The Summer of Dev Protects Children

Who will protect the children? We must protect the children! Politicians, please protect the children. It's an election year. I think. Election years are fun, because they bring out the best marketing tools. Our over-paid, under-worked, and over-esteemed politicians love buzzwords during election years. A particular topic that the clowns will discuss ad nauseam will be about protecting children.. and since we live in a digital age, it will be about protecting children on the internet.

Some congressmanator named Fitzpatrick has created a bill called the Deleting Online Predators Act, or DOPA. You can read about it here. Basically, he feels that libraries that get federal funds should keep social networking sites out of the reach of minors. By social networking, the protectors of morality and children define it as any commercial website that allows users to create their own webpages and also offer discussion boards, chatrooms, or email. Obviously, this bill is targeting sites like facebook, friendster, and myspace. The bill would also include sites like livejournal, yahoo messenger, and the Summer of Dev (along with all other blogger.com websites) though.

I guess this will keep children safe from online predators. I heard on 20/20 that there are alot of predators on the internet. Sarcasm aside, know that I'm all for keeping children safe. But legislation like this only serves as a politician's resume-fodder during an election year.

If you really want to help protect a child, you educate them. You don't try to safeguard them against every danger in the world. Want to argue that? Think back to high school when you knew that nerdy kid that had really overbearing parents. Now think about what happened to them once they got to college.

Exactly.

I personally feel that computer science courses should be apart of everyone's middle school curriculum. Part of that course should teach the various dangers of the internet, ranging from identity theft to pedophiles. That isn't as catchy as saying you created the 'Deleting Online Predators Act' though.

So anyway, I look forward to hearing all the other buzzword reelection slogans that we're going to be bombarded with for the rest of the year. My favorite is when the really moral grey hairs start making a fuss about teaching evolution in the classroom.