Regulating the Internet may seem a nearly impossible task, but that doesn’t keep governments — and individuals — from trying. In fact, efforts to regulate the Net are happening with more frequency around the world. A growing industry of blocking and filtering software and computer scripts offers individuals, schools and businesses a variety of tools -ranging from firewalls to software — to filter out “undesirable” material, while allowing other information to come through.
According to a 1996 report issued by Human Rights Watch, a New York City-based non-governmental organization that monitors human rights, at least 20 countries have enacted restrictions on Internet use.
China requires individual users and Internet Service Providers to register with police and bans access to many Usenet newsgroups,including those classified as “alt,” “rec,” and “soc.” Singapore censorssexually explicit material, news and more than half the Usenet newsgroups. The German phone company cut off access to all sites hosted by CompuServe in an effort to bar Germans from gaining access to neo-Nazi propaganda on one of the sites it hosted. The governments of France and Australia also have indicated they may enact legislation to control Internet content.
America Online offers parental blocking that allows parents to limits and Internet newsgroups. Filtering software, such as SurfWatch, NetNanny and CyberPatrol block access to a list of “inappropriate” Web sites, newsgroups and chat sites. Businesses are using tools such as SmartFilter, which allows company administrators to block their employees access to sites with sexually explicit material, games, gambling, job search information, drugs, online merchandising, sports, humor and others. But no filtering strategy is 100 percent effective. There are so many new sites everyday that, even with frequent upgrades, software is often outdated and a determined user can almost always find his way into a filtered site. Nevertheless, even without the Communications Decency Act, here are methods being used to regulate the Internet:
OLD-FASHIONED PARENTAL GUIDANCE
Since the determination of acceptable content is, fundamentally, a subjective one, many critics of the CDA argue for old-fashioned parental guidance of their children when it comes to kids surfing the Web. Parents have differing sets of values, religious beliefs, morals and interests they would like to teach their children. The respect built between a parent and child, CDA critics argue, will function when no one is around, and will survive software upgrades, changing international law and other unpredictable events.
……Internet Parental Control: Frequently Asked Questions provided by the Voters Telecommunications Watch
GOVERNMENT REGULATION
The Communications Decency Act is its own example of how government plays a role in the regulation of speech on the Internet. The intent of the CDA is to criminalize certain types of speech in order to shield minors from objectionable material. However, as long as the Internet continues to be a global network it remains difficult to truly control use of and access to information on the Web.
Communications Decency Act
full text of the Act.
Silencing the Net: The Threat to Freedom of Expression
On-line
Download the 1996 report on Internet regulation around the world by the New-York based non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch.
AGE RESTRICTIONS
A number of sites that feature sexually explicit material are beginning to require proof of age before providing access to their content. Age verification services require potential customers to provide a valid credit card as proof they are over 18 and to pay a membership fee before they can visit a site.
Adult Check
A fee-based service that assigns members an identification password users apply when they visit one of the more than 2000 participating Web sites.
Porno Pass
A fee-based service that provides members with a password allowing them into adult-content Web sites.
INTERNET RATINGS
There have been proposals to “tag” Internet items with a ratings system similar to the one used for motion pictures.
Recreational Software Advisory Council
RASCi dapted its computer-game rating system for the Internet.
RSACi labels have four numbers that translate to levels of violence, nudity, sex and offensive language. On its site, authors can rate his or her pages by filling out a questionnaire and in
return receive sets of HTML tags. Authors can put these tags into their documents, which then can be read by compatible browsers.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT’s World Wide Web Consortium established a set of technical standards called PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) that people can use as labels on content. The PICS are distributed electronically and read by computers, which would then process the labels in the background. and automatically shield users from undesirable material or direct their attention to sites of particular interest.
FILTERING SOFTWARE
Filtering software monitors what comes into a home computer and can block material deemed offensive either by the authors of the software or by parents.
NetNanny — can be configured by parents to screen out undesirable material coming from the Internet and going back out to the Internet. The software also can be configured to block access to files on a parent’s hard drive, floppy disk and CD-ROM, so that a child can be prevented from altering the parent’s files.
SurfWatch — an Internet filtering application created by the Naperville, Ill.-based Spyglass. Spyglass claims SurfWatch blocks tens of thousands of explicit Web sites at the user’s machine. SurfWatch filters the World Wide Web, Internet newsgroups, FTP, Gopher, IRC and Web-based chat connections. The content filtering software is already included in all retail versions of the Microsoft Internet Explorer Starter Kits.
SmartFilter — Created by Webster Network Strategies, this monitoring and control application allows administrators to restrict access to specific unwanted Internet sites. The software runs as a proxy behind a corporate security firewall, allowing businesses the capability to restrict access to some or all of 15 categories of Internet sites containing pornography, gambling, on-line merchandising, illegal drugs, hate speech, criminal skills, sports, job searching, personal pages, alternative journals, entertainment, games and humor. SmartFilter also creates an HTML-formatted “hyperlog” of all corporate access to the Web so that administrators and managers can select any log entry to actually view the URL the employee accessed.
PHRASE DETECTION SYSTEMS
String detection systems monitor a data stream (whether it is in a Web page, a file, a news group or in a chat session) and block predetermined words or phrases. When such a word or phrase comes across, the system can shut down the computer, choose not to show it or hang up the modem.
COLLABORATIVE FILTERING
Collaborative filtering is based on the philosophy that no one else can determine for a user what he or she would deem inappropriate However, people with similar interests might be able to filter — and recommend — other Web sites, newsgroups and Internet venues to each other.
Firefly — Firefly members enter their personal preferences for movies, music, Web sites and topics of interest into a system that then searches for other members with similar tastes and determines what they would recommend.
