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Deleting Online Predators Act - R.I.P.

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jan 05, 2007 05:03 PM
from the myspace-just-a-little-bit-safer dept.
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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  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2007, @05:05PM (#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)

      Along with all producers of "Reality" TV show?
        • >"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)

    Most schools already have those kind of sites banned.
    • Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lukas84 (912874) on Friday January 05 2007, @07:45PM (#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, @05:08PM (#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.
  • Yikes (Score:3, Funny)

    by finkployd (12902) on Friday January 05 2007, @05:08PM (#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, @05:58PM (#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, @05:10PM (#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.
  • 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).
  • by TheWoozle (984500) on Friday January 05 2007, @05:14PM (#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, @05:17PM (#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.
  • by pandrijeczko (588093) on Friday January 05 2007, @05:17PM (#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
  • 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)

      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.
  • by nganju (821034) on Friday January 05 2007, @05:29PM (#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.
  • by gnu-sucks (561404) on Friday January 05 2007, @06:48PM (#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!
  • by Acy James Stapp (1005) on Friday January 05 2007, @06:54PM (#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.
  • by BaldingByMicrosoft (585534) on Friday January 05 2007, @07:36PM (#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)

      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.