By a vote of 410 to 15, the US House of Representatives passed yesterday H.R. 5319 “Deleting Online Predators Act.”
Now that DOPA has passed the House, it will go to the Senate for consideration, if it passes there then on to George Bush. If it becomes law, DOPA will require schools and public libraries to block children from accessing social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster and Facebook from school and library computers.
DOPA is being opposed by the American Library Association (ALA) who states many libraries already have their own policies on restricting access to social networking sites like MySpace. 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?”
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!
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I left you a comment over on my site.
The questions remain:
Does DOPA do anything to stop teenage behavior online that some adults consider to be risky? This addresses how teens might be able to stop “online predators.” To put the responsibility where it belongs, however, the question becomes this: does DOPA do anything to stop older folks from stalking teens online? This addresses the behavior that we really, honestly all want to stop. If DOPA doesn’t do either of those things, then the question changes dramatically: does DOPA simply make that same risky behavior and same lowlife stalking more difficult, without doing anything to truly stop either one? If that’s indeed the case (as I feel it is), then DOPA is completely unnecessary, not very well thought out, and actually the opposite of what we need.
If the issue is pedophilia and/or molestation, shouldn’t the law about this issue actually, you know, address the causes of the issue itself and not just some random effects? How does DOPA stop people from stalking? How does it send the message that teens should be wiser about the details they make known on their MySpace page?
Todd, thank you for replying. As I stated on your blog, I respect your views and I’m certainly not looking to debate with you. There is a lot of discussion going on about this bill. I for one understand their concerns, but I don’t think the bill was very well thought out. Like I’ve already stated, I think they need to better determine what sites will be blocked before passing the law, if it even does get passed.
From what I understand and correct me if I’m wrong, but the bill would still allow children to access networking sites under supervision, but would restrict children from surfing the internet alone.
Thanks for your comment on my site where I have attempted to reply to your points.
The supervision thing is correct, as I understand it. But what that means in practice is beyond me. Aren’t all libraries and school computer rooms supervised already? How much supervision are we talking about?
In the room or over their shoulder? The latter would be pretty obnoxious, wouldn’t it. Plus, the extra staffing that would require would mean a blanket ban would be the only affordable option for a lot of libraries and schools.
I’d also like to note the class divide this brings into online rights. Middle class children with a computer at home get more and better access to the internet already. This exacerbates that.
Who will teach the parents how to monitor their children at home? Research shows that the non tech-savvy parents are the 40% that do not use filters for their kids.
How will the Federal Trade Commission sort through billions of websites when we cannot even count them? Isn’t this done better on an ad hoc basis by local filtration.
What will schools do when sites critical to their curriculum are blocked? And how long will it take to get unblocked.
Many websites will be blocked by this act that ARE educational and important.
Thank you for posting on my blog. Do you realize that 180 days after the act is passed that educators in American public schools will no longer be able to read it.
In fact, I am almost postive your site will be blocked by all public schools and libraries as well. I hope you have a lot of people who read you at home.
Vicki, well I can tell you that it’s not the school teaching parents.
I speak from personal experience. It’s not just important to know what they are doing at home, but at school too.
As a parent it was shocking to learn that my sixteen year old daughter (15 at the time) was able to use the computer at school unsupervised and like Suzanne Stanford,(internet safety coach who is helping to protect children and organizations from the dangers of the internet) I too learned that my daughter had an online identity.
While she may not have been on networking sites such as MySpace, she was using the internet at school to communicate with friends.
I can guarantee that it doesn’t matter how much you talk to them about the dangers and risk of internet safety, they’ll ignore the warnings. “It won’t happen to me,” is a myth. When a child posts personal information and a photo about themselves on a network site it has now made them a target for predators who are searching for the next child victim.
Should children really be using these websites in Class unsupervised? Should my daughter of been allowed to set up a hotmail account, and add her friends etc without my knowledge when as a parent I supervise her at home? I’m all for education and I believe that computers play an important role in their education. We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher’s hand, but what we don’t need is children accessing the net with no supervision at all. How many children under 14 have already violated the MySpace terms of service? Children should not have unsupervised access to the internet. There are just too many opportunities for inappropriate interactions. MySpace does not belong in the classroom. Again that is just my opinion.
I hope that my website is blocked by all public schools and libraries and most of my readership are adults reading my blog from the comfort of their own home!
If my blog was blocked from school computers my son would not of been able to surf my blog unsupervised when he should of been using the computer lab for his class assignment and his assignment sure did not involve showing his friends Mommy’s blog.
Research also suggests that 50 per cent of youth have received unwanted sexual comments online, and that 25 per cent have been asked by someone they knew only online, to meet in person.
Vicki, I was also under the understanding from an article on mtv.com the proposed bill would allow the filter to be turned off for educational purposes by adults or minors visiting the sites under adult supervision.
Ian, in Canada they are not! You are talkin of children’s online rights? Well don’t you think that parents and teachers have a right? Teachers are given one of the greatest responsibilities we can give to another person, that is educating our children and supervising them when we as parents cannot be there to supervise them. Schools have an obligation to ensure that students have a safe environment and that should include a safe online envirement too. Teachers who fail to fulfill the obligation to supervise our children are failing the child. Computer networks have been established for learning in the school not for students to talk to their friends on MySpace.
Rose-
I am not advocating no filters at the local level. I invest several thousand dollars a year in a firewall. Schools without content filtration are doing a disservice to their students. Teachers who do not supervise their students are also doing a disservice.
I agree that all schools and all libraries should employ filtration. I am opposed to centralized filtration because it interferes with curriculum at the local level.
I also agree that parents should give permission for the activities that will take place at school.
Rose, I firmly believe that you and I are both advocates for parent involvement and supervision. As an educator and a parent I believe that centralized filtration is the wrong way to go about this.
I believe that education of parents, education of students, guidelines and requirements for local filtration, and adequate supervision of children and teens are the way to do this.
If you read my post above, you will see my concerns for adult supervision.
I agree that we must take action to protect children from myspace predators.
Let me ask you this question, what mechanism is in place for children to report predatory advances on myspace.
As for my students at school, I teach at a private school so we will continue to use our educational wiki on wikispaces, we will continue to access math and english blogs available on blogger.com and we will continue to interact with children around the world under my very careful supervision.
We will also unblock myspace for a week and “clean up” their myspace accounts as I teach them about the dire consequences that inappropriate material can have on their scholarship and job hunting possibilities and we will do this with parent supervision.
I am an absolute fanatic about protecting children and teens. I am also a fanatic about doing things that work and not spinning our wheels in misguided directions that will waste taxpayer money and hurt education.
I would never advocate lack of adult supervision. However, most people do not understand how I supervise all of my class activities using RSS. I doubt the commission will which will leave teachers looking at every screen before the kids hit the submit button. That is unrealistic and will result in teachers avoiding new technologies altogether.
Are you forgetting that most students are accessing myspace from home?
Great intent, Rose, but this act, which will probably pass, lacks the real world application to make a lot of difference!
I’d like to point out the things not included in DOPA that need to be addressed so we can do something about this problem:
# Education of children about privacy and online safety
# Education of parents about how to supervise their children online
# Opportunities for students to use social networking to further their education
# Opportunities for commercial businesses to provide needed conduits for education (How about a myspace for education with profanity filters, and privacy blockers?) It would make a lot of sense financially.
# Education of students on Internet teamwork skills.
# Opportunities for American students to interact in global projects using existing websites
# Funding for implementation
# Funding for schools to set up internal wikis and blogs for teaching
# An online mechanism for reporting predators that kids and adults can used.
# Steeper penalties for online predatory behavior.
# More law enforcement resources to handle the problem.
You and I agree that we must protect children. We disagree that this is the way to do it!
Hi Rose,
I’ve responded to your query about my evidence on my site.
There’s another very interesting academic discussion about DOPA here with the co-director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT:
As you’d imagine, coming from me, it’s anti-DOPA, but I hope you are able to give it a look.
One quick quotation: “In theory, the bill would allow schools to disable these filters for use in educationally specified contexts, yet in practice, most schools will simply lock down their computers and walk away. Teachers who wanted to exploit the educational benefits of these tools would face increased scrutiny and pressure to discontinue these practices. And students would lack the ability to explore these resources through independent research or social activities. Teens who lack access to the Internet at home would be cut off from their extended sphere of social contacts.”
Vicki, I have noticed that you and I are both advocates for parent involvement and supervision. I also admire you in taking the role and responsibility of supervising and educating the children in your care, but just as there are parents not doing their job, there are educators not doing theirs. What about those children? What about the children unsupervised at school? I’m not sure what mechanisms are in place for children to report predatory advances on MySpace and to be honest I don’t believe that many children would report them. Children are easily manipulated and alone children become vulnerable. I’m not forgetting that most children access MySpace from home and in all honesty I don’t believe children belong on MySpace, but that is another subject of discussion.
I see that you and I agree on many things, but disagree on the ways to solve the growing problem and that’s ok too. I have already said that before DOPA is passed, if passed it needs to return to the drawing board and the issues that you have pointed out needs to be addressed.
Ian, I of course read your reply and responded. You obviously are not looking at the same page that I am as there have been several convictions. I agree that children need to be propertly educated, but again no matter how much we educate them they ignore the warnings. They believe in a myth that it won’t happen to me when in reality it could happen to them.
It seems like not a day goes by where we don’t hear a case about child pornography, sexual exploitation or internet luring.
Ignoring a problem does not solve a problem Ian.
It seems like not a day goes by where we don’t hear a case about child pornography, sexual exploitation or internet luring.
internet luring convicted
I count two. Including one in China.
PS. I messed up the link in my last post. Could you possibly correct it so I don’t look quite as foolish? 😉
The issue here is DOPA Ian.
Research shows that predators are using the Internet. Did you know that the US alone is home for 78% of Internet-related crimes. 1 in 5 children are sexually solicited or approached over the internet in a one-year period of time. 20% of violent offenders serving time in state prisons reported having victimized a child.
Ian, predators and child pornographers around the world have been prosecuted.
The availability of child pornography is increasing at an alarming rate. In this day and age a child’s photo can be easily edited. Are you aware that real children’s facial images have been attached to the pornographic poses of others. These children are victimized when those images are distributed.
Child pornography is traded 24 hours a day
The following is nothing like the “To Catch a Predator” aired on NBC Dateline. The W5 report, titled “Save the Children” is an extremely disturbing look at the pedophiles that that are underground, exchanging child pornography, and trading full-length movies of babies being raped.
The law enforcement that are in this episode, are the ones that have to deal with this sad reality on a daily basis. In the episode, a 3 time sexual offender calmly talks about what he has done, insisting it’s the children who want to have sex with him. I couldn’t believe it.
You’ll also see Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie disappointment with the justice system. It’s not enough to just read the article; you have to watch the four part episode.
Again, the episode, which can be viewed at ctv.ca is very disturbing.
There also has been a growing number of cases of sexual predators using sites like MySpace to lure children.
Though MySpace added new restrictions to combat the problem of users 18 and older not being able to send messages or join friend lists of users 15 and under, unless they know the youth’s e-mail address or full name. The new restrictions does not prevent predatory, as Predators can lie about their age when they sign up. MySpace has no way of verifying that users submit their true age when registering.
You or I can log on right now and talk to anybody we want and we can tell them that we are 25 or 14, how would they know? They wouldn’t.
If you just do a Google for internet safety you’ll see so much material out there for parents, but it all says the same thing.
We all must take measures to keep our children safe.
Child abusers no longer have to wander around schoolyards Ian. They can log on to the computer and surf on over to MySpace- A haven for pediophiles to use to their advantage. My space currently has 87m accounts, with 270,000 new users being added a day. One forth of those users are minors. Children leave the home and go to school and have access to these social-networking sites. It’s inappropriate for students to be participating in these social networking sites while at school. However, they do access them. My daughter attends a high school where there is no school involvement. Children can log on to networking sites, check their email and surf the web freely.
Internet safety and responsible use is everyone’s concern, however some schools do not appear to be too concerned with the growing concerns over these network sites. Educating your children is not effective enough in preventing youth involvement in these online networking communities. In many cases in which children have been solicited for sex over the Internet, the child was unsupervised. When a web service has become that of a haven to exploit children- like MySpace has then measures need to be taken to protect the children.
Parents cannot asume that children are out of harms way just because they are safe at home. They are not safe if they are on the internet unsupervised.
While some parents may be doing there job to keep their children safe; children are ignoring the warnings. The problem isn’t just unresponsible parents here, it’s the networking sites, schools and peer pressure. If you tell a child not to touch something because it’s hot, they are going to touch it.
Our children are our most valuable asset, but how do we keep them safe when we are not there? Telling little Johny and Susan not to talk to strangers isn’t enough. They don’t want to hear the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Woof.
Supervision is one of the biggest issues here!
The Internet is a valuable tool, but both adults and children must learn to use it wisely and responsibily.
Ian, 1 in 5 children between the ages of 10 and 17 (those surveyed) are sexually solicited or approached over the internet, in a one year period, according to a 2000 report from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I believe the Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a reliable resource unless you wish to argue that too?
“A 37-year-old man solicited a 16-year-old girl by visiting MySpace.com. The man misrepresented himself as being younger, then tracked her down. Lafayette Sheriff Lt. Craig Stansbury said the man showed up at the victim’s after-school job and followed her to the parking lot, where he forced her into his car and attacked her. ‘The assailant knew where she worked because she posted it on her MySpace profile.”
2006- A Hughson firefighter was sentenced to a year in jail for engaging in sexual activity with a 16-year-old Lodi-area boy he met online. Camagna was arrested, and investigators soon learned that the two had met on MySpace.com.
7 Jul 2006 – A former Seminole High School teacher William Warren Greico, 43, of Madeira Beach was sentenced to five years in prison on a guilty plea to using a computer to entice a child for sex.
Earlier this year a 45-year-old Montana man, Jimmy Dean Carpenter, was sentenced to life in prison for abusing three girls, aged 7, 13 and 14.
A court in southern Sweden sentenced a man to an 11-year jail term for luring – and in some cases also raping – teenage girls he contacted via popular chat sites on the internet.
In late May, Johnny Daniel Duran, a 28-year-old Frederick man, was sentenced to 18 months at the Frederick County Adult Detention Center for uploading hundreds of images involving child pornography onto one of his family’s computers.
A 41-year-old Jaffrey (New Hampshire) man has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for possessing child pornography. …
A Tucson man from a prominent family has been sentenced to prison for luring a minor for sexual exploitation.
Ariz. The son of a former Tucson mayor has been sentenced to more than three years in prison on his conviction of luring a minor for sexual exploitation.
Police say 52-year-old William Corbett engaged in several sexually explicit Internet conversations with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl.
A Sherman man was sentenced to seven years in federal prison June 27th for coercing a Danbury High School freshman he met on the Internet into giving him oral sex
Dale Eric Beckham, 33, was originally arrested in March of 2005, in Ottawa, Canada. He was charged with luring a 14-year-old boy he met over the Internet to a hotel room where they had sex. Beckham could get from five to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in October.
While some cases may be dropped due to lack of evidence, there are many convictions.
I think that DOPA needs to be re-worked also. It’s good in theory but in practice, I have my doubts as to whether or not it will work. That said, I agree with Rose, kids should not be allowed to surf social networking sites while at school anyway. They are supposed to be at school or at a library to “learn”, and at the very least, anything beyond that — especially if it’s a social networking site, is a distraction… notwithstading the entire issue of personal security.
Regarding personal security, there is no question that tweens and teens need to understand the serious risks they undertake when they engage in irresponsible behavior by posting inappropriate pictures or comments online. And “yes, kids will push the envelope when it comes to rules and responsibility”, but many kids don’t really understand what they are dealing with in “real” terms. For example, I think it’s safe to say that most kids wouldn’t drink poison because they know the consequences — death. Internet safety education should be mandated for each grade level. and I don’t just mean the teacher giving a lecture. There needs to be “show and tell”, just like when kids take driver’s education classes and graphic films of traffic accidents are shown. Images are more likely to change behavior. The “faces” of these online crime stories need to be included in the education curriculum. Parents and kids who have been victimized need to speak out detailing what happened. Is this harsh to the victims and/or their parents after all they’ve gone through? Perhaps. But it is also a means of healing while also helping to prevent other unsuspecting kids from making the same mistakes.
Right now, it seems as though all the power is in the hands of the predators. Only through internet safety education and outreach to others will parents and kids be empowered to ward off predators. Kids need to learn to say “no” and to report online incidents. Parents need to support their kids in reporting online incidents and they need to parent and educate their kids on a “regular” basis. Part of parenting is saying “no” and enforcing restrictions. And part of parenting is knowing what content your child is posting online.
From my experience in speaking with parents and kids, the majority of parents know that MySpace is dangerous and know that their kids have a MySpace account, but they have never seen a MySpace page! Parents need to see MySpace, Friendster, Xanga, etc. so they know what they are dealing with. It’s also important to note, that MySpace is the conduit not the perpetrator. Kids need to know how to navigate within the cyberspace environment safely. There will always be predators. It’s how not be one of their victims that needs to be taught and followed.
As for predators, the laws need to be more stringent and harsh.
As technology continues to improve, so do the risks. Kids can now be reached by predators right on their cell phones or personal PC’s or smart phones and their parents won’t even know. That said, education and outreach is more important than ever. Communities need to be involved as a community, not just school by school, but as a community.
By the way, regarding the issue of kids being able to report people who contact them with inappropriate content while on MySpace, please note that on every MySpace page, there is a link at the bottom of each page for the user to make a report to MySpace. Also, there is always law enforcement.
Rose,
One of the issues I do see with the bill is that most US public schools are always lobbying for additional teachers, library staff etc. Most student to teacher ratios are so high in most schools, I believe it will be difficult to effectively monitor online child users.
Obviously public libraries are a different matter.
As technology advances, the ability for students to access these sites from cell phones and the handheld mobile pc’s could quickly make this law as out of touch as the 1934 one it is enhancing. Ironically, most of the schools still complain about the lack of pc’s. If I understand correctly it effects schools that purchase via E-rate or receive funding from them and not schools that don’t.
However, I beleive you have to start somewhere. One of the issues our US legislators have is not all of them keep pace with technology issues, yet they legislate how to best protect our children from it’s abuse.
If you look how quickly the bill is moving through the process it also indicates it is an election year for some states in the US.
P.s I have been experimenting with wordpress so the blogs I have will be updated there.
Probably should have stated the issue better. It is really for those opposing the bill where headcount is a concern. Sorry if I confused anyone else besides me.
Oh great, another bill to take responsibility off the parents shoulders. In reading these responses, i’m choked. Why pass a bill forcing libraries and other institutions to restrict/monitor surfing?
Kids know what they are doing, they know they are putting themselves at high risk. Don’t ever doubt that. They are teens, they don’t care was what my girlfriends 14 year old told me. And yes, she’s right. There are too many parents that DON’T CARE what their kids are doing, even though i’ve showed them the proof of what their kids are up to online. I have personally sent hundreds of nexopia links to parents, guess what, things don’t change…
I don’t like bills like these and i’ll tell you why. Too many times we give the government more and more control of our freedoms, this is no exception. Let them control the net they say? I don’t think so.
What about targeting the source? The government knows full well that mIRC is crawling with pedophiles so why not shut it down??? What about yahoo or msn chat rooms? Why not target ISP’s that host these sites, fine them up the wazoo, take them down? Why censor a library where a child is supposed to go to learn?
Parents wouldn’t throw their 13 year old kid the keys to the car and say drive would they? So why are parents allowing their kids computers IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR BEDROOMS with mic and webcam? Hmmmm… makes me wonder. Babysitter maybe?
It’s plain and simple, until something happens? Nothing happens. It’s called complacency folks.
Robert you are correct. Kids do know what they are doing, therefore certain restrictions should be implemented to insure that teens cannot access these network sites like nexopia from school and libraries.
You state, “Parents wouldn’t throw their 13 year old kid the keys to the car and say drive would they? So why are parents allowing their kids computers IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR BEDROOMS with mic and webcam? ” Good question! I ask myself the same question.
You can’t say that all parents don’t care though! As a parent of two teens, I monitor my children from home when they use the computer, however I worry when they go to a library where they can access commercial social networking websites” and “chat rooms. I only hope that they will make wise choices based on the information that we constantly provide them with. I do wish there was an act that would prohibit schools and libraries from providing access to these types of websites to minors.