House Considers Limiting Access to Certain Sites As Part of DOPA

The House's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing earlier this week on the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA). The proposed legislation, which we mentioned in a May 11 post, aims to restrict minors' access to social networking Web sites like MySpace.com on computers at certain schools and public library facilities.

According to News.com, at this week's hearings, legislators introduced the possibility of cracking down on sites by requiring "some form of age verification on social-networking sites." In terms of which sites would be affected if the legislation passed, DOPA seeks to keep kids from any site or Web service that allows "users to created Web pages or profiles."

As News.com' Declan McCullagh points out, that definition would extend beyond MySpace.com and Friendster to include IM on AOL and Yahoo!, Microsoft's Xbox 360 chat and blogging sites like Blogger.com.