[Infowarrior] - Congress targets social network sites

Wed May 10 21:37:59 EDT 2006

Congress targets social network sites

By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/Congress+targets+social+network+sites/2100-1028_3-607104
0.html

Story last modified Wed May 10 18:10:01 PDT 2006

MySpace.com has recently found itself pummeled by critical media reports
describing how teens are divulging personal information without much thought
to the consequences.

A Newsweek article in January was titled "Predator's Playground?" A Dateline
NBC report last month warned that teens using MySpace--now part of Rupert
Murdoch's News Corp. and boasting some 80 million users--are not as safe "as
they think."

Now MySpace and other social networking sites like LiveJournal.com and
Facebook are facing a new threat: A proposed federal law that would
effectively require most schools and libraries to render those Web sites
inaccessible to minors, an age group that includes some of the category's
most ardent users.

"When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and
have access to social networking sites, we have reason to be concerned,"
Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, told CNET News.com in an
interview.

Fitzpatrick and fellow Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert,
on Wednesday endorsed new legislation (click here for PDF) that would cordon
off access to commercial Web sites that let users create public "Web pages
or profiles" and also offer a discussion board, chat room, or e-mail
service.

That's a broad category that covers far more than social networking sites
such as Friendster and Google's Orkut.com. It would also sweep in a wide
range of interactive Web sites and services including Blogger.com, AOL and
Yahoo's instant messaging features, and Microsoft's Xbox 360, which permits
in-game chat.

Fitzpatrick's bill, called the Deleting Online Predators Act, is part of a
new, poll-driven effort by Republicans to address topics that they view as
important to suburban voters. Republican pollster John McLaughlin polled 22
suburban districts and presented his research at a retreat earlier this
year. Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, is cosponsoring the measure.

The group, which is calling itself the "Suburban Caucus," convened a press
conference on Wednesday to announce new legislation it hopes will rally
conservative supporters--and prevent the Democrats from retaking the House
of Representatives during the November mid-term election.

For its part, MySpace has taken steps in recent weeks to assuage concerns
among parents and politicians (Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly
also took aim at MySpace this week). It has assigned about 100 employees,
about one-third of its workforce, to deal with security and customer care,
and hired Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam, a former Justice Department prosecutor as
chief security officer last month.

"We have been working collaboratively on security and safety issues with an
array of government agencies, law enforcement and educational groups,
nonprofits and leading child safety organizations," said Rick Lane, vice
president for government affairs at MySpace owner News Corp. "We've also met
with several state and federal legislators and are working with them to
address their concerns. We hope this healthy dialogue will continue."

Fitzpatrick, who represents a suburban district outside Philadelphia,
acknowledged that MySpace "is working" on this. Still, he said, children are
"unattended on the Internet through the course of the day" when they're at
libraries and schools.

"My bill is both timely and needed and will be very well accepted, certainly
by the constituents I represent," Fitzpatrick said.

Backers of the proposal argue, however, that it's necessary to protect
children. Hastert said on Wednesday that it "would put filters in schools
and libraries so that kids can be protected... We've all heard stories of
children on some of these social websites meeting up with dangerous
predators. This legislation adds another layer of protection."

Fitzpatrick's bill, called the Deleting Online Predators Act, is part of a
new, poll-driven effort by Republicans to address topics that they view as
important to suburban voters. Republican pollster John McLaughlin polled 22
suburban districts and presented his research at a retreat earlier this
year. Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican, is cosponsoring the measure.
To curb teenage access to interactive Web sites, Republicans chose to target
libraries and schools by expanding a federal law called the Children's
Internet Protection Act.

That law, signed by President Clinton in December 2000, requires schools and
libraries that receive federal funding to block access to off-color
materials. Librarians challenged it in federal court on First Amendment
grounds, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law by a 6-3 vote in June
2003.

The Deleting Online Predators Act, or DOPA, would add an additional
requirement. It says that libraries, elementary and secondary schools must
prohibit "access to a commercial social networking Web site or chat room
through which minors" may access sexual material or be "subject to" sexual
advances. Those may be made available to an adult or a minor with adult
supervision "for educational purposes."

Lynne Bradley, director of the American Library Association's office of
government relations, said she was still reviewing the legislation. She
added that: "We're as protective of kids as any other protection in this
whole field, but we do know there are legitimate uses (of social networking
sites)."

"ALA is always in favor of having quality and detailed education on how best
to use the Internet and these other digital tools and the best user is an
informed user that knows the risks, how to avoid them, and knows how to keep
him or herself safe," Bradley said.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, there have been 25,707
agreements to provide federal funding to school districts or individual
schools, and 3,902 agreements to libraries or library systems. The ALA
estimates that as many as two-thirds of libraries receive federal funding
and would be affected by DOPA.

DOPA would also require the Federal Trade Commission to set up a Web site
about the "potential dangers posed by the use of the Internet by children"
and order the Federal Communications Commission to create a committee and
publish a list of Web sites "that have been known to allow sexual predators"
access to minors' personal information.

Rosa Aronson, director of advocacy for the National Association of Secondary
School Principals also said her organization did not currently have a
position on DOPA.

"We are grappling with the tension between promoting our normal policy,
which is to promote local control for schools, and on the other end of the
spectrum, there is the issue of protection of students," Aronson said.

Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the free-market Progress & Freedom
Foundation, was not as reticent. "This is the next major battlefield in the
ongoing Internet censorship wars: social networking Web sites," he said.

"Many in government will want to play the role of cyber traffic cop here,
just as they have for other types of speech on the Internet," Thierer said,
adding that it will "chill legitimate forms of speech or expression online."

Laws restricting Web sites tend to be challenged in the courts. The ALA, for
instance, sued to overturn the Communications Decency Act in 1996 and the
library-filtering requirement a few years later.

But DOPA seems to have been written to benefit from the high court's 2003
ruling that library filtering was permissible. Bob Corn-Revere, a partner at
the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine who has argued before the Supreme
Court, said the eventual fate of DOPA may depend on whether it's implemented
narrowly or broadly.

Even so, Corn-Revere said, "treating MySpace sites like poison seems like an
extreme overreaction."

CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report.