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)
Think of the Geeks! (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
I believe what they are really doing here... (Score:2, Interesting)
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No, it's not. (Score:4, Interesting)
Secondly, even if there was a definitive definition of social networking, just how on earth would you be able to block all sites that fit that profile? A gigantic black list? I'm happen to be the network admin for a small Illinois library, so if this becomes law, I'm one of the people who's going to have to deal with the mess. I'd be very interested in knowing exactly how the heck Senator Murphy thinks this would work. My guess is that he really has no idea what he's talking about, but thought that this would play well with the "think of the children" crowd.
Re:No, it's not. (Score:5, Funny)
And that would be porn, with a few slides of usable content.
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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:No, it's not. (Score:5, Informative)
It is not "universal" - it only applies to schhols and libraries - but it is mandatory blocking.
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.
Librarians already have the authority to do that.
The Fine Article has a link to the text of the bill. This bill explicitly says libraries and schools " MUST PROHIBIT access to social networking websites on all computers made available to the public / students". It contains enforcement provisions by which the Attorney General or any random idiot citizen of the State may initiate a court action if they are personally "not satisfied" with the school or library.
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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
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There are plenty of safe ways to do that, lots of anonymising services for a few dollars a month, sited overseas if you're paranoid (if you're a pedo online, you should be).
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Re:think of the children! (Score:4, Informative)
Regardless, the current tests for applicability of the 1st Amendment would not find anything wrong with the law being proposed.
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Re:think of the children! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, for one thing, we pay for public libraries. They are meant to provide a service for us. And if enough people are using public library computers to visit social sites, then clearly that's a service for which there is demand. As someone who's on the board of a foundation that's trying to get computers into the hands of people who can't afford them, I can tell you with certainty that there are people out there who don't have the money to buy a computer or pay for broadband. If a social site is valuable enough for YOU to use then it's of value to them as well. And, believe it or not, we build public libraries for poor people to use, too.
Your argument is like saying that if people are requesting that the library carry a certain book or magazine, the answer is that they should just go out and buy the book themselves. That sort of defeats the purpose of public libraries, though, no?
I guess no matter how affluent the United States gets, there will always be people who think that poor people shouldn't get things like access to health care, access to public libraries, access to government. It's a pretty fucked up way to think.
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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.
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And regardless, they're not impinging on your "right" to use myspace, they're just saying you can't do it at a public library. Since i think that public libr
Re:think of the children! (Score:5, Informative)
States can have laws that ratchet freedom further, but they can't decrease your rights any more than the federal government Constitutionally is able to.
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Still, one may wonder why only the first amendment contains the words "Congress shall make no law
Federal vs. state (Score:4, Informative)
That idea did get turned upside down less than a hundred years after the Constitution was ratified.
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Interesting. I might check that out some time.
I had the idea that the founders might grant the states more power than the federal government because if you don't like what's going on in one state, you can still move to another (or, today, just drive to another to avoid some of the blue laws), without leaving the country (which would, at that time,
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Of course, the Federal Government is able to do exactly that, as long as there's children, terrorism, or drugs involved.
Seriously - take a look at our Constitution someday and figure out how many of those amendments are actually paid attention to. Out of the first ten Amendments I count five that are unambiguously violated (2, 4, 5, 6, 8) and four that are a
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And a whining voice was heard from offstage, cursing and screaming:
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Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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.
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Compared to arbitrary and inconsistent fines levied against libraries by local police? Or do you mean broad handed banning of anything remotely "social networking" like say wikipedia because some DA is an attention whore and idiot?
Go find some fascists paradise to live in and leave those of us who don't want big brother watching us crap alone. God knows that 99.9% per
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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.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a public library, and this is exactly what we do now. Every day when school gets out, we're inundated with junior high kids coming in to monopolize our computers for their daily MySpace, RuneScape, and AIM fix. The solution that we've come up with is to reserve one third of our computers for "non recreational use." Specifically, this means no social networking sites, recreational IM, MMORPGs, or games of any kind. Basically, it's at the discretion of the staff to determine when this policy is being violated, and to discus it with the patron.
In short, we've already solved this problem without any help from our meddling "representatives" in Springfield. Same goes for porn. We don't filter our Internet access, but we do reserve the right to ask people to avoid sites that include explicit content, because the computers are all in a publicly viewable area. This is part of our own Internet Use Agreement, not some piece of legislation dreamed up by Senators with nothing better to do. In other words, we're perfectly capable of handling most of the perceived problems with public access computers without any interference from the government.
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There is no reason to expect something useful or educational from a public library.
People who can't afford computers do not deserve to use them.
I couldn't agree with what you're saying more!!!!
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Good for him. Have you been to the library lately? Just try to get some work done on a computer there during the first few hours after school lets out. Every computer is some punk 15 year old on MySpace. Let's get library computers doing what they should be doing: helping people with legitimate research. Not helping emo kids whine about their girlfriends.
Good point. However, shouldn't this be at the library's discretion rather than a state law? That is, libraries that feel that this is a problem can set up a proxy locally that bans access to myspace, and libraries where this isn't a problem (because they are too far away from a school) wouldn't need to.
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Good point. However, shouldn't this be at the library's discretion rather than a state law? That is, libraries that feel that this is a problem can set up a proxy locally that bans access to myspace, and libraries where this isn't a problem (because they are too far away from a school) wouldn't need to.
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 mig
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Until some latchkey kid doesn't get to play games with his friends after school decides to whine about the unoccupied bank of computers and convinces his parents to sue: after all, there's no law requiring you to keep that bank free, so you shouldn't put any restrictions.. right?
It's the same thing with cigarette laws. It ends up being an all-or-nothing propositon because people make a stink if there aren't any laws and a restaurant wants to be non-smoking, so the legislature steps in
"at the library's discretion..." (Score:2)
If that's the feds then they should get to decide.
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.
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I agree with you that it is in society's best interest to get as few people wasting their lives on myspace as possible. Just the electricity spent to power the HTTP requests is a tragic waste that we should seek to minimize. But there are more effective techniques than an Illinois state statute of dubious constitutionalit
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.
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The title of this submission is incredibly misleading too, btw. Nothing is being banned here.
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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.
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Not helping emo kids whine about their girlfriends.
Now I know you're making this up. Emo kids don't have girlfriends!
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Jesus, can people stop inventing these crazy three letter words?
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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 o
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.
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How you would define "social networking" has no bearing on what the law says or how courts would interpret it.
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Speech (Score:3, Insightful)
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Do you realise that anything you post to myspace,facebook etc. means that you have licenced them to distribute it in any way they wish.
They own your information. If they think your blog entries might make a nice book they can print it, maybe they like a photo you made they can sell it to a newspaper.
The people don't control this information.
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*scratches head* (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:*scratches head* (Score:4, Informative)
Plenty, if they read newspapers. Here's some trolling by Combs, published in my local paper.
http://www.cagle.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons
How would _you_ mod that as a slashdot moderator? Me: -1 Troll, -1 Flamebait -1 Stupid (if only) -1 overrated (so it can't be taken away in metamoderation).
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BMO
R-27, Palatine (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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I think politics in general is an employer of last resort. Like the army and the police.
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Or they are people who actually want to impact lives, and realize that the majority of governing in general is not done at the federal level.
Or want to be involved in government, but don't want to get into the high-profile grind of federal office where they will spend most of their time raising money to get themselves re-elected.
Or maybe want to stay near home and impact the communities whe
Slightly off-topic, but I have to ask... (Score:2)
what is the difference between "banning" a website and "censoring" website (ie. the www)?
It seems the banning is used to bring about positive connotations while, censoring is used to bring about negative ones, but they are essentially the same.
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Which was Luke Skywalker again?
W
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.)
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flamebait headline (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
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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
Would be interesting from sysadmin point-of-view (Score:2)
I'd love for this bill to become law; so we have a simple and effective method to ban such sites. Inter
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
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As the network administrator for an Illinois public library, I agree that this would indeed be a implementation nightmare (and that's not even taking into account the major ethical dilemma that such censorship presents for librarians). Exactly how does Senator Murphy propose that this be implemented if it becomes law?
Well, there's all these tubes, see? They're just like pipes, right? So there must be spigots. You just have to find the right ones and turn them counterclockwise.
Should be up to the librarian (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for it (Score:2)
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So ? You're not being charged for the use of the library, even though you may (or may not) be paying for it with your taxes.
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Terminological confusion. (Score:3, Insightful)
Example of poorly implemented legislation (Score:3, Insightful)
Contact information (Score:3, Informative)
Who? And Why? (Score:2, Funny)
Censorship, smenshorship (Score:3, Informative)
It's NOT the job of the government to give out free internet access as though it were an "inalienable right." If you want to go to those sites, and the library doesn't give you that permission, then go buy a computer and do it on your own.
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.
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historically, libraries have been "download" only. you could borrow books, listen to tapes, watch videos, etc. but libraries didn't provide you the means to mail letters, make telephone calls, or publish texts. although computers in libraries isn't all that new, the ability to do more than look up information is.
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Poorly written law = bad law!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama will smack him down (Score:2)
Obama's Social Network [digg.com]
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.