Can The Government Protect Children Online?
Posted by anastasia on 10-03-2008I'm getting ready to attend an all-day forum at the National Endowment for the Arts in D.C. today and will try to have everything posted by 3 p.m. EST today. This caught my eye this morning:
Cynopsis Kids reported that the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act (aka S.49) has passed the Senate. Their description of the bill given by Cynopsis is as follows:
This week also US Senate also approved the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act. The measure aims to bring parents, industry and educators together to improve education for kids about the internet while also strengthening parental control. Once singed into law by the President, the act will require that schools receiving E-Rate funds offer specific education on online behavior (including social networking, chat rooms, cyber-bullying), establish a group to identify technologies to help parents protect kids from content they deem inappropriate for their families, and develop a nationwide public awareness campaign that will be conducted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
While I'm all for public awareness and education (that isn't fear-based), I'm pretty sure this is a repackaging of the Deleting Online Predators Act, which was not good legislation. I would love for any Ypulse readers, especially librarians or folks on the business side following this issue to leave a comment sharing your views on what this revised bill will mean for all of us if signed into law.
Categorized under: Web
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:04 am
As someone in the tech industry, this sounds like a step in the right direction – previously proposed legislation has come dangerously close to censorship and pushed responsibility towards Internet providers.
Education and end-user filtering is certainly the best way to ensure that children are protected without compromising the freedom of everyone else.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I'm happy to see the simple idea of bringing people together on behalf of the gov to discuss this stuff (especially from the industry biz perspective). There's a certain amount of responsibility shared by all three pieces of the pie (parents, biz, educators), and to have that conversation happening? brills. I do realize that this stuff is happening all the time with fine folks… but to have the government put money & action towards it? I agree with Gareth that it's a step in the right direction.
I had not considered it to be like DOPA when I first read, and I understand that concern.
Personally, i think the first step is communication – and in particular the development of "a nationwide public awareness campaign" is great!
I need to read more about it so that I have a better grasp about what this means, but I hope… I hope.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I couldn't figure out why I hadn't heard more about this in my circles (school libraries) so I spent some time on Thomas and read the text of the bill. While Sen. Stevens introduced both s.49 (DOPA) and this, this is a serious edit of DOPA including removing the erate restrictions. I did not see any requirements for schools and libraries to do the filtering DOPA called for, just education. The only chage to the 1934 law that I could find was "as part of its Internet safety policy is educating minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response.'.", which is the law DOPA amended for filtering. It does establish a "working group" to investigate effectiveness of protection measures (I read that to be filters) but it seems the focus will be on parents. And I suspect the "education campaign" will continue the fear based campaign with that out of context statistic of 1 in 5 kids have been sexually solicited online. But I could just be a little cynical.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Thanks everyone — Mary Ann, that's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. Good to know. Maybe there is a way for us to influence the education piece by finding the best curriculum out there and pushing for its adoption.