“The days of Myspace and other social networking sites could be numbered at schools and public libraries. The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives by a 410 to 15 vote. If it becomes law, the act will force public schools and libraries to bar access to social networking websites and chat rooms."
Yup, I’m back from vacation and after catching up on news of the pass few days I’m wishing in a small, small way that I was back at the beach. But NO GO!
Please, please, PLEASE join me in writing and emailing your state senators in support of blocking this bill in Senate. This is too, TOO, TOOOO IMPORTANT for both the future of libraries and freedom of information access to disregard!! A block on social networking websites would in effect render over half of the information found on the Internet today useless including Associated Press blogs, Wired news, Wikipedia, Flickr photos, even access to Library blogs like this one. This is too important for libraries, schools and the public at large to ignore.
Read ALA’s, Leslie Burger's response.
Read YALSA's very excellent document on the educational value of social networking sites.
Read this (another good arguement against DOPA)
And then please join me in emailing your state senator (contact info)
As already proven by the House of Respresentatives, Ignorance can be a powerful thing. Please join in the campaign to help educate the members of the Senate and public, so that this uniformed bill doesn't pass!
Technorati Tags: DOPA, Libraries
3 comments:
And whom can be best adressed to from outside the US? It's important for other countries too since we tend to follow the conservative wave of the US :-/
http://zbdigitaal.blogspot.com
Some myspace users have put up a petition against the act as well, here:-
http://www.saveyourspace.org/petition/petition.html
Also-YALSAs response to DOPA: http://www.leonline.com/yalsa/dopa_teens_social_networking.pdf. Since many social networking sites are used by teens, it is important that Teen Services in schools and libraries understand what is happening and advocate for the education and safety of teens and work to preserve what is important and helpful to them.
Also, there seems so much more discussion when a book is banned then when talking about the possible end of social networking sites in schools and libraries. Why?
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