Washington Post -- "Block but Verify"

[declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh)]

[An editorial in today's Washington Post, about blocking software and the
CyberWire Dispatch that Brock and I sent out earlier this month. --Declan]



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1996-07/15/006L-071596-idx.html

Editorial: "BLOCK, BUT VERIFY"

Monday, July 15 1996; Page A18
The Washington Post

   THE NEXT generation of highly publicized Internet products may have
   less to do with what you can get from the Net than with what you can
   protect yourself against getting. In the wake of the concern over
   pornography that sparked the now-overturned Communications Decency
   Act, vendors have rushed to market software with names like SurfWatch
   and NetNanny.

[...]

   Some incidents of what might be called over-screening are accidents
   resulting from the overzealous use of keywords or other sweeping means
   by the inexperienced. Others are exactly what the products' makers
   intend...

   An on-line article by cyberjournalists Brock Meeks and Declan
   McCullough reported on a product called CyberSitter, marketed by the
   conservative group Focus on the Family, that blocks access to any
   discussions of homosexuality. It's advertised as a product for
   families who want just that: a relatively G-rated version of
   cyberspace.

   The feasibility and ready availability of such products is, of course,
   a strong argument that the government needn't meddle. Anyone, not just
   those worried about porn, should soon be able to find software that
   edits what a family wants edited and lets through what it wants to
   read. One pitfall, though, as Messrs. McCullough and Meeks observe, is
   the commercially inspired reluctance of many of these producers of
   software to specify exactly what they are blocking. Though
   understandable, this raises obvious dangers that products meant to
   block one type of transmission -- violence, for example -- will in
   fact muffle wider areas of debate. Smart consumers will want, and
   demand, to know what they're not getting, the better to make use of
   the information they have.