Saturday, February 24, 2007

More on DOPA and Social Networking Web Site Prohibition Act

Having discussed DOPA previously (1, 2, and that it had failed, but returned in a new guise when Senator Matt Murphy (Illinois) had introduced a new bill called Social Networking Web Site Prohibition Act, I was interested in Jenny Levine's article over on the shifted librarian blog called Senator Matt Murphy of Illinois Set to Ban His Own Blog from Libraries?.

She points out that in his blog that :-

In the blog post itself, Murphy sounds fairly reasonable and balanced, saying he filed the bill "to raise awareness of the threat predators on these sites pose to our kids" and "to advance a dialogue on how we can minimize this threat." Neither of these reasons really explains why he chose to introduce a full ban on a class of sites he can't even define (nowhere does the legislation explain what is meant by the term), but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt as I read his responses anyway.

Unfortunately, I got as far as the 12th comment, in which Detective Bob Riordan, who is working with Murphy on this legislation, notes that Blogger is in the list of "top 10 social networking sites."


Crikey. How funny is that. You would have thought he would have at least checked his own blog out beforehand wouldn't you?

What site is Murphy's blog on? Blogger. So apparently, Murphy's current bill would ban his own site - where he hosted the "live chat" to discuss banning social networking sites in libraries - from being accessed in libraries, even by adults.in

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