Fitzpatrick’s MySpace bill stirs debate

Bucks County Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick was thrust into the Capitol Hill spotlight Tuesday amid a three-hour hearing on his contentious “MySpace bill.” The bill, officially named the Deleting Online Predators Act, bars children from accessing social networking Web sites, such as MySpace, Friendster and Facebook, at schools and libraries that receive federal technology funding. Fitzpatrick, R-8, said those wildly popular sites have “become a haven for online sexual predators.” “Something must be done to stop the spread of child sexual predators and my legislation is a step in the right direction,” Fitzpatrick said. In his testimony Tuesday before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, David Zellis, Bucks County’s first district attorney, said child predators scouring MySpace and other sites are “an evolving problem in our community.” Zellis said law enforcement officials in Bucks this year have arrested a 25-year-old man who police said sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy he met on MySpace, arrested a juvenile for selling drugs on the Web site and investigated street gangs such as the Bloods and Crips who use the site to recruit Bucks teens. While Zellis heartily endorsed Fitzpatrick’s legislation, many committee members as well as school, library and Internet security officials who testified said Fitzpatrick’s plan would do little to protect children. Ted Davis, director of the information technology department at Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, said the bill would “not protect students and it will place an added burden on schools.”

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