Educational Social Networking Ready for a Post-DOPA Era

Social networking sites and services are dealing with a new threat - the U.S. government. The DOPA act (Delete Online Predators) is proposed legislation that was recently passed by the House of Representatives by 410 to 15. If the act is passed and made into law, this sweeping legislation will ban social networking sites and services from being accessed from schools. Not only would sites like MySpace & Friendster be affected, but the broad definition of of social networking in the DOPA act would ban access to any websites that meet the following criteria:

• is offered by a commercial entity;
• permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
• permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
• elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
• enables communication among users.

By this definition, sites live Blogger or LiveJournal would be banned, flickr & photo-sharing sites, instant messenging services, & basically any non-educational social networks, chat rooms, wikis, instant messaging, blogs and possibly even e-mail would be banned. Ouch. For a political party that by definition wants less "big government", it seems odd that party members & supporters would have no problem with this legislation, which is nothing short of letting the government do the parenting for you. Or perhaps they just want to ban the majority of the new Web 2.0 offerings so those darned poor people can’t access them and better themselves.

A short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction, ban everything! ban social conversation! law is not what this country needs. In fact, this legislation is not needed at all. As the ALA points out, "As libraries are already required to block content that is ‘harmful to minors’ under the Children’s Internet Protection Act, DOPA is redundant and unnecessary legislation."

The technical director, Ben Werdmullerh, at a new social networking service called Elgg, states that "this legislation is underpinned by backwards ideas about the Internet, and needs to be fought, sooner rather than later." Backwards ideas about the internet? Not our congressmen! Ha!

So Elgg prepares for the post-DOPA era…Elgg describes their offering as a "new breed of learning environment based around choice, flexibility and openness: a Personal Learning Landscape that firmly places individuals at the centre of their learning. With the freedom to incorporate all of your favorite tools within one environment, Elgg allows you to showcase your best work with as many or as few people as you choose." In other words, what they’re offering is a an open-source social networking service designed specifically for schools. Legal? Yes. As Werdmullerh notes, "Elgg installations at institutions or hosted on Elgg Spaces are provided by the institution, and therefore escape the legislation. In fact, Elgg may be the only social networking system school-age educators can use within the law."

I’m glad we have a backup plan, but I hope we never need it. Agree with me? Contact your congressmen and/or endorse the Joint Statement Opposing Internet Blocking Requirements in School and Libraries by emailing statement@onlinepolicy.org.