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"A new battle over keeping the Net clean," by J.Weber/LATimes
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 10:49:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: "A new battle over keeping the Net clean," by J.Weber/LATimes
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 09:23:15 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jonathan Weber <[email protected]>
To: Declan McCullagh <[email protected]>
Subject: ratings story
Innovation/ Jonathan Weber
A New Battle Over Keeping the Web Clean
WASHINGTON
When Congress passed the Internet censorship law known as the
Communications Decency Act early last year, the many companies, advocacy
groups and individuals with a stake in the Internet rose up as one to
challenge the measure in court.
But now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the CDA
unconstitutional, the victorious coalition is fracturing, and a bitter
battle is being joined over the Clinton-backed effort to develop a rating
and labeling system for the Internet.
On one side are the big, mainstream Internet and computer companies,
led by America Online and Microsoft, which proclaim their eagerness to
make cyberspace "safe for families.'' Lining up against them are
free-speech advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union and
the American Library Assn., which see ratings systems as censorship
tools.
It's not exactly a fair fight: Ratings proponents have popular
opinion, the economic interests of the industry and the power of the
presidency on their side. But here's a prediction: The free-speech forces
will lose the battle, but they'll ultimately win the war. And with a
little luck there won't be too much damage done in the interim.
The debate over ratings begins with a technology called PICS, which
stands for "platform for Internet content selection.'' PICS is a
mechanism for labeling Web pages according to their content. The labels
can then be read by a software program, which in turn can block access to
sites that have specific types of content.
PICS itself is not a ratings system, but rather a method for
implementing a ratings system. The theory is that once PICS is in place
throughout the Internet, a multiplicity of ratings systems would emerge.
A Christian Coalition ratings system might block access to anything with
any sexual content as well as certain political sites, for example, while
another system might block only hard-core porn. Parents and others could
easily choose.
So far, so good. There would be no law requiring Web sites to use PICS
labels; the Clinton administration has stressed that any ratings plan
would be voluntary. But parents and others would get a new toolone more
robust and effective than existing software programs, such as
CyberPatrol, that block out sites deemed unsuitable for kids.
The free speech purists have a philosophical objection even to this.
""Ratings systems are developed to enable one individual to exercise
control over what another person sees,'' says Marc Rotenberg, director of
the Electronic Privacy Information Center. That might be OK for parents
and their children, he allows, but such a tool will inevitably be used by
public institutions and governmentsif not here then abroadto restrict
speech.
An even bigger worry is that what's being sold as a voluntary system
that will include a multiplicity of ratings systems is actually going to
be an all-but-mandatory system that offers very few choices.
Consider, first of all, what happens to Web sites that decline to rate
their pages. Any PICS-based filter would have to block all unrated pages.
Already, ratings proponents are calling on the major search services,
such as Yahoo, not to index unrated sites. Overseas Web services would
face the choice of adopting a U.S. labeling system or forgoing access to
any U.S. readers. Web publishers that didn't want to participate might
suddenly find themselves in a deserted backwater of the network.
There's also the question of how disputes over ratings would be
arbitrated. Sites would be self-rated, and in fact the vast majority of
sites would have no incentive to misrepresent themselves. But what
happens when some do anyway? Would it be a crime for a porn site to
proclaim itself suitable for children?
At the moment, moreover, it doesn't appear that there are a variety of
ratings systems under development representing different values. In fact,
a system being created by the Recreational Software Advisory Council, a
Microsoft-led industry group, is quickly emerging as a de facto standard.
The battles over how RSAC handles certain kinds of sites have only
just begun, but to see the inevitable problems one need look no further
than the ongoing discussion about news.
N ews sites, reasonably enough, don't want to rate themselves. At
the very least it would be impractical to label every page of a big news
site every day to warn of violent or tasteless or otherwise disturbing
content. And labeling news just doesn't seem very consistent with freedom
of the press.
So the news organizations want to have a special news rating. Who
qualifies for a news rating? Well, a committeeoperating under the
auspices of the Internet Content Coalition, which represents a number of
major publishers (including The Times)would decide. News organizations
get together to decide who is and who isn't a news organization. Hmm.
In the face of these objections, the Clinton administration and the
companies backing the ratings effort say that, first of all, something
has to be done to stave off new legislation. If industry doesn't act,
Congress will come up with "son of CDA,'' and this time it might hold up
in court.
There are other motives too, though, namely a desire to expand the
market. "Nothing is as important as making this medium
family-friendly,'' America Online Chairman Steve Case declared here last
week.
That's funny coming from him, because AOL owes much of its success to
its decidedly un-family-friendly sex-chat rooms, but he's obviously
decided that a clean image is important to further growth. The online
giant is spearheading a two-day meeting here in October, where the
ratings battle is likely to come to a head.
The administration and the big companies both want to bring the
Internet into the mainstream. If some of its wilder and woollier aspects
are marginalized in the process, well, good.
And that is the nightmare of free-speech advocates: that a medium that
the Supreme Court declared ought to be treated at least as liberally as
print (ever heard of ratings for books?) will nonetheless be driven into
TV-like conformity.
This is a legitimate fear. Personally, though, I don't think the
worst will happen. The Internet is simply too big, too diverse and too
fast-changing to be tamed by even a semi-voluntary ratings mechanism. The
business interests, moreover, cut both ways: Family-friendly might look
like a way to expand the market today, but pornography and gambling and
even radical politics are sure to remain a big part of the online
landscape.
AOL's Case says that online service providers competing on the basis
of who is more family-friendly would be akin to airlines competing based
on their safety records. That's a ridiculous analogy: Everyone thinks
plane crashes are bad, but not everyone feels the same way about controls
on Internet content.
In my ideal world, Internet providers should be competing based on
values, not trying to impose some kind of bogus consensus.
Esther Dyson, one of the industry's most respected thinkers, favors
the development of PICS as a tool but stresses the importance of
choicesand of people taking responsibility for their actions. In the
wired world, she says, power is constantly shifting and devolving away
from central authorities, and that requires individuals to be less
passive: "I want local control,'' she says. "I don't want no control.''
PICS and RSAC have powerful forces behind them and stand a good chance
of establishing themselves as part of the mainstream Internet. But
there's a natural tendency toward diversity in cyberspace, and it's hard
to see how they would become ubiquitous.
If individuals and organizations are vigilant about how ratings are
usedi.e., not by governments and not by public institutions such as
librariesthere's a chance that they'll remain what they were originally
intended to be: one of many means for people to manage the often
unmanageable Internet.
Jonathan Weber ([email protected]) is editor of The Cutting
Edge.
**********************************************************************
Jonathan Weber
[email protected]
Technology Editor
Los Angeles Times