After reading thoughts and comments about DOPA from Dave, Will and Wes, and specifically when I found that Will had posted a list of Senators on The Commerce Committee, who will take the next look at DOPA, I wrote the following email to  Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ. I hope all the attention in the blogosphere is making its way to the Senate!  Anyway here is my effort to open their eyes:

Senator:
I noticed a news article today that says that the Senate Committee on Commerce is taking a look at DOPA, before it proceeds any further.  As a member of that committee, I urge you to be aware of a few things.

First, social networks are not bad.  There are some sites that fit under that description that are tremendous tools for educators and for society-at-large.

Second, educators are using these tools to prepare our young people for a future in which these tools are going to exist.  These educators are also teaching the students about the potential dangers of some of these sites.  This is a much more sensible approach to protecting our children from online (or any other) predators than just removing these tools from the schools.

Tools of all sorts have been misused for the full span of human existence.  A screwdriver can be used as a murder weapon, should we stop manufacturing screwdrivers?  Crayons can be used to draw pictures depicting hatred and violence, should we ban the use of crayons in schools?  Textbooks have been used to present issues from one, skewed point of view, are all textbooks bad?  If 76 million young people use a particular social networking site and a small fraction are led to some danger, should we ban access to all social networking sites in schools?

The answer to all of these questions, of course, is NO.  My request for you and the rest of the Senate is to carefully prepare the final wording of DOPA.  If, in the end, you decide that some form of DOPA is still needed, then please make sure that it is not a generic condemnation of anything that falls under the category of social networking. Support and trust our teachers to educate the students on good uses of social networking sites.  Encourage schools to use their own security systems to limit access to sites that each school district decides are inappropriate for their students.

I agree that some sites should not be accessible from schools and libraries.  We don't need a Federal law to decide what should be banned.

Thank you for your support on this matter.