Illinois Bill Would Ban Social Networking Sites 293
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.
think of the children! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:think of the children! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:think of the children! (Score:3, Insightful)
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
First, define "social networking". (Score:5, Insightful)
By my reckoning, this leaves you with FTP sites that have no upload facility, the few remaining Gopher servers, and maybe the local taxi cab company.
Speech (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
*scratches head* (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Proposal to ban People (Score:4, Insightful)
(Global proposition 999)
People are responsible for the most dangerous and irresponsible acts that can be committed against other people. I propose we ban "people" all together. Stop repeating a history of mistakes and destroy the worlds problems in one fell swoop. End people. They rape, torture, kill without regard for themselves or others. All over the world people are forced to jail people in order to protect themselves, yet the problems continue. They have children, abuse the children, who intern have more children with no end of abuse in site. Their is no way to ensure a person will never mistreat another person unless all people are banned from existence.
So in conclusion, the only way to provide a safe loving environment for the future of our world is... the immediate and complete removal of all people from the face of the earth. Please support proposition 999 for a people free planet. "Get rid of the people, get rid of the problems."
(Yes I've been drinking.)
No social network... no job networking either? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about people (for example some small bands) who maintain their websites through services such as MySpace, because they can't get, afford, or know how to do the coding to set up a website of their own?
Or users of services like Facebook, where a school organization or club may be hosted mostly or entirely on the service, because the tools are extremely convenient to use and FREE? All of a sudden, those tools become off limits - neither club officers nor the members can communicate until an alternate (and probably more expensive) method is set up.
Someone is being paid way too much money to come up with these ridiculous bills.
A case study in sucky Internet regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
The bill goes on to define the key terminology it uses: administrative unit, computer, public library, school, and school board.
All well and good? Well, they never define what constitutes a "social networking website"! Which of these do you think would qualify: Slashdot? Reddit? Digg? Evite? Delicious? Blogger? We could debate this to death. (In fact, it probably is being debated at some Web 2.0 conference.) Without a clear definition of the most crucial term in the bill, how are schools supposed to know how to enforce it? How are the rest of us supposed to know what's allowed and what's not?
If a legislator took the effort to become knowledgable about the Internet, understand how it operates, and then proposed some carefully-crafted regulation, I wouldn't get so emotionally angry about it. Instead we get Ted Stevens' rant about tubes, and crap like this, because people don't take the time to understand what they're talking about. We should expect more out of our elected officials. They wield significant power, and it's ridiculous that they choose to use it without thinking.
Ryan
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that I'd still say this bill is absolutely ridiculous. A better solution would be implementing blocks on a few clearly labeled computers, or allow librarians to use their judgment to give serious users preference over frivolous users if necessary. For some reason I doubt it will pass anyway.
Yes, it would be. (Score:2, Insightful)
There's probably no sane way to detect "social networking" features based on a pages content, so the only possibly way to block them would be a gigantic black list. Any who exactly is going to maintain that? The state of Illinois? I don't think so. If they try it, I wish them much luck in compiling their list of every social networking site on "that intarweb thingy."
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
I work for a public library and, yes, we are perfectly capable of handling this without crazy legislation being shoved down our throats by clueless politicians. The simple solution is to reserve a portion of our computers for non-recreational use and locate them far enough away from the ones that noisy teens frequent so that people can get real work done in peace and quite.
Wow, that was simple! We even managed to come up with that all on our own, without any help from Big Brother. We librarians are might smart and resourceful people, let me tell you.
Should be up to the librarian (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Posting on Slashdot?
Why shouldn`t kids use Myspace? Maybe we should get rid of all Fiction books as well - I mean they`re
not for legitimate research.
Libraries are for everyone - don`t be such a snob.
Where did "freedom of speech" enter into it. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you desperately need to use MySpace then go across the street and pay $1 an hour in the cybercaf like everybody else.
Terminological confusion. (Score:3, Insightful)
Example of poorly implemented legislation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, it's not. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's most likely intended to give the librarian the authority to tell someone who is using the library computers to surf myspace.com to get off the computer and let someone waiting to do their homework have it.
We are talking about libraries, after all...
Re:Think of the Geeks! (Score:5, Insightful)
You've just nailed (accidentally or not) what I see as the second biggest problem here (after the blatant unconstitutionality of the proposed legislation)...
What does count as a "social networking" site? Would SlashDot count? Would most blogs that allow comment posting? Would USENET, for that matter? The full text of the bill basically sounds like it violates Free (online) Assembly rather than Free Speech.
The concept of "social networking", as used here, really has no meaning except by example. When you outlaw meaningless ideas, you open the door for overly aggressive AGs and DAs to start creatively interpreting the law to apply in areas not even the most paranoid of the beanie-wearing crowd could have predicted. Case in point, the DOJ (in)famously held a series of lectures on how to apply the patriot act and subsequent antiterrorism legislation to your friendly neighborhood weed dealer. Riiiiiiiight, protection from Osama.
But, but, but... Think of the children!
But (Score:4, Insightful)
And to the extent that, in good slashdot tradition, I didn't read the article, this statement should be intrepeted as broader than this specific instance. I.e. I don't know what the actual suggested "consequence" of violation would be, so MMMV here.
Re:First, define "social networking". (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where did "freedom of speech" enter into it. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about holding the opinion that my time on MySpace is worth just as much as your time on Google? I'm not a big MySpace user, but you are putting values to the way people spend their time. If your community feels that people shouldn't use library computers to get on MySpace, then campaign to make it a policy of your local library, but don't support some bill that will make it a requirement of every library. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean there isn't some community that only uses their libraries to access MySpace.
Ban totally? (Score:3, Insightful)
We can debate all day long about letting children have access to this stuff when a parent isnt around, but removing it from adults as well, who pay for the library with their taxes? Ummm something is a miss here.
Poorly written law = bad law!! (Score:3, Insightful)
better altenative (Score:4, Insightful)
Not helping emo kids whine about their girlfriends.
Emo kids, whining, and girl friends is mostly what literature (i.e., the stuff that belongs in libraries) is mostly all about. Think of MySpace as interactive, participatory fiction.
Re:Where did "freedom of speech" enter into it. (Score:2, Insightful)
They just want to ban Myspace.com (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to judge the social or moral "worth" of a site like MySpace.com, but I will give the opinion that there is a place for access to such sites, and schools or libraries may not be that place. Providing free access to the Internet doesn't necessarily imply unrestricted access.
Constitutionality and feasibility (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, in my opinion the librarians do a pretty darned good job balancing such issues, and I hate to take any control out of their hands. Furthermore, there is no "save the children" aspect to blocking social networking for adults, which seems decisively included. (Unless you're taking the "no anonymous internet access" route, which isn't realistic)
On the other hand, MySpace has traditionally shown a pretty flagrant disregard for keeping people safe from predators, and the age where you can type is definitely younger than the age where you can really have an adult understanding of someone lying repeatedly and systematically to scam you into a predation situation that you don't understand, especially if all the adults you have met have been relatively friendly. So I WANT my child's school to block MySpace, at least at younger ages. Or I want them to send me home a transcript of my student's messages there. (Frankly, I think there's definitely a whitelist age, followed by a blacklist age, followed by relatively open access. I'm not going to get into the argument about what these ages are, though - which I'm sure would vary wildly from person to person.
Obviously this legislation is nothing but lawsuit fodder if it doesn't carefully define a social networking site. So it's terrible legislation until it does that. And once it does, you'll have a devilish problem of policing the smaller ones. Actually maybe a harder problem than just monitoring all the communications on MySpace, because at least then you'd know where it was.
So I guess overall I'm in favor of this legislation if substantially watered down to something like:
The librarians are required to either provide guardians with transcripts or block access by minors to sites where the users can privately message each other and which have been shown to have a strong disregard for the protection of minors.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
The public computers in a public library exist for the public to use. The 15-yeard old emo kid is a member of public just as much as you are; his use of the computer to whine about his girlfriend online is every bit as legitimate as your research. There is no reason whatsoever why your definition of legitimate use or your needs should take precedence over anyone else's when allocating public resources.
Besides, didn't you just use whatever computer you posted from to post a whine to a social networking site ? If it was a public computer, you're a hypocrite; if it was your personal computer, why do you not use it to do your research instead of using the library's machine ?
IAAL - I Am A Librarian. And sick and tired of dealing with people who think their convenience takes precedence over everyone else's. And even more sick and tired of people who think everyone but them and the people they know personally are an anonymous mass of "emo kids", "hooligans", "niggers", or $DERAGATORY_TERM, and can and in fact should therefore be treated as second-class people who can be given service once the Real People are done with their Important Business.
Guess what: the emo kid couldn't care less about your research, so why shouldn't I ban you from the computer for his benefit instead ?
Re:think of the children! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm saying that in a rich-ass country like the US, we could do a little something for people who weren't born with rich parents or maybe grew up with no parents at all. I'm saying that maybe we can do a little better than letting everybody shit for themselves. Civilization isn't supposed to be like the jungle, jackoff.