The World Wide War on … blogs?

Simran reports from India that India is now blocking most popular blogging sites:

Our lovely government, the government of India has BLOCKED all .blogspot.com, .typepad.com, geocities.com/ blogs and web-sites. There are more on the list, but these are the three, that all the media is agreeing on. I am in India, and I’m confirming it.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, the House of Reprehensibles has passed (by 410-15!) DOPA, which will make it illegal for schools and libraries to allow access to blogs, wikis, and sites with editable profiles. The opposition of the American Library Association didn't seem to matter.

"This unnecessary and overly broad legislation will hinder students' ability to engage in distance learning and block library computer users from accessing a wide array of essential Internet applications including instant messaging, email, wikis and blogs," said ALA president Leslie Burger. "Under DOPA, people who use library and school computers as their primary conduits to the Internet will be unfairly blocked from accessing some of the web's most powerful emerging technologies and learning applications. As libraries are already required to block content that is "harmful to minors" under the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA is redundant and unnecessary legislation."

Some observers have noted that, as worded, this ban includes e-commerce sites such as Amazon and ebay.

You probably couldn't find a better argument against this legislation than the one offered by CBS's Larry Magid:

The bill defines social networking sites as being "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."

That covers more than just chat and social networking and could force school and library officials to ban a wide range of sites, including Amazon.com and many news sites that allow for user feedback and interaction.

But even if the bill weren't overly broad, it would still be troublesome because it is the wrong – and I would argue a dangerous approach – to Internet safety.

While nearly everyone agrees that Internet predators should be "deleted," this bill doesn't address that issue. Unlike the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which the President signed into law on July 21, DOPA does nothing to strengthen penalties or increase prosecution of criminals who prey on children. Instead, it punishes the potential victims and educational institutions chartered to serve them, by denying access to interactive sites at school and libraries.

It would be like trying to protect children from being injured or killed by drunk drivers by ruling that kids can no longer walk, ride a bike or even ride in a car or bus to school.

Aside from punishing potential victims rather than the perpetrators, the bill doesn't even address the issue where it matters.

If children are going to get into trouble online, chances are it won't be at school. They'll be home, they'll be at a friend's house or they could even be completely away from adult supervision using their mobile phones. Schools and libraries are relatively protected environments where adults are never far away and, for the most part, computers are in public locations that make it difficult for users to hide what they're doing.

If anything, schools and libraries should be encouraging kids to use blogging and social networking services. They have enormous educational potential for such things as writing, interviewing, collaborative research, media literacy, and photography, but even if not used as part of a formal supervised education program, they encourage kids to communicate and reach out to others.

This affects me personally, since I have just started using blogs for students to publish, read, peer edit, and revise their writing. (Me is tea-cha, after all.) Hopefully Japan will not follow China, India, and now the United States into the black hole of internet censorship.

It's odd (or fitting?) that this move comes just as MySpace becomes the #1 internet portal in the United States. The internet is a new medium that still eludes government control. Social networking and communication are threats to the ruling elite's media control. It is predictable that they will continue to try to control this channel. Paranoid delusion number 200,608,031,538 tells me that "they" are data-mining all the e-mail and internet traffic to construct a model which will tell them where to send the death squads, if real democracy ever threatens to break out. (Is Google a CIA front?) Stand up, though! They will never be able to kill all of us!… Well, not until the mass production of robots really takes off. (Is a christo-fascist zombie man or machine?)