Archive for the ‘Government’ Category

Government Attempting to Force “Parental Consent” for MySpace Signups

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

We’ve covered this before. This time, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper feels that it is time to require parental consent for children under the age of 18 to sign up for “social networking” sites like MySpace.  (source article)

Of course, there’s no mention on how Mr. Cooper plans to determine what qualifies as a “social networking” site. Or how they’ll go about ensuring that kids will not just be able to claim to be 18 years old.

You gotta love feel-good legislation…

Posted in Government, Social Networking | No Comments »

The KIDS ‘Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act’ of 2007

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Once again, Senators with little knowledge of how the Internet works are writing flawed legislation.  John McCain (R-AZ) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) are pushing a “feel good” bill to the senate floor that would require sex offenders to submit e-mail addresses, instant-message names, and other identifying Internet information to federal authorities.

Sure, who doesn’t want to protect children online from sexual predators?  The problem is that the legislation is difficult to near impossible to enforce, and would require nearly every website that has social interaction to link to a sexual predators database.  The blog MyCrimeSpace has a good posting on this as well.

From the article:

As for the bill’s intent to stop age misrepresentation, Internet safety experts say nice try, but hardly enforceable. Parry Aftab, a cyberspace attorney and executive director of the 8-year-old WiredSafety.org, said only “the stupidest” online predators would use their registered online monikers. And “while there’s a lot of stupid sexual predators, it’s easy to get around (the proposal).”

“I love the idea, but who’s going to comply?” Aftab said. “I don’t want to dismiss the efforts of anyone who’s trying to help, but what we’re coming up with is a lot of knee-jerk legislation.”

Posted in Government, Predators, Sex Offenders | 1 Comment »

Senator wants to Restrict Social Networking sites

Friday, January 26th, 2007

I think most would agree that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook should take additional steps to protect minors that sign up for their services. But do we really need government to get involved? Georgia State Senator Cecil Staton has proposed a bill that would “make it illegal for the owner or operator of a social networking Web site to allow minors to create or maintain a Web page without parental permission.”

In the wild world of Web 2.0, how do you define a social networking web site? What inherent features flags a site as a “social networking web site” and who makes that decision?  And what happens if a social networking website just happens to be based outside of the USA? This kind of legislation raises all sorts of sticky issues that are better left resolved in the private sector.

From the article:

If owners or operators of a company failed to comply with the proposed law, they would be guilty of a misdemeanor on the first offense. A second offense would be a felony and could lead to imprisonment for between one and five years and a fine up to $50,000 or both.

And the real kicker:

Staton said the bill does not tell the companies exactly how to ensure that minors don’t log on without parental permission. The companies can figure that out on their own, he said.

“They can find a way to do this,” Staton said. “That’s my challenge to them.”

Read the rest here.

Posted in Government, Social Networking | 1 Comment »