[tags]DOPA, Congress, Web 2.0, Social software, technology ban[/tags]
I promised to draft a letter to my Congressman about the Deleting Online Predators Act (PDF). Here it is, and please leave suggestions for improvement in the comment section.
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Dear Rep. Buyer,
I am an associate professor in the Mathematics and Computing Department at Franklin College, an officer in the Indiana chapter of the Mathematical Association of America, and a constituent in your district. I am writing you today to voice my concern over the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), recently introduced to Congress by Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. In practice, the bill will require public schools and libraries to block access by students to any internet site that could potentially be used to access “material that is harmful to minors”. While well-intentioned, this legislation would have a crippling effect on the ability of public schools to use a new generation of web-based software technology, effectively removing this technology from the hands of both teachers and students who could make good use of it.
The restrictions proposed by DOPA would involve blocking any internet site that allows users to create profiles or pages in which personal information is stored and which allows communication between users. The intended target of DOPA appears to be online chat rooms and social networking sites such as MySpace. But there are a wide variety of sites which would fall under the aegis of this legislation which not only do not pose threats of sexual predation to minors, but in fact have great potential for transforming the educational experiences of the students being “protected”. Such sites include:
- Social bookmarking services, which allow users to create web-based lists (and research other users’ lists) of internet locations organized by subject;
- Wikis, which are user-contributed knowledge bases on various subjects, the most prominent of which is the online encyclopedia known as Wikipedia;
- Weblogs, both those written by others as well as those written and maintained by the students themselves.
All of these instances of “social software” technology have the potential to effect a transformative change in the quality of education at the K-12 level. As a college professor, I am already utilizing this technology to enhance the classes I teach and encouraging my students to learn this technology themselves. I find it alarming, therefore, that there would be a move by Congress to keep this technology out of the hands of the students who could most benefit from it — the kids of the current “Net Generation”. We send dangerously mixed signals to these kids when we enact high standards and encourage excellence in math, science and technology on the one hand, and then ban the use of technology on the other.
While we all want to protect kids from online predators, banning the medium by which such behavior happens is a reactionary measure that has been shown time and again in the past to be of little or no effect. Banning the technology does not solve the problem; teaching the appropriate use of the technology does. I urge you and the other members of Congress to support a more effective means of protecting our kids, such as through the promotion of materials for parents about how to teach kids appropriate use of technology. There are many such materials already available online.
Thank you for your time, and please feel free to contact me at the provided address if you would like to discuss this issue further.
7 responses so far ↓
rightwingprof // 14 May 2006 at 2:33 pm
So did he respond? I’ve heard Steve is pretty good at replying to constituents.
Robert Talbert // 14 May 2006 at 2:58 pm
I actually haven’t sent it yet; I posted this on Friday and have been pretty busy with finals. Probably Monday.
Steve is a very smart guy. I traded letters with him a year or so ago about the SCO vs. Linux lawsuit and I was surprised at the depth of the knowledge he had about it, and the fact that he responded within a week of my mailing the letter in the first place. I’m pretty proud to have somebody like him, and also Mike Pence, representing us here in Hoosierland.
Mobilize.org // 15 May 2006 at 3:33 pm
Mobilize.org is launching a new campaign in response to Congress’ attempt to censor the communication of our generation. We have created the action alert below and built a website, http://www.mobilize.org/SOS. We are hoping to get as much grassroots action as possible around this important issue, especially from the online community.
Breaking News:
Legislation introduced this week will ban social networking, even sites used for educational and professional opportunities. What’s next? HR5319 will censor the communication of our generation and tell us who we can talk to, when and how. Tell Congress that social networking is a movement that we built, a movement that we are going to fight for.
Visit http://www.mobilize.org/SOS, take action, tell your friends and get mad.
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The bill blocks the use of these sites in public libraries, which is for many, the only access that they have to a computer. Our hope is to be able to amend the bill to take these facts into consideration. We agree that there need to be safeguards put in place for “sexual predators” and any of other crimes that might occur because of the accessibility of information on these sites, but to ban them in schools (including using school computers afterschool) and public libraries, is for many - banning social networking.
rightwingprof // 17 May 2006 at 3:24 pm
I was in Baron Hill’s, then Mike Sodrel’s district. One thing I will say for Hill is he answered every letter I sent, and never with a form letter. Specter, OTOH, is even nasty in his responses to his constituents (having gotten a couple of very nasty replies from him since moving here).
Casting Out Nines»Blog Archive » Technology banning, antique style? // 9 June 2006 at 10:56 pm
[...] Or perhaps this is another provision of DOPA? Because, you know, those predators out there would certainly want to keep themselves secret, so we can’t allow anybody to keep anything secret. • • • [...]
EduBlog Insights » Blog Archive » No to DOPA // 17 December 2006 at 10:32 pm
[...] I believe Tom is right in rejecting the premise and rationale for this bill. Thanks, Tom! It was also really helpful to read all the letters from other educators. I love this blogging community. Thanks Liz, Miguel, Will, Robert, and Doug. I’m sure there were others I missed. Here’s mine: [...]
Casting Out Nines / DOPA rises from the ashes // 16 February 2007 at 4:04 pm
[...] A while back I posted about the ill-conceived Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), a congressional bill designed to protect children from online predators by making it illegal to use public computers — such as those found in public libraries and public schools — to access sites that involve some kind of social networking functionality. Sounds good, but it was technologically naive and pedagogically damaging. Fortunately, the bill got stuck in red tape and has quietly died away. [...]
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