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Senator Revises Web Monitoring BillSen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) plans to revise his Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act (S. 49), introduced January 6 and criticized by some librarians, internet companies, and civil liberties advocates. The revised bill would join the ranks of February’s Deleting Online Predators Act (H.R. 1120), and the Cyber Safety for Kids Act (S. 1086) introduced April 11 by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) that would require websites to embed tags to help filtering software flag content deemed harmful to minors.“I’m pleased to hear about some new developments in the marketplace,” Stevens said at a recent communications industry meeting, the April 17 New York Times reported. “Several companies like MySpace have revised their policies and announced new initiatives.” Although it is not clear exactly how the bill will be changed, Stevens has indicated the main points of the bill remain the same. One controversial section requires libraries receiving federal e-rate funding to block social networking websites from underage users unless supervised by an adult and accessed for “an educational purpose”—a definition that, for critics, is too vague and duplicates the similar mandate in the Children’s Internet Protection Act. Another portion of Stevens’s bill makes mandatory the labeling of sexually explicit websites. “Librarians know from experience that blocking and filtering cannot be counted on—the software is still overly broad and provokes false confidence,” Lynne Bradley, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Government Relations, told American Libraries. “Decisions about how to access these interactive sites are best made by parents, librarians, teachers, and those who set policies at the local level.” Opposing these web-labeling bills, said Bradley, will be a top priority when librarians take their messages to Congress on National Library Legislative Day May 1—2 in Washington, D.C. Posted April 20, 2007. |
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