I probably should have mentioned in the title that my post yesterday was discussing DOPA. It’s certainly been a topic today, here are just the posts that I saw in my aggegator today.
- Walt Crawford is normally fairly apolitical but even he sees that this is “a thoroughly bad idea”
- Michael Stephens, also not an aggresively political guy links to David King’s image and a longer post at ALA Techsource about the Flickr fear that is making some people lash out at libraries that use Flickr.
- Sarah Houghton makes a short list of the people who voted against DOPA (not even MY rep? damn!) and discusses what she thinks this means for the future of E-Rate.
- Alane Wilson at It’s All Good calls it “a disaster” and notes what it could mean for Open WorldCat
- Marshall Kirkpatrick at TechCrunch describes the one-sidedness of the vote as “shocking” and points to a few more sources for learning about DOPA.
- David King, also not mister superpolitical calls the law scary and says we need to think about how this is going to impact your library’s digital services.
- ALA issued a “we’re disappointed” statement that is good but doesn’t mention the resolution passed by Council supporting social software applications (that I can’t find because it’s not on the damned site yet. update: Rory posted it here.). I am very worried that after their expensive CIPA defeat they may not fight DOPA as hard as they might have.
- Joshua Neff discusses someone putting porn in his library group on Flickr and how self-monitoring seems to mostly work for this sort of thing.
- The AASL weblog talks about how DOPA will impact school libraries.
- Emily Alling talks about how this bill is about way more than MySpace.
And then there’s the blogads on Technorati which just say “Looking for Dopa? Find exactly what you want today.” Har har.
I saw, in one of the many, many posts yesterday or the day before, which Senate subcommittee this is sitting in, and now I can’t find it! Does anybody know?
As an amusing aside, in the course of writing to my Senators this morning, I discovered that one of the things that minors would no longer be able to do from library computers is… write their Senators. Of course the typical webform requires “detailed personal information” and allows “interaction with others.” Hah! Should cut down all those pesky e-mails from teen activists who think they know something about politics.
Seriously though – it’s an interesting angle (a small, side note sort of angle, as there are far more scary and broad problems with this bill, but an angle nevertheless) to pitch, and I did.
I respect your opinion. I was surprised and disappointed that the vote was 410-15. Many of those who oppose DOPA do so because they believe that children should be educated and not restricted. I agree that they should be educated, but let us face it, not all parents do their job and the parents who are doing their job are left with schools and libraries that are not doing their job.
I can not speak on behalf of the US, but I know that surprisingly some Canadian public libraries and schools do not monitor children’s internet access nor do they have filters in place. We were all teens once. I keep hearing the same comments. “Parents do your job.†Well I ask you this, “How many of you rebelled against your parents?â€
No matter how much we take care of our children and educate them, it only takes them making one unhealthy choice to put them at risk. You can educate your child untill you are all blue in the face. The truth is that children don’t often think of the consequences of unhealthy choices. If DOPA will save just one child, don’t you think the bill is worth it?
I do want to add that while I support the bill, I do think that the legislation should be rewritten so it does not block sites such as Yahoo and Google. I think they need to better determine what sites will be blocked before passing the law.
These are just my thoughts!
Please contact your Senators about the importance of social networking sites. Share with them personal stories about how you or your library patrons use these sites in educational ways. Let them know what negative impact of DOPA or similar legislation will have on libraries and library users if it passes.
http://donwood.alablog.org/blog/_archives/2006/8/1/2185440.html
Background information about this issue can be viewed on the ALA Web site located at:
Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA)
Online Social Networks
Resolution in Support of Online Social Networks (PDF)
Tell Your Senators Why DOPA Is Bad for Libraries