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How Parents Can Filter Out the Naughty Bits
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 outthere.
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