US to block minors' access to MySpace?

MySpace.com has recently found itself pummelled by critical media reports describing how teens are divulging personal information without much thought to the consequences.

But now the online social-networking phenomenon as a whole is under attack from a proposed US federal law that would effectively require most schools and libraries to render social-networking websites, such as Facebook and MySpace, inaccessible to minors - an age group that includes some of the category's most ardent users.

Rep Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, told silicon.com sister site CNET News.com in an interview: "When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and have access to social-networking sites, we have reason to be concerned."

Fitzpatrick and fellow Republicans, including house speaker Dennis Hastert, on Wednesday endorsed new legislation that would cordon off access to commercial websites that let users create public "web pages or profiles" and also offer a discussion board, chat room, or email service.

That's a broad category which covers far more than social-networking sites, including Friendster and Google's Orkut.com. It would also sweep in a wide range of interactive websites and services, including AOL and Yahoo!'s instant-messaging features, Blogger.com and Microsoft's Xbox 360, which permits in-game chat.

Fitzpatrick's bill, called the Deleting Online Predators Act, or Dopa, is part of a new, poll-driven effort by Republicans to address topics they view as important to suburban voters.

For its part, MySpace, which is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and boasts some 80 million users, has taken steps in recent weeks to assuage concerns among parents and politicians. It has assigned about 100 employees, about one-third of its workforce, to deal with security and customer care, and hired Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam, a former Justice Department prosecutor as chief security officer last month.

Rick Lane, vice president for government affairs at MySpace owner News Corp, said: "We have been working collaboratively on security and safety issues with an array of government agencies, law enforcement and educational groups, [not-for-]profits and leading child safety organisations. We've also met with several state and federal legislators and are working with them to address their concerns. We hope this healthy dialogue will continue."

Fitzpatrick, who represents a suburban district outside Philadelphia, acknowledged that MySpace "is working" on this. Still, he said, children are "unattended on the internet through the course of the day" when they're at libraries and schools.

Fitzpatrick said: "My bill is both timely and needed and will be very well-accepted, certainly by the constituents I represent."

To curb teenage access to interactive websites, Republicans chose to target libraries and schools by expanding a federal law called the Children's Internet Protection Act.

That law, signed by President Clinton in December 2000, requires schools and libraries that receive federal funding to block access to off-colour material. Librarians challenged it in federal court on First Amendment grounds, and the US Supreme Court upheld the law by a 6-3 vote in June 2003.

Dopa would add an additional requirement. It says that libraries, elementary and secondary schools must prohibit "access to a commercial social-networking website or chatroom through which minors" may access sexual material or be "subject to" sexual advances. Those may be made available to an adult or a minor with adult supervision "for educational purposes".

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), there have been 25,707 agreements to provide federal funding to school districts or individual schools, and 3,902 agreements to libraries or library systems. The American Library Association (ALA) estimates that as many as two-thirds of libraries receive federal funding and would be affected by Dopa.

Dopa would also require the Federal Trade Commission to set up a website about the "potential dangers posed by the use of the internet by children" and order the FCC to create a committee and publish a list of websites "that have been known to allow sexual predators" access to minors' personal information.

Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the free-market Progress & Freedom Foundation, said: "This is the next major battlefield in the ongoing internet censorship wars.

"Many in government will want to play the role of cyber traffic cop here, just as they have for other types of speech on the internet." He added that it will "chill legitimate forms of speech or expression online".

Laws restricting websites tend to be challenged in the courts. The ALA, for instance, sued to overturn the Communications Decency Act in 1996 and the library-filtering requirement a few years later.

But Dopa seems to have been written to benefit from the high court's 2003 ruling that library filtering was permissible. Bob Corn-Revere, a partner at the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine who has argued before the Supreme Court, said the eventual fate of Dopa may depend on whether it's implemented narrowly or broadly.

Even so, Corn-Revere said: "Treating MySpace sites like poison seems like an extreme overreaction."

CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report

Declan McCullagh writes for CNET News.com