Virtual World News: Congressman Mark Kirk v. Second Life

By Eric Gregory

On Tuesday May 6, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) held a press conference in Chicago to denounce institutionally-sponsored access to virtual worlds and social networking sites like Second Life. Rep. Kirk reaffirmed his commitment to a bill sponsored over a year ago <http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-6160610-7.html> that would require federally-funded institutions such as schools and libraries to block children’s access to any “commercial social networking Web site or chat room unless used for an educational purpose with adult supervision.” One of Rep. Kirk’s aides allegedly gained access to Second Life (a veritable den of the most abject iniquities, if you accept Kirk’s fevered summation) by simply entering his age as 18 while setting up an account. While Second Life does request age verification, there are obvious and uncomplicated ways of circumventing the blocks. This leads Kirk (and, it seems, a majority of other representatives, as an earlier version of the “Deleting Online Predators Act” passed in the House by a 410-15 vote in 2006. It was shut down in the Senate) to presume that scores of minors will be swarming our public libraries to frolic in “rape rooms, brothels, and drug stores.”

Unfortunately, for Kirk and his fellow crusaders, the American Libraries Association opposes the Act, arguing that virtual worlds often double as effective learning applications. What typically goes unsaid, and thus gets “lost” in these types of emotional debates, are engaged discussions about U.S. educational and public institutional commitments to “freedom.” Blocking access to sites such as Second Life via federal legislation constitutes outright censorship—something most U.S. public library systems staunchly oppose (the U.S. educational system, on the other hand, often walks hand in hand with hysterical moralizing and informational foreclosure). And as the story typically goes, our “innocent” children are the victims in this dark and debased theatre. While Kirk’s worst visions don’t appear to be based in any “actual” experiences (at least none beyond his aide’s ability to access Second Life by lying about his age), this appeal to a mythical child—a child unspoiled, blameless, yet uncontrollably drawn to the corrupt—becomes the basis of a necessary and violent legislative intervention into public “freedoms.” Your adult “freedoms” must be sacrificed for the sake of this mythical child. Instead of according local institutions the ability and responsibility of defining and maintaining rules of “reasonable” access, Kirk and his fellow congresspeople offer a totalizing clampdown. Instead of considered discussion and negotiation, Kirk offers hysteria and fear-mongering. And by using “our children” as the cover story for his “infantilized” moral politics, he constructs an argument that most opponents refuse to deconstruct at face value. Although it appears unlikely that the “Deleting Online Predators Act” (apparently this “online predator” means you; the SL user who might access his account via a public institutional computer) will make it through both congressional houses, refusal to engage with Kirk’s discourse and its most explicitly troubling metaphors means that these kinds of totalizing assaults on “public” privacy will continue to define the terms and rules of contemporary political engagement.