Congress to ban LiveJournal, Nightstar

[gwalla]

The "Deleting Online Predators Act" (H.R. 5319) would ban minors from any site that "allows users to create web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users; and offers a mechanism for communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, email, or instant messenger."

Comments

[derakon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think they quite realize just how ridiculous that one is.

[animal-co.livejournal.com]

Stupid as I think this legislation is, you've done something that I routinely screech at newsreaders and newspaper headline writers for. Look at your subject line:

Congress to ban LiveJournal, Nightstar

Well, no. They're not. They're proposing to ban minors from those sites. The law, which I predict will die not with a bang but a whimper, would not ban LiveJournal or Nightstar.

We should strive to be honest, even - especially - in criticism.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true. But how would they be able to enforce it short of banning, or requiring every site to check credit cards or sign up with one of those adultpass services? The current "solution" that phpBB has by default is the COPPA link during registration, an "honor system" solution that is as toothless as those "I'm over 18 / I'm under 18" links on adult sites...or MySpace's age restrictions.

[jokermage.livejournal.com]

This is really stupid. Teaching kids about what is acceptible online is a parental responsibility issue.

I hate election years. Every resolution is basically vote-pandering and fund raising.

[malver.livejournal.com]

Not sure if the law has been returned from the GAO-- it hadn't been last I checked-- so that its text itself can be browsed yet, but when I first heard of it, it required certain kinds of tracking (by libraries? by ISPs?) that might act as partial enforcement mechanisms. It might be enforceable enough --

(or perhaps be a stage in the better mousetrap - more clever mouse game, instead, yes; I don't know. Some well-known sites would lose membership and other sites would take advantage of that, I suppose.)

[malver.livejournal.com]

That should probably be Government Printing Office, of course. And HR5319 can now be searched for at http://thomas.loc.gov, as it couldn't be then- so yes, it has been "enrolled".

[starkruzr.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how would you enforce that on your kids? Kids typically stop believing in parental omnipotence/omnipresence after the age of 12 or so at the latest.

Would you propose to keep your kids out of the library?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not saying I could be some perfect overlord that'd meter all their activities. There's little I could do if they simply used a school computer (though I've regularly seen chat and other protocols blocked on such networks.) Beside, circumventing parental limitations is part of growing up. The best I could do would be to convince them to do other things that don't potentially expose you to people who want to rape and/or murder you.

Also, it'd only be a matter of time before they'd try to access those webpages on the home computer. That's when Mr. Secret Key-logger brings down the terrible hammer of vengeance. :)