WASHINGTON: Social networking sites and chatrooms could be banned from schools and libraries in the U.S. following a legislation that passed the House of Representative last week on an overwhelming majority vote.
Sites like MySpace, Facebook and Friendster will be barred in classrooms and libraries if the bill, called the Deleting Online Predators Act, is passed by the Senate and president Bush signs its enactment.
The bill describes "social networking websites" as hunting grounds for pedophiles and stipulated that federally funded schools and libraries should limit access to these sites.
The bill's author, Republican congressman Michael Fitzpatrick said the legislation is the first of its kind to address the growing use of social networking sites by sexual predators.
According to the FBI, one in five of the 24 million child internet users in the U.S. have received sexual approaches and that there are some 50,000 predators on the net seeking child sex.
The bill does not target any specific sites by name, but defines the kind of sites the Federal Communications Commission would be asked to ban as: commercial entities that permit users to create online profiles with highly personal information and their own online journal, and which enable communication among users.
It is estimated that there could be some 300 social networking sites that may face the ban and more than half of all Americans in the age group of 13 to 17 are members of one or more of these sites.
The bill has found opposition from several people, who say by shutting out these sites, the youth will be deprived of several benefits such sites offer. Rick Weingarten, director of information technology at the American Library Association, said people join these virtual groups for all sorts of beneficial reasons, including getting information or joining support groups. "You get in a morass every time you try to block technology."
The bill's opponents also point out that many schools in the U.S. have already banned the use of online social networks because of fears about the amount of personal information users post online.
Some users of MySpace have posted an online petition opposing the act. It has some one million signatures and says, "Many of our nation's leaders are not intimately familiar with how social networking websites operate, and none of them have had computers and internet all of their life."
