I'm sure that many of you have seen the rash of news media reports this year discussing the use of MySpace by online predators to contact young children, and calling on the government to "do something" about it. While this certainly does happen, I don't know how widespread the problem is, and I suspect the news media has overhyped it because it makes for dramatic television. The U.S. House responded on July 28th, 2006 by passing the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), by a landslide margin (410-15). I find this legislation to be deeply troubling, and that is why I am posting this bulletin.

There are many ways that Congress could have decided to respond to the problem of online predators. The most obvious approach is to seek to educate children and their parents about the danger of interacting with strangers online, in exactly the same way that we educate them about the danger of interacting with strangers in real life. DOPA creates the appearance of attempting to do this by directing the Federal Trade Commission to establish a website with this sort of information on it, but its primary purpose is different. DOPA's primary purpose is to make it illegal for any school or library which receives federal funding (about 2/3rds of them) to allow people under the age of 18 to use any website that enables users to create a personal profile, keep an online journal, chat with friends, or otherwise express themselves.

The United States Constitution protects certain fundamental human rights. Foremost
among these are the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of association. We protect these two rights in particular because they are prerequisites to democracy. The ability to vote for the representative of your choosing requires an environment in which you can consider and discuss the options freely. It is obvious that much of our democratic discourse has moved online in the past decade. Given how important these rights are to our identity as Americans, I am deeply troubled that so many of our representatives would be so eager to pass a broad prohibition on online discourse by minors.

DOPA will have three primary effects. The direct impact will be to remove online social communication tools from most schools and libraries. I'm talking about websites like MySpace, Facebook, Livejournal, Friendster, Google Groups, Blogger, Slashdot, and MemeStreams, as well as instant messagers like AIM and other chat software. Even adults will find it difficult to access these resources from libraries as they'll be forced to ask that library administrators remove blocks and filters for them. The secondary impact is that DOPA sends a message to schools and libraries that don't receive federal funding, as well as parents, that a complete ban on the use of online communications tools is a reasonable response to the problem of online predators. It is no more reasonable then prohibiting teenagers from going outside of their... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]