Yeah - because this will stop them...

The Libertarian in me is weeping. Again.

On Thursday, July 27th - the US House of Reps voted 410-15 to block social networking sites from public access terminals...

Problem is, they're also nailing sites that have nothing to do with the emo waste-basket that is MySpace.

Even though politicians apparently meant to restrict access to MySpace, the definition of off-limits Web sites is so broad the bill would probably sweep in thousands of commercial Web sites that allow people to post profiles, include personal information and allow "communication among users."

"While targeted at MySpace, the effects are far more wide-ranging than that, including sites like LinkedIn," said Mark Blafkin, a representative of the Association for Competitive Technology, which counts small- to medium-size technology companies as members. "Nearly any news site now permits these types of behaviors that the bill covers."

Honestly - what exactly does congress think limiting access at public terminals is going to do? Their ideas are coming from apparently best interest...

"Social networking sites such as MySpace and chat rooms have allowed sexual predators to sneak into homes and solicit kids," said Rep. Ted Poe, a Texas Republican and co-founder of the Congressional Victim's Rights Caucus. "This bill requires schools and libraries to establish (important) protections."

Alright, great, now kids can't get onto MySpace to post sad pictures and depressingly bad poetry from school. What about at home? Where are the teachers? Where are the parents? Does anyone in Congress honestly believe that preventing them from accessing these sites for part of the day will suddenly make them not want to use them the rest of the day? Apparently 410 of them did.

Honestly, this is a needless limitation of freedom. If you want kids to stay off of these sites, go after the parents, not the internet. It's not MySpace's fault that sexual predators creep on it and kids spend all their time on it. The market has played out that way and the sick, twisted, and perverted will always find ways to take advantage of their surroundings.

Instead of limiting our freedoms for absolutely stupid reasons, the governments needs to help educate parents and teachers to keep kids off these sites or at the very least, warn them about certain dangers of networking sites and chat rooms. Most of it is common sense and rather than now turning it into "forbidden fruit" they would be much better off with helping parents and teacher do their jobs and take care of their kids as they deem fit.

It's time for the government to stop telling us how to live our lives and stop making decisions for parents. This is why bad parenting abounds - more and more now, parents wait for someone else to fix their problems or blame their poor parenting on someone else. That's a poor trend to be encouraging.