NSLS Blogs

 Home » Blogs » Ad Lib: Advocacy for Libraries

Ad Lib: Advocacy for Libraries

September 13, 2006

The Straight DOPA

Kay pointed me to the Librarian in Black, who pointed me to this DOPA and the Participation Gap PDF of the article that Bob Doyle wrote in the ILA Reporter. Bob explains what the Act is, and what the problems with it are:

The act is based on the fear that when young people reveal personal information about themselves to friends and new acquaintances online, such information becomes available to certain adults, dubbed by the act “online predators.” While this is a genuine concern, the act is overbroad and threatens not only to disrupt the value of these targeted sites, but also to do so disproportionately, seriously disadvantaging young people who rely on public access computers rather than more private access via home computers, WiFi, cell phones, etc.

Basically, in a time when libraries are trying to find ways to bring teens into libraries, it doesn’t make sense to block what could be one of the biggest draws. (The article features a wonderful pull quote from an ironically anonymous teen: “If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist.”)

Of course, none of this lessens that DOPA is overly broad legislation; the equivalent of disallowing public buses from taking kids to the mall because there might be a kidnapper there. It just provides yet another perspective to why the library community is, by and large, against the Act.

All this is by way of reminder that DOPA has passed the House (by a vote of 410 - 15!) and is in the hands of the Senate even as we speak! If you have a chance, give Senators Durbin and Obama a call and let them know what you think about this bill.

posted by Alan at 11:38 am |

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website