So the news on DOPA is eerily quiet. I’m starting to think (hope?) that our best outcome right now is that the Senate Commerce committee won’t deal with it until after the October 6 target recess date which means that it will become a post election issue. That might just allow cooler heads to prevail. (Here’s the meeting schedule through Sept. 28…DOPA isn’t mentioned.)
In poking around, however, I did find this interesting tidbit that I hadn’t seen and that I can’t seem to confirm. Geoffrey Fletcher writes in THE Journal that “DOPA also wants to
make these sites available only to people age 18 and older,” as in people under 18 wouldn’t be able to use them anywhere, in or out of schools. Is that right?
At any rate, I don’t think now is the time to get any less vigialant about this. If you haven’t already done so, write your senators and tell them that only education will truly protect kids from falling victim to predation on the Net or anywhere else for that matter.
technorati tags:dopa, education, weblogg-ed
I’m not sure why you’re so amazed. Right now, the only people actually talking about DOPA are bloggers, which has the ironic, preverse effect of keeping the bill alive. The real clue that this wasn’t going to go anywhere was when it passed the House with such a large majority. It indicated that this was more a “statement” vote on child safety than an actual legislative bill they expected the Sen. to take up. Not terribly unusal since something like only 6% of all bills proposed each year ever become law.
I also think THE Journal is wrong with the age requirement. That’s no where to be found in the actual legislative text. I’ve been a bit puzzeled but how few bloggers have ] taken the time to read the actual text of the bill. As a result, there’s all sorts of misconceptions about what it requires and what the penalties are. Your post over at District Administrator contained several overstatements.
I’m also puzzled by why bloggers aren’t drawing more attention to the law that was signed in July which includes an education component. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 was signed into law on July 27. The law includes staffing up Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces across the country to go after online predators, increased penatlies for offenders, and a grant program to that instructs the the Attorney General to develop and carry out a public awareness campaign to demonstrate, explain, and encourage children, parents, and community leaders to better protect children when such children are on the Internet. http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/documents/AdamWalshAct.pdf
So everyone is spending time arguing that DOPA is the wrong approach, education is the better approach, and then when an education bill is signed, they don’t even talk about it.
Looks like US News has picked up part on part of the dangers of DOPA. See http://edtechnths.blogspot.com/