DOPA'd in the Dog Days

First there was CIPA, then the USA PATRIOT Act, and now, when no one is looking because it’s too darn hot, there is DOPA.

At a time when many of us are just beginning to learn about social networking sites (and how they might be used for good rather than evil!) they’ve been summarily banned from schools and libraries by the U.S. House of Representatives. At the end of July, the House approved, on a 410-15 vote, the Deleting Online Predators Act, which calls for any school or library receiving federal funding through the E-rate program to employ filters to prohibit minors from accessing social networking sites and chat rooms where they may be subject to "unlawful sexual advances."

Just as they did with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, those who would believe that a piece of software could protect children have forced their colleagues to support censorship rather than be perceived as supporting evil. Public institutions dependent on federal funds are being forced to shut down a whole mode of communication because some mistakenly think they can stop the bad guys, and others are afraid they’ll be mistaken for them. Maybe if schools and libraries had more government resources they would be safer, but that would mean putting one’s money where one’s rhetoric is. Instead, this legislation denies freedom of speech to those who are vulnerable because their schools and libraries are dependent on E-rate funding to which these strings can so easily be attached.

I agree with the rep who said DOPA "makes good press releases, but it won't save one single child from one single incident." As the American Library Association has noted in their opposition, school districts and libraries already have the power to block access to social networking sites, and a number of them already have done so. There is no evidence of a correlation between school and library computer use and sexual predators. The correlation is, I fear, between child safety and apple pie in the fall elections.

Is this what we’ve come to in our democracy? Our elected representatives can now be coerced into censorship? This legislation is now scheduled to go to the Senate, which may or may not have time to vote on it before their session ends. I hope that once the fall elections are over, senators will be more courageous than their House colleagues and stand up for the safety of our beleaguered Bill of Rights as well as for the safety of our children.

I thank my colleague Peter Chase, one of the Connecticut Four and chairman of the Connecticut Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, for providing us with information about DOPA and other issues of importance to libraries and librarians.