A regular reader of my blog, one who is not an educator and who does not always agree with my ideas, has posted a comment on one of my DOPA entries that I suspect bares some consideration — probably more than I can give at the moment.
He points to a law that was signed on July 27, The Adam Walsh Child Protection Action of 2006. This reader says…
I’m curious why bloggers aren’t drawing attention to The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 which was signed into law on July 27. Among its many provisions are some intiatives aimed at protecting kids online. One is staffing up Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces across the country to go after online predators, increased penatlies for offenders, and a grant program to that instructs:
The Attorney General, in consultation with the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, is authorized to develop and carry out a public
awareness campaign to demonstrate, explain, and encourage children, parents, and
community leaders to better protect children when such children are on the Internet. Similar grants could be made to state governments and potentially schools as well.
The commentor continues with…
It strikes me that this at least provides the arguement that DOPA is not needed due to a bill that was just signed with child saftey protections. Plus it includes the educational campaign that some are calling for.
Are there any aspects of DOPA, besides the appeal of the title that are not already covered in the Adam Walsh law?
Interesting point, David, from your blog reader. It perhaps helps to prove the obvious consideration that many high-profile examples of legislation, such as DOPA, are less to do with enacting a genuinely useful new law, and more to do with gaining party political capital for being seen to deal firmly with issues that are deemed to be of concern to the enlightened constituency that the promoters of the new law wish to kowtow to. The fact that there might be some earlier pieces of legislation that could deal with the issues perfectly well is not even considered, since the intention is simply to get their ‘decisive action’ into the media with a view to gaining votes when the next election comes around.
We do seem to be living, in the UK just as much as in the US, in a hugely over-legislated society today. DOPA is, I think, just another in a long line of legislation in recent years that has more to do with garnering votes than understanding the real issues involved. Such lack of understanding, when combined with a complete unwillingness to listen to people who do understand the territory in question, will always make for bad legislation. In DOPA’s case, it is the future education of children that is endangered.
The only positive note, I guess, is that bad legislation often turns out to be simply unworkable. As I have said elsewhere, it might actually be interesting to watch any attempt to carry out the aims of the legislation by actually banning certain sites from schools. I think it will prove difficult if not impossible in any case.
*Some letter-writing resources*
Children less likely to encounter online predators
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/internetprivacy/2006-08-08-kids-online-survey_x.htm
The bill: http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.05319:
Senate sub-committee assigned the bill (ranking minority member = John Kerry: http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Subcommittees.Subcommittee&Subcommittee_ID=87