House Overwhelmingly Passes DOPA

Andy Carvin posts about DOPA on his site. Wesley Fryer did a great post on this topic too.

Here is Andy's take,

Last night the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the
Deleting Online Predators Act, 410 to 15. It would seem that educators
had little to no impact on the outcome. Perhaps this is by lack of
numbers, or because the MySpace panic that's overtaken this country is
so overwhelming that no amount of rational pleas from educators would
have stopped it.

If you haven't been following DOPA just click here and catch up---
I had been following David Warlick's take pretty closely and comments from Jim O'Hagan caught my eye. It begins...

I posted this the other night and feel there some misleading tendacies in your post about the bill. It isn’t that big of a bill to read, and I will preface this with saying that I am actually against the bill, but want to have a realistic view of this bill if it becomes law.

Let’s look at the bill objectively... 

... Have you read the bill yet? Have you broken it down without relying on the opinion of another blogger? Blogging isn't banned. Learning Blogmeister will not go away. The commercial sites will be filtered in schools. Commercial chat services will be filtered. The list of sites will be provided to schools and libraries.

The back and forth is interesting. The tag on Technorati is http://www.technorati.com/tag/dopa
if you want to read more about this bill.

The part that struck a chord with me though was the statement "...Without relying on the opinion of another blogger." I read something lately on Robert Berkman's blog Intelligent Agent in his post Verify, Verify, Verify he blogs about Jay Rosen's session at BloggerConIV. In his discussion of the current role of citizen journalism in “Users Know More Than We Do Journalism: My Session at BloggerCon IV, June 24”, NYU Professor Jay Rosen discussed the challenge he has had when discussing using citizen journalists to do original research and gather and report information.

He shares the following which I found valuable.

And so it does seem that knowing how to verifiy is now becoming important not just for reporters, but for all of us when we get our information from blogs, citizen journalists, or consumer generated media (CGM).

Trust is nice when you have it in a particular source: we all do come to know those handful of writers or bloggers who have the most insightful, significant, and valuable things to say, and come to generally trust them… But verification of an unknown source is another matter. We'’re all our own editors now and need to know what it means to verify for accuracy.

So simple but so true... as responsible educational bloggers it is important that we not only check for  accuracy but teach our students to do so as well. We all know it. It is common sense. But we need to be reminded. His post goes on...

Starting with the fundamentals, I think that these are the three fundamental rules reporters'’ follow when trying to verify some claim or statement:

1. Going to any original source and checking yourself. You need to go to the primary material, original report, broadcast, document, etc and view it. Admittedly, the concept of "“original"” changes on the Internet: —for example, is a digital copy of a document an original? Not technically, but assuming that the document itself is authentic (another discussion altogether) then it is much preferred that you read this than relying on someone'’s own discussion, summary or interpretation of it.


2. Get a confirming source-- or two--if possible. Remember that our best estimate of truth generally occurs via probability: when it becomes increasingly likely that what you found out is accurate. The more sources or people that say the same thing, the higher the probability is that it is accurate.

3. Understanding the motivations and background of the person making the statement or claim. Although the culture of blogs is transparency and honesty, in some ways, this can make a blogger with a hidden agenda even harder to detect, since we may assume that the blogger is stating his or her views openly.

Now I am not saying that what many of us have been saying about DOPA isn't true. If nothing else, this legislation, while well meaning, opens a can of worms in ways it could be interpreted in court. What I am saying is that I am guilty of jumping on the bandwagon without having read the entire bill myself. Jim's statements to David were a timely reminder to me that I need to make sure I always do just that. We all do-- if we are going to bring the credibility to the power of this medium it deserves we need to check originial sources. I know most of you who are posting about DOPA did-- I am just admitting --I didnt. Thanks Jim, for the reminder.

Thanks to blogging I continue to grow as a human.

Comments

[Jim O'Hagan]

Wow, I am honored by your comments. Your insight and reflections are poignant. Fantastic post!