevant. In the real world, the proposed language applied more generally to restrict access to "commercial social networking websites" and "internet chat rooms", which are a rather broader class of websites than just MySpace.
    • And I seriously doubt I'd care if DOPA only affected schools or MySpace, but it doesn't. It affects public libraries and a LOT of sites you wouldn't think of immediately. It's a crappy, very broad piece of legislation. Wouldn't it bug you if your kid couldn't use Wikipedia at the public library because it counted as a social networking site?
    • Curiosity got the better of me and I clicked on the second link to find out if perhaps I am doing "e-learning 2.0" without even knowing it or getting buzzword credit for it. Early in the article I discovered the word "edublogosphere", which is pretty much my new favorite word ever.

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