WIRED Staff
Security

MySuburbanSpace

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to force libraries and schools to ban social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms in order to save children from online predators, part of an election year campaign by Republicans to appeal to suburban voters, according to Declan’s News.com story The list of possible casualties of […]

overhead image of vegas suburbs

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to force libraries and schools to ban social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms in order to save children from online predators, part of an election year campaign by Republicans to appeal to suburban voters, according to Declan's News.com story

The list of possible casualties of the bill include any site that allows a public profile -- and is specifically targeted at MySpace and parents' overblown fears that the site is overrun with sexual predators.

The law is best thought of as Congress's pandering to the same fears that drive suburbanites to live in gated communities and drive SUVs.

The net thrown by Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 could include sites such as LiveJournal, Amazon, hosted wikis, AOL/Yahoo/Microsoft's instant messaging software, Slashdot, Daily Kos, Redstate.org, Kuro5hin, all hosted blogging, Yelp, Ning and Yahoo 360.

The bill punts the question of what exactly is a 'social network' or a 'chat service' to the Federal Communications Commission.

But the 415 representatives who voted yes to advise the committee to look at five factors:

  1. offered by a commercial entity;
  2. permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
  3. permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
  4. elicits highly-personalized information from users;
  5. enables communication among users.

The bill is likely to be constitutional since the bill only pertains to sites that get federal money for computers and is written as an amendment to the current legislation that requires libraries and schools that get e-Rate funds to install anti-pornography filters on all computers. Libraries may, but are not required to, turn off the filters for adults when asked.

I can't wait for the Congressperson who realizes that the majority of sexual assaults and exploitation of children is done by family members, friends and trusted authority figures.

Will a bill requiring families to remove their LAN be next?

Image: ulybug