US Congressman, Michael Fitzpatrick has responded to the moral panic surrounding social networking sites by banning everything.

The Deleting Online Predators Act tries to limit the access paedophiles have to the networking sites which have become hugely popular with minors.

Which is all very laudable. But there are a couple of issues with the legslation as it stands, which leads me to suspect that this is more a case of wanting to be seen to be “doing something” than anything else.

The act covers federal institutions that received funding for computers and net access via the US E-Rate scheme - primarily schools and libraries. The American Library Association (ALA) estimates that two-thirds of US libraries receive this funding.

It requires these organisations to put in place filters to stop children viewing social networking sites where they might be subject to “unlawful sexual advances”.

So the act does nothing about “online predators” and instead seeks to prevent children from using the internet in a public - and safe - environment.

The second problem with this proposal is with its broadness.

The act says the FCC should consider any site that allows users to create and modify a profile, chat to other users and post personal information.

That’s a lot of sites when you consider that the definition covers not only sites like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook but also Blogger, Amazon, Flickr, Wikipedia, Slashdot and many, many more. In fact, any site with a forum would be blocked if this law is passed.

Some MySpace users have created an online petition to gather support for protests about the act. The petition, called Save your Space, aims to gather more than one million signatures in a month.

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post