(Feel free to ignore this diary if you don't care about Barney Frank or MySpace. It is not exciting.)
The other day, I wrote to Barney Frank, my representative and (IMHO) an extremely honest person with the best interests of the nation in mind, to protest the way he voted on the sneaky, MySpace-banning bill called the Deleting Online Predators Act, which I considered to be anti-free speech. I opened up my mail today and was surprised to find that the great man wrote back to me personally! There are no surprises, but he defends DOPA in a rather peculiar way. The full letter, after the jump.
Dear Mr. [blipped, nothing against using my real name online but I happen to like to separate my two identities],
I agree with you that the Online Predators Act, so-called, raised some troubling questions. This is one of the problems with the way Republicans run the House -- measures like this are simply brought up on an up or down basis with no ability to amend it. There is a problem with sexual predators, and I believe it is legitimate to address that, but the bill does also go further than I want it to. I debated strongly as to whether or not to vote for it, and in this case I did vote for it although I have generally opposed censorship efforts. The difference here for me was the pattern we have seen of some young people being exposed to people who have exploited them. Where we are talking solely about expression, I share your view and I have consistently voted against anything that simply censored expression. On the interactive question, however, I do think it is more complicated and I have to disagree that the danger from the websites is no greater than that of a young person just walking down the street. I also believe that while there are problems with the bill, it is not repressive with regard to freedom of expression on political and other matters as you described it. With regard for librraies, the bill does allow access for minors if they have parental authorization, and with regard to schools, the restriction is not against any networks but entities called "commercial social networking websites." And while you say the definition "doesn't say blogs about their personal lives," but would in fact ban "political blogs or any kind of expression," I disagree. Again I had some concerns about the law and if I could I would have voted for amendments that would have stricken some parts of it and tightened others. But the factors taken into account do include whether or not hte profile created "includes detailed personal information" and in a separate section "elicits highly personalized information from users." Again I would have liked to cut this back, but I do disagree it is in any way a license to shut off purely political blogs or other forms of expression.
So in summary, I continue to oppose anything that simply talks about censoring any forms of expression, including of obscenity, but where there are parts of this bill I disagree with, I do not agree that it "really says ... that allowing minors to express themselves publicly, on the Internet, should be prevented for thir own good." And I am hoping that if control of the House changes in November, we will not again see situations where bills are presented with some good pieces and some very bad pieces in a form that does not allow us to make changes.
[signed]
BARNEY FRANK
So, I'm honestly wondering... do you agree with Mr. Frank? I don't think it's a good idea for call for libraries to block
anything, parental authorization or not. But I can see where he's coming from here.