DOPA: The Ins and Outs of Deleting Online Predators

DOPA or The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Michael Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and was passed by a vote of 410 to 15 in July of 2006. DOPA is currently on review in the Senate, and was introduced by Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, on January 4, 2007.   DOPA stipulates that facilities receiving federal aid must block minors from accessing commercial social-networking sites and chat rooms due to their risk of encountering child predators.  The bill primarily targets public schools and libraries.  

According to a 2006 CNET article, Lawmakers Take Aim at Social-Networking Sites, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said the bill "would put filters in schools and libraries so that kids can be protected... We've all heard stories of children on some of these social Web sites meeting up with dangerous predators. This legislation adds another layer of protection."

Indeed, according to The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NMEC) more than 2,600 incidents of adults using the Internet to entice children were reported last year.  Will DOPA in its current draft really help rectify this problem?  

"Limiting access to social networking sites in schools and libraries will have little impact on the overall problem, since young people access these collaborative sites from many locations over a period of time," Illinois Library Association Executive Director Robert P. Doyle said on the February 28, 2009 ALA TechSource blog. He adds, "If children are going to get into trouble online, chances are it won't be at school or at the library."

This controversial act, unfortunately, covers more than just popular social networking and bloging sites such as MyYearbook, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, blogger, livejournal and Xanga.  The bill includes the blocking of any website with an interactive component.  This would include everything from Amazon to Yahoo and AOL's instant messaging system. The bill requires filtering based on technology and not content, which the American Library Association, as well as many educators, find problematic.

Under the current regulations in DOPA students and teachers would be prevented from accessing sites with wikis (or editable content) as well as blogs and sites that allow commenting, which can be found on major news sources such as The New York Times online and all of the CNET networks, just to name a few.  Most school libraries already have filters on incoming Internet access due to the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which was signed into law by President Clinton in 2000.  Under DOPA regulations, in-school access to any site with amendable content would be allowed only with adult supervision and if the site is being used for an educational purpose.  For libraries, access would be allowed only if parental authorization is given and the parents are informed that "sexual predators can use these websites and chat rooms to prey on children."  Educators are having a difficult time supporting this bill because many have found the educational use of wiki and blog sites to be incredibly useful in their daily lessons.

Rep. Diane Watson, a Democrat from California, and Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, argued in opposition of DOPA when it was presented in the House, maintain that the bill failed to combat the threats to minors, and placed a burden on schools and libraries to block millions of sites with largely innocent information. Rep. Jay Inslee, a Democrat from Washington, suggested that an amended bill focused on directly blocking and prosecuting predators as well as providing tools to educate children on how to avoid online dangers would be more advantageous.  Inslee also noted that most internet activity, especially on social networking sites, occurs in the home.

The impact on youth from economically disadvantaged families is what Henry Jenkins, professor of literature and director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, also notes as a major problem in the current DOPA legislation. "Already, you have a gap [in education] between kids who have 10 minutes of Internet access a day at the public library and kids who have 24-hour-a-day access at home," he told Technology Review in an articled entitled The Moral Panic over Social-Networking Sites. "It exaggerates the 'participation gap' -- not a technology gap, but a difference in access to the defining cultural experiences that take place around technology today."

"[Teenagers will] be moving from site to site with a level of ephemerality that no one can keep up with," Danah Boyd says. "Not the cops -- not even the designers of the technology."

If you would like to get involved in either the support of opposition of DOPA, you can contact your state Senator through the Capital's main switchboard 202-224-3121 or by e-mailing them through www.congress.org.  If you are not sure who your state Senator is, you can find out by logging on to www.congress.org and typing in your zip code in the left hand text box.