Deeplinking in the Heart of Texas, Judge Says No

Bad case out of Texas regarding linking and copyright liability. The website Supercrosslive.com linked to "audio webcasts" of supercross events hosted on SFX Motor Sport's website, was accordingly accused of copyright infringement, and has been preliminarily enjoined from providing such links until the case is settled or resolved at trial. It's a troublesome decision because it essentially holds that you need permission to link to another website beyond its front page; that is, no deeplinking. The case is Live Nation Motor Sports v. Davis (No. 3:06-CV-276-L, ND Texas, Dallas Division). No sign of it freely online yet.

What happened was that SFX provided a link on its main page to its LIVE! page, which lists Supercross races for which there is an audio broadcast. Clicking on a race link goes to the page for that race, on which there is a link to the audio broadcast. Clicking on the link to the broadcast opens up Windows Media Player and the audio file is streamed. Confused? Click here to listen to the December 9th race from Vancouver. According to Texas, I just infringed SFX's copyright in that broadcast!

What is absolutely outrageous about this decision is that, as Internet Lawyer agrees, no actual copying occurred. Generally speaking, if there is no copying, there can't be any copyright infringement. It's even in the word copyright: the right to make copies. In addition to the right to make copies, as section 106 of the copyright act says, "in the case of sound recordings, [it is also the copyright owner's exclusive right] to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission."

Essential to understanding the technology at issue, which Judge Sam A. Lindsey (it appears he's not too bright) obviously does not get, is the essential characteristic of streaming media. One definition of streaming media is "media that is continuously received by, and normally displayed to, the end-user whilst it is being delivered by the provider." Even if one deeplinks to an audio stream, the file is being sent from the original source exactly as if one had gone to the original page and clicked on the original link itself. Technically speaking, the transmission occurs in exactly the same way no matter from where the stream is accessed. So, it should be said that only the copyright owner is performing the work "by means of a digital audio transmission" because the stream is a single transmission from the source to the user. One can record the stream, and then rebroadcast it oneself, but providing a link to the original stream results in an unadulterated performance of the copyright owner's stream. A good analogy might be a fan posting his own fliers for his favorite band's upcoming concert. Yeah, you found out about it from an "unauthorized" source, but you still have to go to the same venue and watch the band play like everyone else who knew the concert was happening from an "authorized" source.

But why bother about the technology. In the background section of the decision, here is how Judge Lindsey described the arguments:

SFX asserts that Davis "streams" the live webcast of the races on his website in "real time," which causes SFX irreparable harm by limiting its right to sell sponsorships or advertisement on its own website as the "exclusive source" of the webcasts... Davis admits to providing an audio webcast "link" to the racing events on his website, and asserts an affirmative defense.

Nope. Davis (the operator of SCL) can best be described as providing access to the stream. Again, no matter where one clicks on the link to the stream, the stream itself is sent from SFX (or wherever the source file is located) to the user's computer and is performed through Windows Media Player. Based on this setup, it's not surprising that Judge Lindsey found "that the unauthorized 'link' to the live webcasts that Davis provides on his website would likely qualify as a copied display or performance of SFX's copyrightable material."

This conclusion appears to have been heavily influenced by the case NFL v. PrimeTime 24 Joint Venture (summary here, decision here [pdf]), which is really off the mark. In NFL, a satellite carrier was sued for rebroadcasting NFL games in Canada. Is deeplinking to a media file the same as a retransmission? It shouldn't be. First, there are a whole set of rules from Congress and the FCC regulations (notably SHVA at the time because it was satellite, now SHVIA) that deal with retransmission rights. The Internet is largely beyond the control of the FCC and as such, reliance on a case that is founded on its regulations seems greatly misplaced. Second, and on a much more basic level, a retransmission is exactly what it says: it involves the capturing of broadcast signals and the resending of them through another network. In the NFL case, over-the-air broadcasts were captured by PrimeTime, who sent the signal to its satellites, from where it was sent to its subscribers in Canada. This is decidedly not the case with deeplinking to a media file, since the content is being delivered in exactly the same manner as it would be otherwise. There is no new technical path for the content to pass across.

I would point out here that the streaming at issue here appears to be a live broadcast of a given supercross race. That still qualifies as a sound recording, but is different than streaming music (which is what is often associated with streaming). Streaming music has been problematic because of royalty issues, for instance radio stations have to pay royalties to the various rights societies in order to stream their broadcasts, otherwise it's infringement. Again, however, this illustrates the issue of the source of the stream. A radio station streaming a popular song is like the satellite broadcaster in NFL, streaming another's work over its own connection. This is not the same as providing a way to access the original stream.

But not only does Judge Lindsey appear to misunderstand the technology and wrongly rely on NFL, he quoted from NFL in what seems to be a dangerous fashion in coming to his conclusion. The quote he chose from NFL was:

We believe the most logical interpretation of the Copyright Act is to hold that a public performance or display includes each step in the process by which a protected work wends its way to its audience. Under that analysis, it is clear that PrimeTime's uplink transmission of signals captured in the United States is a step in the process by which NFL's protected work wends its way to a public audience. In short, PrimeTime publicly displayed or performed material in which the NFL owns the copyright. Because PrimeTime did not have authorization to make such public performance, PrimeTime infringed the NFL's copyright.

If we were to accept Judge Lindsey's reasoning and conclusions at face value, then under his thinking, all copyright owners can dictate the manner in which their content is accessed, presumably including how and where that content is linked to online because clicking on a link is the last step in the process from creator to audience. That's a fine rule for traditional media, like when a company takes a broadcast signal and, without permission, sends that signal across its satellite network, but is a terrible rule to impose on the Internet. Such a rule applied online would be like requiring the permission of brickmakers before placing a brick to build a house, and would require permission for each brick. Links are as essential to the web as bricks are to buildings and to require such a rule seems incredulous.

Even if this rule became the law of the land, it would think that it would cause few problems for Google. Blake v. Google also dealt with linking, a case which SCL used to support its position, but the situations differ. In regards to Google linking to sites, or linking to cached versions of sites, it is important to note that a site can employ the robots.txt file to prevent Google from indexing, and thus linking to, a particular site. This is the functional equivalent of giving Google permission to link to one's site. This is very important for Google, because a site cannot complain about Google linking to its pages precisely because they have the option of whether or not to allow Google to link to them. Websites have no such option when it comes to humans seeking to link to their content, which makes the SCL case different.

Which brings up the point about whether a copyright violation has even occurred. There is a growing body of law dealing with the legal liability of linking, but they are mostly predicated on some underlying infringement. In Blake, Google was serving up archived cache versions of Blake's works (ie. copies). In Kelly v. ArribaSoft, the issue was inline linking (again, involves copies). And when it comes to linking, as was pointed out on Internet cases, California decided to adopt a "server test" when it comes to inline-linking in Perfect10 v. Google, meaning that "the website on which content is stored and by which it is served directly to a user, not the website that in-line links to it, is the website that 'displays' the content." While SCL is not inline linking (that would require that the audio be performed on the site itself, whereas what happens is that Windows Media Player opens to play the audio files), the idea of the server test would seem rather appropriate in resolving the dispute. At least it would be much closer to the facts than NFL.

What the problem presented by the case is, and should have been dealt with as, is a problem of SCL passing off SFX's audio stream as its own. This, however, is not copyright infringement, but would be best handled under some theory of unfair business practice under state law. Though SCL is currently down, and thus I cannot be sure how their links to SFX were presented, it is plausible that SCL did not include any indication that the streams were provided by SFX. This sounds like copyright infringement, but as I've tried to argue (and truly think the case to be) this is not technically copyright infringement since no exclusive rights appear to have been violated. Further, SFX doesn't charge for access to the audio, nor is there a login, so any claims that SCL is improperly bypassing anything (except perhaps ads and the rest of its content). Ticketmaster v. Tickets.com would seem to be relevant here, where Tickets.com scraped the ticket info from Ticketmaster and redisplayed it on its own site. This was not copyright infringement, and of course facts (time, location, ticket price, etc.) are not subject to copyright. The court said that ""deep linking by itself (i.e. without confusion of source) does not necessarily involve unfair competition." Ticketmaster certainly would also be a better place to start than NFL, but what do I know, I'm not a judge.

More: There's really a lot to this case. Bob Davis, the individual the runs Supercrosslive.com, argued the lawsuit himself pro se, which may or may not have something to do with why the case came out this way, especially since he's up against a Baker Botts lawyer who's listed in The Best Lawyers in America 2007. Also too, Judge Lindsey's review from The Robing Room is less than flattering. The comments are particularly amusing. It also worth noting that much of this case revolves around a TM dispute too. SCL registered the domain Supercrosslive.com in 2003, but didn't try to register Supercrosslive with the USPTO until recently. At nearly the same time, SFX tried to register Supercross LIVE with the USPTO and its first use in commerce claim comes after that of SCL. This has yet to be resolved, but the simmering issue of what appears to be a TM grab by SFX only indicates that this really is a highly charged dispute between the parties. All of these issues are contained in the motions provided on supercrosslive.com in the left column. As it is, there were plenty of less than ideal conditions that led to the decision, and I only hope that Davis has it in him to appeal and keep fighting.

Will Copyright Kill the Video Star?

Just finished with finals today, which is why I've been skimping on new posts.  To fill your need for information, here's a video report on Tur v. YouTube by Ron, a lawyer from DC.  It's a pretty good run down of the case and relevant law.  To boot, it offers a novel way for everyone to try and influence the court that will eventually decide the case.  Anyone who will be directly affected by a decision can file what is known as an amicus curiae brief, Latin for "friend of the court."  Though it's doubtful that people who upload videos to YouTube will actually write such a brief for the court to consider, the solution to this would be to create Friend of the Court Videos.  By labeling self-produced, non-infringing videos FOTCV, users could help a judge quickly see how many videos are legitimate.  This legitimacy issue failed in both Napster and Grokster (c'mon, how many people used those to trade non-copyrighted material?).  The other option is to create a new video, in response to Ron's video, also labeled FOTCV, and containing language that "I am not induced, I am self-produced," as a way to counter the accusation that YouTube induces copyright infringement.  The inducement test is from Grokster, and says that a party will "be liable for purposeful, culpable expression and conduct aimed at inducing users to engage in infringement."  Finally, Ron also suggests that users themselves pull their own videos down if they infringe copyright and go out and flag other videos that infringe, so that YouTube can pull them down.  If all infringing videos were to magically come down before evidence is submitted in the Tur case, then how could YouTube be shut down for infringement like Napster and Grokster were?  Great video, better ideas.

Other videos on YouTube and copyright:
The Great YouTube Copyright Debate.  A bit schizo, but a solid summary of the copyright debate.  Great quote: "I'm not an entertainment lawyer, but I play one on YouTube."
Re: Re: The Great YouTube Copyright Debate:  Don't let his face deter you, he knows what he's talking about.  Interesting analogy:  Violating copyright is like smoking pot... it may be harmless if done in the home, but it's still against the law.
YouTube Does Not Violate Copyrights:  On YouTube and its compliance with the DMCA.
Copyright Owners - Don't Be Dinosaurs: A plea for sanity from a technology analyst.

There are tons of videos on the topic, just not worth linking to.  Alas, the nature of the beast.  Hope this tides everyone over until after Christmas, at which point I will return with more.

Scanning for Copyright

A new tool will scan the web for copyright violations. 

Wargames.com Domain Dispute

This isn't Google related, but I thought it was a neat story from Techdirt.

Rogers Cadenhead, the owner of Wargames.com since 1998, has been approached by a lawyer from MGM claiming that his domain name infringes on the trademark to the 1983 classic WarGames. It's a classic example of domain dispute over a trademarked term. The problem with cases like these is that they get decided by arbitration, where precedent doesn't mean a whole lot. What's nice though is that Mr. Cadenhead is going to blog about the affair, so people will be better informed as to how this process plays out. As for his odds of winning, that he uses the site to literally sell games about war makes it a really tough call because the movie was also about a game about war, and it's conceivable that a reasonable person could be confused. And with domain names, the issue of initial interest confusion (ie. typing in wargames.com into the address bar hoping to find the movie) is always an issue.

Why would MGM make a bother about this at all given that the movie is 23 years old? I'm betting there's a sequel in the works, which makes this also a preemptive strike by MGM.

As an aside, I wish there was a way to know how many people still blindly type domains into the address bar, rather than go to Google or use a search box that most browsers have these days. If only a small minority still make random guesses as to what the site they're looking for is, maybe they are being unreasonable, and thus, initial interest confusion wouldn't be such a problem in a domain dispute since it's predicated on people being reasonable.

Anyway, good luck Rogers!

Should Google Rank Businesses Higher Than Blogs?

Slashdot and Techdirt link to yet another story on someone dissatisfied with their Google PageRank, however, this time its a blogger being harassed by an online business over the blogs higher ranking.  The blogger, Dean from deanhunt.com, hasn't divulged the identity of the business at issue, but he has posted their email conversations wherein the company asks that Dean contact Google to have his site removed from the result pages for an unidentified search term.  After Dean balked, the business claimed that it has asked Google to take action, justifying its behavior with:

You have to understand Dean that an online business should be higher in Google than a blog. Don’t forget that Google is a business as well, they obviously make more money from other businesses than they do from blogs, so it is in their interest that I am higher than you for certain searches.

This is not only a dubious assertion, but also betrays a fundamental misuse of Google.  A Google ranking is supposed to be entirely about relevance to what a user is searching for.  Not all results actually are relevant, but given how PageRank works, Google seems to get it right for the most part, most of the time.  Even assuming that blogs should be ranked higher than businesses, there is no way to stop people linking to your site so, as long as someone isn't manufacturing links to their site to boost their ranking, there is nothing that other people looking to be identified with a specific search term can do.  Allowing people to essentially "vote" for which sites will appear in PageRank helps make search results more relevant, which makes Google more money because it will be known as the most relevant (thus the best) search engine.  That process makes Google a lot more money than those businesses foolish enough to rely on Google rankings as the primary means of getting business.

But should businesses be ranked higher than blogs?  Certainly not in all cases.  Blogs and any other website that is not devoted to selling things are often (if not always) more relevant to what a user is looking for.  Say for instance you want some information about the amazon.  The rain forest gets only one link on Google's first page of results and it's ninth, behind eight results for Amazon.com.  How relevant is that?  If you run a business and are all flustered about not being highly ranked, Google has its AdWords program so you can have your business prominently listed for certain keywords.  Basically, if you run an online business, you should have some conception of how online business works.

I find Dean's email exchange even more distressing for what it reveals about how some view the Internet.  One view is that the Internet is just a gigantic mall where all people do is shop and consume.  The other view emphasizes access and finding information.  These two views coexist peacefully, though legislation (eg. copyright) may sometimes prefer the commercial vision over the other, but search results represent an area ripe for huge conflict between the two.  Since no one ever looks beyond page three in their search results, pushing non-commercial information down to the bottom of the list so businesses can have top billing would threaten to wreck what makes the Internet most useful.

In addition, Google would most likely resist such a request because manually editing its rankings like this would be equated with exercising editorial control over its rankings, which could actually get it in trouble over what their search results display.  If they can promote businesses over blogs, why can't they block links to defamatory or copyright infringing sites?

I only wish Dean posted the search term and website at issue.  He has been given the "I have consulted with a lawyer" threat, so we'll have to see what happens.

Blog Update

I'd like to apologize for my absence lately. Took a couple days off around Thanksgiving, only to have my laptop die on me. By the way, anyone with an IBM T30 laptop with an ATI 7200 video card better be aware that there's something defective with the combination of the motherboard and video card. There are several other people who have had problems with the video card zonking out on them, causing the screen to garble and go dyslexic on them. I had purchased my laptop used from a campaign I worked on, thus it was out of warranty. When the video card died in April, I figured paying $700 was worth it since I liked the T30 and only paid like $300 for it in the first place. However, IBM only guarantees their parts for 90 days, so when the same part broke after Thanksgiving, they said I'd had to buy a new motherboard, but this time it would cost about $800 to have it fixed. Needless to say I balked and now have a pretty sweet HP dv2000 which has all the new bells and whistles (Core2, DVD+/-RW, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB HD) and cost less than $1,000 (not including warranty).

Anyway, regular blogging will now resume so keep checking back and if anyone has questions they're looking to have answered (about YouTube, DMCA, copyright, etc.) don't be shy to send me an email and I'll try and shoot out a post in response.

Will McCain Ban Sex Offenders from the Net?

Senator McCain has decided to stir up new Internet legislation aimed at protecting children from molesters and other devious elements of society with nefarious intentions. On Wednesday, McCain introduced the “Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act” (alas, no snappy acronym, but it was suggested that SOEOCA is Navaho for “beware of a warrior from the desert”), which will require most websites to delete any material posted by sex offenders or face substantial fines. On Thursday, McCain and Senator Schumer announced that they will introduce legislation in January requiring sex offenders to submit active email addresses to law enforcement, just like they are required to register their physical addresses with the police now. These two announcements are slightly confusing since McCain’s bill includes a requirement for sex offenders to submit their email addresses, so I’m not sure if McCain and Schumer are concocting another bill or if they are referencing the bill submitted on Wednesday. Either way, not only will these policies affect Google and all its holdings, but it’s regulation with an alarming scope that should raise some eyebrows. By all means children should be protected online, but there’s a lot more going on online that these kinds of knee-jerk legislation don’t even bother thinking about.

In McCain’s remarks on the bill, its stated goal is to “reduce the sexual exploitation of our children, and punish those who cause them physical and emotional harm through sex crimes.” He further said, “technology has contributed to the greater distribution and availability, and, some believe, desire for child pornography.” That he references “some,” rather than attribute this belief to specific people, only fuels speculation that these kinds of laws are supported by fear and politics rather than facts or real problems.

To accomplish its goals, the bill (read here) strengthens the system for reporting child pornography and sex offenders by expanding the current rules to more businesses, imposing higher penalties for companies that do not report child pornography, and lays out clearer rules by which to report such activity. All of this sounds good on its face, but a closer look exposes serious flaws, especially in the expansive scope this legislation takes.

In parsing the bill, one sees that it covers: content hosting services; domain name registration services; search engines; social networking sites, chat rooms, message boards (and any other similar services); email, instant messaging, or any other similar service using the Internet; electronic communication services; any service provider (including any wireless carrier that provides Internet access); Internet image or video sharing services; and remote computing service (meaning “the provision to the public of computer storage or processing services by means of an electronic communications system”). I am at a loss in trying to think of something a person could do on the Internet that doesn’t fall under one of these kinds of activities.

Using the Internet is not a crime (yet), so the bill outlines a series of federal laws that trigger its provisions. Among those are laws on: involving/selling/buying children to be used in visual depictions of sexually explicit conduct; sending/possessing material involving the sexual exploitation of minors; “misleading domain name with the intent to deceive a [either] person into viewing material constituting obscenity… [or] minor into viewing material that is harmful to minors”; and obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children. For the detail-orientated, that’s 18 USC 2251, 2251A, 2252, 2252A. 2252B, 2260, and 1466A.

My focus here is not on these specific laws against child pornography, but I must note that each of these laws are quite broad and can rope up those that don’t fit the “child predator” label. For instance, 18 USC 1466A prohibits the “depict[ion] [of] an image that… appears to be of a minor engaging in… sexual intercourse” that also “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” That little bit about “appears to be” is troublesome, potentially roping in people who simply look young. Also, Japanese anime depicting underage sex was said to satisfy this standard in US v. Whorley, 386 F.Supp.2d 693 [EDVA 2005]. The more general point is that lots of activity that doesn’t quite fit with what people think of when they hear “child pornographer” or “sex offender” is illegal and is covered by McCain’s bill.

Once anyone “providing an online service… obtains actual knowledge of any facts or circumstances” describing any of the federal laws above, that provider is obligated to make a report of those facts to the CyberTipline of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Such a report needs to include identifying information about the user in question, including screen name, user identification name, email address, website address, and [url], as well as when the material was uploaded and subsequently transmitted, geographic information of the individual, hosting website, or [url] (ie. street address, telephone number, area code, zip code, and any [IP] address), any images related to the activity, and contact information for the provider filing the report. A knowing and willful failure to file a report (like when Google refused to handover identifying information when asked by the NSA) results in up to a $150,000 for a first offense, and up to $300,000 for each subsequent offense. A negligent failure to report results in up to a $50,000 fine for a first offense and up to $100,000 for each subsequent offense. Additionally, service providers are required to retain all information relating to the report for 180 days, or longer if asked to do so by the NCMEC or another government agency.

It’s not clear how an online service provider is supposed to “obtain” knowledge of violations of federal law, especially since the bill itself says that there’s no obligation to “affirmatively seek facts and circumstances of violations of Federal Law under this act.” Plus, there’s no requirement for an online service provider to monitor users or the content of their communications. These two provisions should soothe privacy advocates to some extent. However, the information that must be included in a report is probably enough to get a warrant to seize someone’s computer, and given the importance of this issue to some groups, it must be expected that a number of interest groups and government agencies will be surfing the web, looking for material to send to service providers to force them to issue reports.

For our purposes here, Google, upon learning that a user is engaging in any of the specified violations of federal law, needs to send one of these reports to the NCMEC for each report received. Whether it be something posted on Blogger, a video uploaded to Google Video (I’d assume that YouTube would handle its own reports), a profile on Orkut, or a post on Google Groups, Google needs to be prepared to send reports for conduct on any of its services. That’s not so much a problem for Google because of its size and resources, but this blog is also an internet service provider and I would be equally compelled to submit similar reports of anyone leaving comments on my site. My failure to do so would cost me $150,000. That seems a little harsh on me, an innocent citizen who would prefer not to censor any comments submitted here.

To be fair, the reporting requirement isn’t all that terrible since it does target specific violations of federal law. For the most part these violations would be pretty clear to an average service provider, and the only added requirement would be to have to submit any information the service provider has on that user.

However, tucked into the end of the bill are two more provisions that are much more problematic. First, it amends section 114(a) of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (42 USC 16914(a)) such that: Sex offenders must also provide for inclusion in the sex offender registry… “Any email address, instant message address, or other similar Internet identifier used by the sex offender to communicate over the Internet.” This alone doesn’t seem too bad, I mean, if we are to require sex offenders to register their physical addresses, why not their Internet addresses too? One thing to consider would be whether we require sex offenders to register their addresses so we know where they are. If so, then requiring them to register email addresses and the like has less to do with tracking where they are, as it tracks who they are talking to and where. A subtly difference, but a difference that invades more into their lives than a simple address registry, as the rest of the bill shows is the case.

Second, the bill requires that “any OSP… that is a social networking site shall implement effective measures to remove any web page hosted by that provider that is associated with any identifier listed [the Sex Offender Registry].” This means that anyone who falls under the SORNA and has to register their addresses (and now email addresses etc. too) with local officials will have any web page associated with their email address removed from the Internet. This is right out. The bill provides no definition for “social networking site” and a broad interpretation could say that any website is by definition involved in social networking. This may be unlikely as most think of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and the like, but then again, would anyone trust a judge who may or may not know how to work their email to properly distinguish between MySpace and a discussion forum on something like Slashdot or Slate’s Fray? But essentially, this provision banishes sex offenders from the Internet. We can quibble over what a social networking site is, but no doubt this vague provision will be interpreted to mean more than MySpace. This has the potential to cause more problems than it will solve because it only further degrades sex offenders as unfit to be productive parts of society, doesn’t take into account that one doesn’t actually need their own page on a social networking site to prey on children, and, depending on what other sites fall under the definition of social networking site, will cause all sorts of speech to be erased from history by no longer being online. As if a sex offender has nothing good to say! I would think that Mark Foley had lots of good things to say, but had he been labeled an actual sex offender under the law, one might be unable to find anything associated with his name, email, screen name, etc. online since it would all have to be deleted.

This last bit is so extreme and unsound that I will bring up an example to show the problems it will cause. A while ago an Alabama man was convicted as a child pornographer for taking pictures of fully clothed teens in “lascivious poses.” There was an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog a few years ago that was only given to those 18 and over. So, given the precedent and McCain’s new law, not only does the photographer get convicted as a child pornographer, but then he has to register all his Internet identifiers and all social networking sites he has ever associated with have to remove anything relating to his identifiers. The photographer could try and sue, saying that such removal is unfair and infringes on his constitutional rights, but McCain’s bill also grants both the NCMEC and the service provider immunity from such lawsuits. This immunity will create a “shoot first” mentality for service providers since they won’t be liable for aggressively following the bill’s removal requirements, it being better for them to be aggressive financially, better for their public image, and creates less risk.

Another example might be this photography book on nude girls and women. The added kick of being excluded from social networking sites for publishing such a work strikes me as ridiculous. Imagine that “social networking site” included eBay. Imagine telling someone they couldn’t use eBay because they were a sex offender. Further, any “social networking” sites might be obligate to take down any ads, comments, or other mentions of such a work. If anything, we tell sex offenders that they can’t play with children or that they can’t hang around schools. Telling them they can’t shop or sell goods or talk to other people is not only a drastic step, but totally unnecessary.

This fear of “protecting the children” really needs to be tamed. I coach a bunch of 10 and 11 year olds whose social lives revolve around IM and texting. When they go to dances, they don’t dance or really talk with girls: they amass tons of screen names and talk with these girls from the comforts of home. So much less horrifying, so they tell me. It seems to me that someone in McCain’s age bracket would need more protection online than the average 10 year old because they have no idea what’s going on, while the kids are much more savvy and aware of what’s going on online. For the most part, kids simply take their real world social life online, rather than socialize with random potential molesters posing as other kids. To make much of the Internet unusable for sex offenders seems to go to far in punishing them, especially since the it doesn’t seem to solve much, and it certainly doesn’t do anything in reintegrating these people into society and making them feel like they haven’t been completely rejected by the rest of us.

And of course, there’s the obligatory complaint about such a bill that it will generate such an immense amount of reports so as to make them all but useless. But hey, we already know that when the government goes around fear-mongering (ie. with the NSA and other phone/online data collection programs) most don’t really care how effective such a plan will be or whether it’s a good idea, since it’s nearly impossible for anyone to vote against these plans without being labeled a sympathizer.