Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Center for Democracy and Technology says "Just Say No"

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) released its legislative recommendations. Although they support additional funds for parental controls and internet filtering, they do NOT support the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), which would expand the censoring due to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (which pertains to mostly schools and libraries) to include social networks. In other words, DOPA would result in people not being able to access their MySpace, Facebook, and BeBo accounts at their local school or library. They also may not be able to access Amazon, as there are ways to connect to people through sites such as those as well. "Social networking" has not been defined by the authors of DOPA yet.

CDT joins the American Library Association in its official stance against this bill which many believe is more about censorship than truly protecting youth. The CDT also opposes mandatory labeling that would require Web sites to label some content as "sexually explicit," if the bill did pass.

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