Kent Newsome on technology, music and life

7/28/2006


The MySpace Law is a Good Thing

When I said the other day that "as soon as the parents of the world (and the legislators they vote for) come to understand the risk their kids are taking by putting their lives online, MySpace will come under increasing pressure to become safer," I didn't realize when would be now.

Marshall Kirkpatrick writes today about House Resolution 5319. If it becomes a law, HR 5319 will require schools and libraries to block social networking sites and chat rooms.

Marshall, not surprisingly, looks at the issue from the perspective of application developers.

Let me give you the parents' perspective. Put very simply, is there anyone with two brain cells to rub together who thinks that kids should spend part of their time at school surfing around MySpace?

Of course not.

I will read the resolution and the portions of the Communications Act it seeks to amend tonight, but based on what I have read so far, this is a good thing.

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Posted by Kent @ 7/28/2006 08:34:00 AM | Permalink

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2 Comment(s):

Lol, I think that the student organizing for the rallies against the most recent anti-immigration legislation that went on via MySpace was a good thing. Some presumably went on during school ours and the step taken by that organizing was...a school walk out - gasp!

No, I can hear what you're saying, but there are MANY educators who think that social networking sites online are very important. I haven't even done it yet, but I'm guessing that a Technorati search for blogs tagged eLearning or Education2.0 would bring up lots of teacher blogs who disagree with you.

Furthermore, and the point that most people are emphasizing - it's not just about MySpace but has the potential to impact a much wider list of sites, many of which you would presumably support your children using. Or maybe not, I don't know.

Ultimately you're right, I wrote that post from the perspective of a person primarily interested in web apps. I don't have my own children, so to some degree my opinion is all in the abstract. But there are many people, some with brain cells even, who agree that DOPA stinks.

Nice cross blogging with you!

By Anonymous Marshall, at 7/28/2006 9:11 AM  
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I don't care whether or not schools block certain sites from the students access, but I don't think that is a decision the government should be making. What if some teacher wanted to use some site like myspace to organize a class participation project. To just blindly block something like myspace because bad things happen to a handful of kids just seems knee-jerky to me.

By Anonymous Mike, at 7/28/2006 9:36 AM  
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