Ding, Dong, DOPA is Dead

Despite passing overwhelmingly in the House, the Deleting Online Predators Act never made it out of the legislative branch to the President's desk. This legislation, which would have barred access to social networking sites in schools and libraries, would have hampered public agencies and nonprofit groups who are reaching out to teens and tweens online and would have had placed economic burdens on the urban poor who use these sites instead of more costly long-distance telephone calls. According to the Learning Now blog on PBS, four of the bill's sponsors lost their re-election bids, and so they lacked the political capital to push it through the Senate before the slate of the year's business was wiped clean, and Democrats who might have second thoughts about the bill took over.

Read more objections from Henry Jenkins and Danah Boyd here. Virtualpolitik has talked about DOPA here, here, here, here, and here.