Congressman Takes Aim at Second Life in Libraries
U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) announced May 5 that he was gearing up to reintroduce the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), legislation that would require libraries and schools that rely on e-rate funding to prohibit minors from using chat rooms and social-networking sites without parental permission. He indicated that the new bill would create an adults only (.ado) domain for chat rooms and social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
During a press conference at the Mount Prospect police station of Kirk’s suburban Chicago district, the representative singled out Second Life as a site where youngsters were particularly vulnerable. Although Kirk said he could cite no cases in which children were targeted by predators in Second Life, he maintained that it “offers no protections to keep kids from virtual ‘rape rooms,’ brothels, and drugstores. If sites like Second Life won’t protect kids from obviously inappropriate content, the Congress will.”
Kirk shared a letter being sent to Federal Trade Commission Chairman William E. Kovacic that same day requesting that the FTC issue a consumer alert to warn the public about the threat that Second Life presents to children, as Kovacic’s predecessor Deborah Platt Majoras, did in 2006 regarding social networks. “I urge you . . . to take action to warn parents of the similar dangers and sexually explicit content found on Second Life,” the letter said. “If Second Life is unwilling to protect minor children from explicit material on their website, it is imperative that we warn parents of the danger Second Life represents so they can effectively monitor their children’s internet usage.”
Stating that Second Life “contains explicit content that can be easily accessed by minors,” Kirk’s letter also says, “Second Life and its owner, Linden Lab of San Francisco, has no controls in place to prevent minors from creating an account, giving minors access to pornographic and explicit material for no charge.” He argued that although Second Life claims to prevent children under the age of 13 from accessing the site, there are no age-verification features built into the registration process.
In 2006, DOPA passed the House by a whopping majority but died in the Senate. The American Library Association is opposed to the proposal, maintaining that it ignores the value of interactive web applications as a learning tool, could block helpful sites, and would inhibit librarians’ ability to teach youngsters about how to use the Web safely. Libraries accepting e-rate subsidies are already required to block content that is “harmful to minors” under the Children’s Internet Protection Act.
Posted on May 9, 2008. Discuss.