INTERVIEWS
Ted Koppel
Censorship devices
When the Supreme Court struck down the pernicious Communications
Decency Act this summer, the online community roundly celebrated the victory as a milestone for free speech in cyberspace. Well, it's time to put down the champagne glasses. Two new threats — nearly as insidious as the CDA — now loom over freedom of speech on the Net: censorware and Internet ratings. "We're seeing a move toward the privatizing of censorship," warns David Sobel, legal counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "It's likely to destroy the Internet as it's existed until now." Overstated? Perhaps not. Parental controls are an important goal, and we'll get there someday, but the current filtering programs on the market are clunky solutions that come nowhere close to shielding children from pornography on the Internet. Worst of all, the tools don't allow parents to decide what their kids can or can't see — someone else is substituting their judgment. Programs like SurfWatch, Cyber Patrol, Cybersitter and Net Nanny have already sold millions of copies. While they do block most smut sites, they also screen out much more. Consider: • The Web browser included with Sega's Saturn game console allows users to
block out "alternative lifestyles" — not merely Satanic cults and the
like,
but all information regarding gays and lesbians. • Cyber Patrol blocks such sites as Planned
Parenthood and the Usenet news groups
alt.journalism.gay-press, clari.news.gays (home to AP and Reuters
articles),
alt.atheism and soc.feminism. (Cyber Patrol's marketing chief, Susan
Getgood, says sites are restricted for certain age groups on the basis
of content and language.) • Cybersitter, which has drawn the greatest wrath of Netizens, has in
the
past blocked the sites of the National Organization for Women, the
entire
WELL community, gay rights groups, animal rights groups and
progressive
political causes. It also filters words and phrases like "safe sex,"
"violence," "Sinn Fein," "lesbian," "fascism" and "drugs" from e-mail
messages and Web pages — including newspaper sites. Marketed largely by the Christian watchdog group Focus on the Family,
the
program's manufacturer, Solid Oak Software, has responded to its
critics by
saying that parents have the right to prevent "objectionable material"
from
coming into their homes. "The majority of our customers are
family-oriented
people with traditional family values," a Solid Oak executive told
CyberWire
Dispatch last year. (CEO Brian Milburn declined to be interviewed for
this
column, saying, "No one is interested in printing the truth.") Some of the sites listed above are no longer blocked; the sites change
weekly. But which ones? Neither users nor operators of the censored
sites
often know about the blockage. The programs generally won't disclose
their
list of blocked sites — trade secrets. (Cyber Patrol is a notable
exception.) I've no quarrel with parents who want to protect their children from
some of
the Net's excesses. But parents also have a right to know the kinds of
sites
that are being blocked. "I think parents would be surprised to learn what's being blocked,"
Sobel
says. "Frankly, I don't know why any parent would want to buy these
kinds of
shrink-wrapped values, which amount to someone else's idea of what's
good for
your kid." It's unknown if any newspapers have installed such censorware in their
newsrooms, but it may be only a matter of time. Meanwhile, censorware
has
made its way into public libraries and public schools. The American Library Association in July adopted a resolution against
the use
of any filtering software in libraries because they also block
constitutionally protected medical, artistic and political
information. But
public libraries in Boston and Austin, Texas, have already
installed Cyber Patrol on their computer systems. So what is journalism's stake in this? Plenty. As content providers, newspapers have an interest in not having a
third
party censor their content before it reaches the eyes of young
readers. Pity
the poor censorware-shackled student who accesses his local
newspaper's
archives to write a report on the Middle East or the Oklahoma City
bombing. Journalists and publications not in the safe center of the political
spectrum
will be marginalized if a large portion of Net readers cannot access
their
views. The ideal of the Web as a democratic, grass-roots medium for
expression outside the homogenized mainstream will be lost. All journalists have a stake in preserving the free flow of
constitutionally
protected information on the Internet. As traditional guardians of the
First
Amendment, we have an obligation to ensure that a broad range of
voices
continues to flourish in this bright, shining new medium. Up until now, news organizations have shirked their responsibility to
the
public by touting these censorial tools — but telling only half the
story.
It's time for a healthy dose of public education, discussion and
careful
reporting to make it clear what each of these products actually does. Warns Sobel: "If this trend continues, the Internet is not going to be
the
open forum of ideas that it has been. This kind of technology will
sanitize
content to the point that it's even safer and less controversial than
the
mainstream media." And that would be the biggest tragedy of all.
on the Internet
Unbeknown
to the public, filtering programs block out much more than pornography
This column appeared in the September 1997 issue of The American Journalism Review.
By J.D. Lasica
CHILDREN MAY BE only the first casualties in the rush to muzzle the
Net.
Corporate America may be next. Net Nanny Pro is being pitched to major
businesses as a way "to ensure that employee productivity and
corporate
policies are maintained within the workplace."
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