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I can think of five sites that I'm involved with -- 3 of which are dedicated
to Internet safety.
BlogSafety.com that I co-direct with
Anne Collier is a forum for discussing how to keep teens safe online allows
people to register and create profiles. That might be banned.
SafeKids.com,
SafeTeens.com and
<a href="http://www.pcanswer.com" rel="nofollow">PCAnswer.com, which I operate, are set up
as WordPress blogs and, by default, they allow comments and the ability to
register so they might be banned as well.
I also write for CBSNews.com which allows registration and comments. I suppose
that too would be banned.
As I said in my CBS News
article about DOPA, it should be called DOTA -- Deleting Online
Teenagers Act.
Larry Magid
http://www.last.fm/users/
For those who don't know, think "e-mail sigs", the basic nature of e-mail, and GMail's new "Add your photo" feature.
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Here's an additional issue (category) to add to your analysis; "help forums". The following two forums allow persons to ask and answer questions concerning computer applications. If the proposed legislation adversely affects these sites a lot of collaborative exchange of technical information would be frustrated. Not being able to access these sites from schools or libraries would severely limit the ability of students to learn computer skills.
http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/inde...
http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?s=8...
As a side issue, many forums are located outside of US jurisdiction even though you can access them from the US, so how would the proposed legislation regulate these sites????? The access forum above is based in the United Kingdom.
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General lightweight computer discussion.
http://leovilletownsquare.com/fusionbb/
http://www.eham.net/
Your comment raises an important point. The fact that many sites are out of US jurisdiction (above mentioned last.fm is an example) is one of the reasons why all these ideas to restrict access to social networking sites are flawed. Even for a small-time blogger like me it is relatively easy to buy web hosting in countries that do not care about anything.
I thing the motivation behind all these laws is not to protect children but just to get votes from panicked parents who do not comprehend how the Internet works. Investing a couple of dollars in some education programs would be probably a better idea towards protecting kids.
I wonder if YouthNoise.com, a nonprofit social-networking site promoting teen social activism (started by Save the Children), would be able to afford putting age verification in place. It would certainly be banned under a DOPA-type law. This one would be a great loss, I believe.
Ning.com says it now hosts more than 33,000 mini-social-networking sites run by individuals and small groups (such as Santa Monica beach volleyball and Pez dispenser collectors. I guess these individual social sites would have to age verify or would be banned by a DOPA-type law.
Then there are all the family-oriented social-networking sites from which kids would be banned and unable to socialize online with their grandparents on Famster.com, Families.com, Famoodle.com, Cingo.com, FamilyRoutes.com, Minti.com, and Famundo.com.
Many niche sites would be banned, such as WAYN.com, TripConnect.com, and Zimbio.com (in the travel category, the last one a guide to all the travel-social-networking sites); and thoos.com for outdoor athletes (runners, paragliders, cyclists, hikers, etc.) and SportsDigger.com for sports fans; Digg.com for the news; and Reuters is planning a financial social-networking site. Kids will be banned from comparing notes on the news or learning financial planning in these last two categories.
I also wonder what the impact on Wikipedia.org would be, not to mention its ever-growing list of links to social-networking sites.
I think this blog is safe because we don't offer our readers the ability to create profiles.
-Tim
Below I have posted two stories from the past week that show how political campaigns are being transformed by social networking technology. My.BarakObama.com shows where this is all going.
Through this lens, I have a few questions: 1) As a society, we really want young people starting to engage in political discourse -- it's clear that they would rather make their political comments on a social networking site rather than writing a letter to the editor. Would these restrictions hurt the budding interest of young people to engage in political discourse? 2) The most commonly used age verification technology is a credit card. How will credit card verification affect low income folks or those without access to lines of credit. In a political environment already charged by concerns over voter disenfranchisement, how will the courts view these age-verification gates to social networking-enabled political discourse?
"Young Voters Find Voice on Facebook,
Site's Candidate Groups Are Grass-Roots Politics for the Web Generation" [Washington Post]
"Donations Pooled Online Are Getting Candidates' Attention" [
Washington Post]