How Parents Can Filter Out the Naughty Bits
Connecticut Hacker Newsgroup - Issue 1
BILL DUVALL WANTS TO FIND PORN ON the Internet, He wants to so badly that he pays Stanford University graduate students to track it down for him. Those bright-eyed bounty hunters of smut are efficient, finding between five and 10 places a day that meet Duvall's single criterion: sexual explicitness. On a typical day last week, his free-lancers Internet addresses of computers that images from Playboy, erotic bedtime !;tories and stag party-style X-rated video snippets. All of 1-hem went into a kind of address book that has well in excess 1,000 entries.
But Duvall is no ordinary pornography collector. His little black book is built into a program called SurfWatch that, instead of connecting to the electronic hot spots, automatically blocks access to them. SurfWatch of Los Altos, California, is one of a growing number of computer programs designed to answer a fundamental concern of parents, educators and even employers: How can porn be prevented from coming into computers? Fearful that Congress will try to stifle cyberspace with overly broad antismut laws, computer hackers and civil libertarians are promoting such desktop remedies as a way to keep censorship where they think it belongs-in the home.
I'm not in the position to be a censor-that responsibility should be at the parents' level, or whoever controls the terminal
says Gordon Ross, chief executive officer of Canada's Vancouver-based Net Nan*ny, a program that allows a parent or guardian to monitor everything passing through the computer. Net Nanny users, for example, can phrases as "Whats your name?" and "Whats your phone number?" in a phrase book. When the software detects one of the targeted phrases printing across the terminal-say, in a chat room of a commercial online service-Net Nanny harrumphs and pulls the plug on the conversation by logging off the service. The program is effective in direct proportion to the monitor's ability to predict all the permutations of blue out there.
Naturally, the national online-service providers, such as Prodigy, America Online and CompuServe, are watching these developments closely. They are gated communities, with local ordinances that prohibit red-light districts. But once their gates are open to the Internet, how do they protect their customers? CompuServe posts only a written notice, warning people to be careful when they venture forth. "The internet is a completely different place,' says spokeswoman Michelle Moran. "You're on your own. We're not responsible for lost or stolen items." At Prodigy the registered head of the household, using a credit card for verification, must activate an Internet connection for each family member. That way, access can be denied to the kids. Or a husband.
What's missing from all these solutions is something that would give responsible parties more specific guidance about which Internet material is appropriate and which is not. Earlier this month a consortium of information-highway companies that includes Microsoft, Progressive Networks and Netscape announced a plan that should help. By year's end the consortium is expected to come up with a rating system akin to the one used for movies. Anyone for a nice
G-rated Web site?
TIME, JULY 3,1995
-By Joshua Quittner
