The only way to protect children from predators is to lock them in a box and shove food through a little door in the side. Or teach them to protect themselves. Generally there are 2 sets of computers in a school. Classroom computers should not have access to social networking. Library computers may be the only opportunity for some kids to access the internet. Those should not restrict social networking, although net nanny might be useful to block some sites. Children know more about the "ways of the world" than parents give them credit. The concept of sex, drugs, and rock and roll is present in the children of the 21st century the same as it was in the 20th. The children need protection everywhere, in the malls, on the streets, in the church, and even in the home - mostly in the home from people they know and trust. Children need education about risks but not total paranoia. All these problems with MySpace are generated at home where adults send the kid off to the computer in their bedroom, completly unsupervised.

Just an FYI, since a few have been incorrect in their posts.

Libraries DO have to filter if they want federal funds. I am a sys admin for a library, and have been affected by this. This has been the law for a few years now.

Libraries DO have to filter if they want federal funds.

From what I understand, that is exactly how the federal government exerts control over things it cannot/should not control. That is how the federal government has so much control over state-run schools. "You want federal funding? Better teach certain things, and not other things.", "You want money to build roads? You better let certain kinds of traffic on them.".
Qualifications for federal funding have always had strings attached to help the federal government hold more power.

When a young kid can Go to www.google.com and search for "nude body" or "sex on myspace" or "xxx" or "big d***" and see things that are not age appropriate because of free speech and land of the free then someone needs to protect the kids. The internet is for all citizens; however, all of its contents are not.

I understand what you are saying. However, the internet is run by adults, its paid for by adults, and the content is largely adult in nature. Your taxes are not paying for the internet, and you can simply remove any internet connection if you find it too much.

Filters are probably the best you can do, along with sitting with your kids or checking on them while they are on the net. Expecting anything more is foolish - irregardless of what any DEM or REP says.

Just like the folks during Katrina found out.. the government is NOT HERE to help YOU (caveat - unless your filthy rich like the music industry :) )

If someone wants to post nude pictures on the web, that's fine. I don't think that by not advertising these sites that you are preventing anyone from exercising their right to free speech. It is irresponsible to allow these things not to be filtered by internet security software, and to have them available at sites such as "http://images.google.com/". Search engines that display these items should be subscription sites thus making them less accessible to minors.

So, adults should have to pay for content that would otherwise be free, just to keep it out of children's reach? I find it irresponsible for parents to let their children access the internet unmonitored when it is a well-known fact that sites such as google can take their children to the most twisted stuff on the internet in a few clicks.

And before you say the "subscription" could be free, it would require me to register, proving my age and most likely my identity. I, and many others, would have issues with the potential for my activity to be more easily monitored because people do not want to monitor their own children.

or maybe parents should actually be resposible and monitor their kids....

I think what our country needs is soccer moms who are going to teach their children that life isn't all flowers, candy and well-fed bellies, and stop taking away adults' fun and f'ing good times!

I am torn between what to think about this bill. On one hand I feel that students within the public school sytstem, while at school should not be able to access websites like this during school. What educational purpose at that grade does this website or MySpace provide exactly?

Then on the other hand being the land of the free, and free speech one of the most important things we should fight for, I am afraid to give this freedom up for our young citizens. But they are children so shouldn't the schools protect them from information they are not ready to view yet?

To be honest the school's should NOT be connected to the internet, they should be connected to a private network. Which would only allow for information that is educational to be viewed. I have no problem having a young child listen to our President's State of the Union address, I do have a problem with them posting on their MySpace account.

While at school they are not allowed to do alot of things, with the amount of kids teachers have its not possible to allowed kids to do internet research and watch what they are viewing at the sametime. If this bill is not abused I am in support of it. The only support is within Public Schools, the connection to the libraries is crazy, as long as the kid is not in school I have no problem with them viewing MySpace. If your leaving your kid at a library and not helping them with their research as a parent then thats your fault if they view something they shouldn't.

The Internet offers a wealth of educational resources for students. They are able to read newspapers and periodicals on line, conduct research for term papers, submit work to their teachers, receive homework assignments from school websites, register for SAT tests, find scholarship opportunities, and the list goes on. To block a child from the Internet while at school is to deprive the child of important educational opportunities. Students and parents should sign an acceptable use policy contract. Violation of this contract would prohibit the child from access to the Internet. Schools should also filter and block inappropriate sites. Sites should be required to use alternative image tags (to describe image content), and key words describing their sites so that parents and schools can filter out “inappropriate content”.
Unfortunately many students divulge way too much personal information on social networking sites such as “My Space”. Only children mature enough to use these sites safely should be allowed to use them. These are decisions to be made by parents, and parents alone and should not be under school or library purview.

interesting......
I'm just wondering what life was like for students before the internet was born.

The internet isn't required. At it's most basic level, what we're talking about here is forcing an adult resource to conform to children.

Another step away from what we teach the kids as the "land of the free". If we tell them this is the land of the free to do what you want and then out of the blue approve a law that keeps them from the internet in whatever fashion they use it, its kind of backwords. It gives them another reason to dislike where they live.

Minors have never had the same rights as adults. Restricting things from children is a common accepted practice in many many countries. Sorry, if I am wrong, but your post sounds in many ways like that of a teenager that wants to be treated as an adult. It is only a step away from the "land of the free" if we allow the overprotection of the children to take away the rights of adults.

What next, Starbucks?

This is a start for COPA again, just one piece at a time until the US government can turn the entire Internet into content for noone over 12. This kind of legislation should be easily killed by the Supremes though, in fact, WASTING OUR TAX MONEY!

I want to protect kids, if this were only applying to schools I would be 100% fine. Since adults can go to the library as well, someone's rights are violated.

Why not just enforce library rules based on age? Some computers for younger people and some for older? Isn't that a nifty idea, I just thought of it in 10 seconds, and it wouldn't COST US THE TIME THIS WILL SIT AT THE SUPREME COURT.

SKSnews - This is for YOUR VOTE!

DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS SUCK!

Interesting views on this topic.

I have children that I'm very concern about the web sites they may visit (intentually or not). At home I have control via software that I take advantage of. I supervise them when I loosen the controls. However, when they are at other computers such as the library, school or friends the tight control is gone. It is not always a question of direct supervision since for example at our library as many as 20 computers are available for all to use (adults and children). Just because a computer is for the public does not justify no control. Sometimes even adults need to be controlled in public. And just because control can potentially be circumvented does not mean we should not try.

Many parents understand the need to control what children do online, but they do not have the skills to navigate some of the software/hardware that is currently available. I've been at it for years and still find it challenging at times.

Many parents understand the need to control what children do online, but they do not have the skills to navigate some of the software/hardware...

If parents cannot responsibly control their children's use of something, they should not let their children use it. It is as simple as that. Parents seem to think the internet should be made childproof. The internet is a tool for diverse purposes. Power saws are tools for specific purposes, you don't see people trying to make those "child safe". They just keep their kids away from them.

Here we go again. I wonder if this is america anymore. **sigh**

*looks at map*

Yep.

this is so stupid...

I see something heading to the Supreme Court.

They couldn't help New Orleans but, "No Problem" with net censorship?

Got to keep those tubes clean I guess.

Protect the childeren: ok

Passing sweeping bills that adversly affect the flow of information...: NOT OK!

**** ALL YOU IGNORANT REPUBLICANS!

...how do you really feel *laughs

lol i'm registered republican, and i even disagree with the whole thing. ;-p

READ THE ARTICLE!! "The bill passed with wide bipartisan support, on a 410-15 vote."

Only 15 votes against...f*ck the Democrats as well.

"A near-unanimous" umm there are well over 150 democrats in there too.... The blame is on both sides, not just republicans. So much for the Lib idea of free speech.

Thank you. Finally someone with at least 2 working brain cells.

This law will be abused. If the decision is left up to School Administrators, what happens when communities with extreme liberal/conservative agendas start "by law" restricting content that does not fall under the DOPA guidelines? My public library prohibits Porn, anything else is fair game. What wrong with that.

well as a school admin myself, i can tell you there are already quite a few laws we have to follow, to keep our tails clean so to speak. the big one being the childs internet protection act, which is obviously porn and stuff involving posting of personnally identifiable info on the net, etc. there is also the widely enforced "zero tolerance policy" which i think is taken wayyy to far, but means we have to block guns, violence, racism, bombs, you get the idea. on the other hand, we out of choice block software download sites and p2p networking, file transfering and things related, to protect ourselves against I.P. violations. (and to prevent adware, spyware and viri from screwing up our machines to keep us from having to constanly re-clone them.

I am all for protecting children, but I think this schema has the tail wagging the dog. I find it amazing that every single book and publication that appears in a school library has to be approved, yet there has never been much of an issue in placing computers with internet access in classrooms and libraries in schools all over America.

Trying to block thousands of web sites will be an impossible task for any administrator. Kids will invest time and effort in finding ways to reach whatever may be a questionable web site - just as kids now look up "dirty" words in the school dictionaries. As long as they are curious they will go there one way or another.

The problem with all this is how local school boards determine what is acceptable material from district to district. Will religious materials be banned? Will sites that promote evolution be banned in districts where the teaching of evoluntion theory has been banned? What about biology or sex education? Who gets to decide what is "approved" for a child to explore on the internet? Who is going to determine what a child seeks out intentionally and what is popped up in a computer screen? If you put key loggers on evrey computer in every school, how are you going to pay a staff to review the logs?

I applaud Conress for trying. However, after millions of tax payer dollars are invested in this program, the level of "protection" will be cursory at best. It wont take unscrupulous webmasters long to find ways around the blocking mechanisms either.

It seems it would almost be less expensive to establish a new K-12 network and start from the ground up and create a "school safe" verification system, where content providers sign up, and only those qualifying sites are accessible by default.

its not all that hard. i mean sure we have to block selective sites sometimes, but we use websense to filter our web and go through our logs periodically to look for sites we missed. on the other hand some people use whitelists and compare them to the logs then go through what is left, but so far we havent really done that. also some schools in my area use whitelist-only browsing, so you can only go to a "handful" of sites, maybe 25,000 or so. we find that way too restrictive and primarily, we rely on teachers to watch over the kids, because that is, after all, their job.

Here's what the bill is actually looking to do:

5/9/2006--Introduced.
Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 - Amends the Communications Act of 1934 to require schools and libraries that receive universal service support to enforce a policy that prohibits access to a commercial social networking website or chat room through which minors may easily: (1) access or be presented with obscene or indecent material; (2) be subject to unlawful sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or repeated offensive sexual comments from adults; or (3) access other material that is harmful to minors. Allows an administrator, supervisor, or other authorized person to disable such a technology protection measure during use by an adult, or by minors with adult supervision, to enable access for educational purposes.
Directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to: (1) establish an advisory board; (2) annually publish a list of commercial social networking websites and chat rooms that have been shown to allow sexual predators easy access to personal information of, and contact with, children; (3) issue a consumer alert regarding use of the Internet by child predators and the potential dangers to children because of such use, including the potential dangers of commercial social networking websites and chat rooms; and (4) establish a website resource of information for parents, teachers, school administrators, and others regarding potential dangers posed by the use of the Internet by children.

(GO HERE: http://www.congress.org/...n/query/z?c109:H.R.5319:)

What it is saying is that the library and/or school administrators have the right to block any site from their systems where children are being preyed upon and/or being subjected to inappropriate behavior/comments.

Nothing more, nothing less. Betanews is not (I hope) one of those sites (I have never seen anything like that here) that would fall under that category.

Right now if the school or library blocked a site, the ACLU would be on them like white on rice claiming that they were taking away the rights of these kids to be sexually abused.

I hate articles like this because they are taken out of context, the actual content of the bill is not even mentioned and people start jumping up and down hollering over nothing.

This took me all of 10 seconds to find, not rocket science, that's for sure (otherwise I'd be in for a fix ).

I agree. This article is informative, yet no real information is provided.

The problem is with how broad the wording is on defining such sites.

Any school or library administrator now has carte-blanche rights to block vertually 90% of the net from their systems.

As I do not believe this was the intenet of the law, I hold that it was extremely negligent, ignorant, and outright stupid of the house to pass it in such a condition.

...through which minors may...other material that is harmful to minors
Those two bolded parts are the problem here. Basically, any site that is not vigilantly monitored for "material that is harmful to minors" (find people who agree how far that definition should go) will be banned from public viewing. Because it may contain the burned books. Again, even if implemented carefully in public libraries, it still reduces adults in society that cannot afford a computer and internet access to the level of children.

What it is saying is that the library and/or school administrators have the right to block any site from their systems where children have the potential to be preyed upon and/or being subjected to behavior/comments inappropriate by who knows whose definition.

as it is, school admins do have the right to block anything they want, and all we have to do is cite the childs internet protection act, because the wording is so broad. currently we dont even require a reason to block a page when requested by a teacher, but we do require a reason to unblock a site. after all from a legal standpoint, blocking a site is more likely to protect us, and unblocking a site may put us in legal jeapordy. of course we do use our heads and review the sites in question and make a decision from there, we have on occasion blocked a single "safe" site from a certain student or group of students at request of the teacher because she/he/they were wasting too much time on it or using it in a not so safe way.

The US governemnt passes the dumbest laws like this is realy going to change anything just more or less a PR stunt or maybe they are stupid enough to believe this will work.

Think i will save the US a lot of time and just email old bush telling him the best way is makeing it law requiring all internet conected PCs(including home) to have a credit card swipe for age verication underage access denied;)

That would require all internet users to have credit cards, and instate an informal national identification system, and that is a whole other issue in itself.

I was joking.

And I was giving you the opportunity to clarify that you were joking, really, I was ;)

Another attempt to close the southbound lanes of the information super-highway.

Exactly.

This is completely ridiculous and is going to get struck down in court. Has Congress completely forgotten that in the 90s the bill they passed to block *pornography* from being able to be accessed in libraries was struck down? If they can't block porn from libraries they sure as hell aren't going to be able to block MySpace.

but it already is legal of libraries and schools to block sites at their discretion if they so choose.

Point made on Ars, that bears repeating:

Blocking access to these sites at schools and libraries, where students are under constant adult supervision will *only* serve to increase the likelyhood of these children going to these sites on the sly....without *any* supervision at all to protect them from the *evils* of the net, or to teach them how to responsibly use such services.

This bill will, in fact, do more *HARM* to the "children" than *GOOD*.

Good job, Reps. You just proved beyond all doubt you're a bunch of friggin' retards.

The parent's won't take responsibility. The government removes any chance of actual responsible adults to take the responsibility.

Another misguided attempt by our government to appease neglectfull parents ends up putting their children right into the hands of the very people they were trying to protect them from.

Oh happy day...

Won't someone think of the children??!1

May I be so bold as to suggest that it be the *PARENTS*?

Lord no. All they did was have unprotected sex and then 9 months later this burden on their partying showed up.

How can they be responsible?

let the parents do that, its not my problem they cant control thei kids, and i refuse to suffer because some jackass cant be responsible.

The bill defines 'Social Networking Sites as:

(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
(v) enables communication among users.'.

This is broad enough to include 90% of the sites out there that require registration and allow users to view other users profiles. (not just BN, but slashdot, ars technica, techdirt, digg, you name it.)

This is a prime example of why anyone running for office should *not* be allowed to legislate. Officials running for re-election are the cause of some some of the worst legislation out there.

...in the name of the children...

...my ass.

...in the name of the children...
Exactly, I mean, after all what else can we use to take the public's mind off of real issues, like: accountability for public officials, poor school systems, homelessness, rampant obesity, stratifying social levels, etc...

PC_Tool: I couldn't agree more. I can't stand how parents and legislators continue to demonize MySpace and point the finger of blame at innocent websites that simply provide a service which you have to be a complete moron (or an unsupervised underaged moron) to be taken advantage of on.

The real culprits are the ridiculous lazy parents who refuse to accept the blame for their kids getting molested by perverts who contacted their kids online, and don't want to be bothered with monitoring what their kids are doing on those crazy newfangled computers. If you want to ban people from interacting with each other then quite simply you have to ban the entire Internet, and then ban people from going outside for that matter. Who knows what fearsome predators you might encounter outside your own home! zomg B&!!!!

homelessness, rampant obesity, stratifying social levels, atc...

ATC?

They want to take the public's mind off of the Appalachian Trail Conference?

I missed the journal and highly-personalized information sections on Betanews. Can you give me the link? =p

haha, oops, fixed ETC.

http://fileforum.betanews.com/

You post a file and your contact info becomes public.

I bet you thought you had me, didn't you?

Falls under this section:

i) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information

Oh sure, now my reply looks out of place...

you jerk. ;P

...and this reply looks out of place now too!

Hey - who made me write that? ;-)

Still couldn't find the journal though...

Heh...

Comments section. List of files the person has submitted, etc...

Point being, the law is so loose (They define nothing...including journal..which could easily be broadly defined as a list of recent activity, i.e., submitted files), that it will be very easily abused.

but the point of this law is to force these places to be filtered, it is already somewhat forced that we do so now, and most do it out of choice now. technically if you walk into a library, and access porn next to a minor or see one looking up porn, the library can be sued. as to whether it will win or not is another thing, but techincally they can get sued.

From the description here, I doubt this legislation would survive a challenge on First Amendment grounds. Furthermore, what about non-minors (who pay the taxes mentioned) using public computers?
Of course Congress missed the simplest solution to the problem: Require minors on public computers to be supervised by a responsible adult. Like a parent perhaps?

Nobody ever thinks about the obvious solutions like that. We Americans prefer to point fingers in other directions. Never our own fault. Asking parents to supervise their kids in a public place is absurd in America. That should be the governments job. Then when the government really tries to go there, the parents complain it's not their business. Catch 22. :)

Asking NEGLECTFUL parents to supervise their kids in a public place is absurd in America. That should be the governments job. Then when the government really tries to go there, the RESPONSIBLE parents complain it's not their business.

There, fixed ;)

Maybe instead of trying to hide our children, just perhaps congress should try and help fund some of the services that specifically get these scumbags off the streets. If it isn't myspace, it's something else. The solution isn't shutting our kids away in the closet, it's getting the bad guys off the streets. Perhaps we should try that?

I caught part of some show where a TV crew did just that. They pretended to be some pre-teen, and lured these scumbags to their "house". Then they arrested them. The show was sick, funny, and sad at the same time. These guys were so dumb, calling them retarded would insult real retarded people. Maybe they should start more of these type programs, and get 99% of the scum off our streets.

The government outlaws it's use in any place where the children might recieve guidance and supervision.

In other words, the government is forcing them to use it the only way they have left....without any supervision or guidance whatsoever.

Paren't don't want to babysit, government won't allow teachers or librarians to, who does that leave?

You got it...the pervs.

They'll be more than happy to do the babysitting.

In a hlaf-assed attempt to 'protect' the children from predators, the government has served the kids to them now on a silver platter.

How nice of them....

ah but you see there are loopholes in the law that exclude government places and censoring from the first amendment, mainly the fact that you could go pay for your own internet and surf to your hearts content freely.

good, internet access in school and library should be use for research and education. if you in school or library to hope onto those site looking for hookup, please be kind and stand and let someone else use it.

So, you don't think a cancer patient who cannot afford a computer should be able to access their online cancer support group via a public library? Because, you know, a big bad child predator might be hanging out in the very same chatroom waiting for a child to show up.

That is utterly ridiculous. My taxes made that Internet available in the public library and I should be able to do whatever I want on it (within reason; no pr0n/warez/etc). Who are you to say how people are "supposed" to use the Internet in a public library? It's a library, not a freaking school. And even if it were a school, what people do with their spare time on the Internet (again, within reason) is their own business.

The "oh noes, there was one problem here so let's throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach is not a good solution to anything.

And even then, one person's porn is another person's art.

You can see all the "Art" you want in the library but you won't be able to comment on it.

I've never really seen the library as a place for discussion. All those "quiet please" signs tend to discourage it.

see there people go again with the entitlement thing. you are absolutely wrong, your taxes went to the government to compensate them for you living here and buying stuff and all that. once it goes to the government it is no longer yours to decide what to do with. for all intents and purposes it is theirs. think of the government as a giant landlord, cause thats what they are, they can tell you what to do within reason, and charge you to live there. do you go up to your landlord and say, "i dont think you should have bought that tv, i think you should have bought a new front door for me." ?

First public buildings, next it will be resturants, and pretty soon you won't even be able to blog in your own bedroom anymore. Who cares what nonsense those clowns make? What's important is that somebody needs to spend taxpayers money for IT services.

Freedom a forgotten idea by the Senate.

*cough*

Please read the article. The bill was passed by the House. It hasn't hit the Senate yet.