“Social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids,” … [Source]
NO! It is NOT the social networking sites and chat rooms that have allowed the sexual predators to sneak into homes…It is the parents! The parents the parents the parents! You cannot legislate parenting or morals.
Secondly, does anyone fact check anymore! (ironically, I am not going to fact check my next statement) I bet that the above quote is sensationalism and that if you measure the actual rate of incidents concerning sexual predators that you will find it to coincide with the real world. People naively continue to think of the Internet as a game or a book. It is not a game. It is not a book. The Internet is a reflection of the real world! If your 13 year old daughter said, "I’m going to go hang out at a bar near the college." would you give her your credit card and shrug her off in a taxi so that you could focus on all that busy stuff you need to attend to? Of course not! Then why are you doing the same thing with the Internet? Do not allow the greatest technology, the convergence of world knowledge, be crippled by some scared, power hungry technology ignorant people manipulating your vote with hype.
A free society remains free because of the unhindered exchange of information. Burning the books is how to control knowledge and remove freedoms. Filtering software does not work. It filters the wrong information, allows for unfair competition, and is often easily circumvented by those seeking to ignore the filtering.
We have real world predators attacking you right now. Those predators are your senators, lawyers, your president, and other people in government seeking to remove your freedoms and change America forever in the name of leveraging their own beliefs and powers. A government of the people and for the people is only of and for as long as the people keep the government in check and the moment people become too busy to worry about it and being taking sensationalism and generalizations as fact is the moment that the foundation of our society begins to crumb. We are at that moment now!
Contact your representative and ask them just what they were thinking!
Thank you Tom for the link!
