CENSOR'S SENSIBILITY

By MICHAEL KRANTZ

Seeking to protect fellow citizens from depravities ranging from TV violence to rap lyrics, from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Howard Stern, some Americans have always had a hard time restraining themselves from trying to circumvent the First Amendment. And the World Wide Web, with its infinite plenitude of pro-Satan home pages and SEXY NUDE BABES! sites, has more, um, free speech in need of protection than any medium in history. As lurid tales of online obscenity seep into America's consciousness, a variety of Internet sentinels have volunteered their services.

Or was that Internet censors? What one group claims as guardianship of public morality strikes another as unconscionable, not to mention unconstitutional, interference. In June the Supreme Court slapped down the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which prohibited the posting of "indecent" material over the Net. This decision in turn has created a hot market for products that derisive Net-heads call "censorware"--such software filters as CyberPatrol, NetNanny and SurfWatch ($29.95 to $39.95) that offer to help nervous parents keep inappropriate material from prying but underage eyes.

Just what is inappropriate is a messy issue, as citizens of Loudoun County, Va., a conservative enclave northwest of Washington, can attest. Last month, after six public hearings and over the objections of library staff, the county library board adopted the region's most restrictive Internet-access policy. Henceforth, the library will arm its computers with filters to censor obscene sites--the definition of obscenity, of course, being largely up to whichever filter Loudoun County ends up deciding to buy. Adults who want to cruise the Net sans filter will have to ask the librarian to call off the watchdogs; children under 17 will be able to do so only if accompanied by an adult. "The issue is whether pornography will get into the library," says board president John Nicholas. "Our task is to protect our children."

A more politically fireproof sentence has yet to be conceived by mortal man. On the surface the policy seems reasonable, given the prevalence of offensive sites and the ease with which even a novice Web surfer can find them (though most porn sites these days can't be accessed without a credit card). But free-speech advocates call censorware a cure worse than the disease. Filtering programs block Web pages in one of two ways. The more primitive method is to search for key words in the pages' titles, a system with all the subtlety of a Gatling gun. America Online, for instance, once banned the word breast from some areas of its service, which outraged breast-cancer sufferers locked out of their bulletin boards. And SurfWatch legendarily banned sites featuring the word couples, only to discover that that word appears on the White House's official site.

A better method is to study individual sites--yes, that means hundreds of thousands of them, one at a time--and then place them on yes or no lists that can be updated as new pages pop up in the Web's endless sprawl. A program called CyberPatrol identifies 12 categories of troublesome material (violence, profanity, sexual acts and so on) that parents can block at their discretion. The software can also be adjusted for different age groups. "My six-year-old son doesn't need to know how to put on a condom," says CyberPatrol spokeswoman Sydney Rubin. "But I'll sure want him to know when he's 13."

Opponents say the filter companies' banned lists can also reflect ideological biases. CyberSitter, the most aggressively conservative filtering program, is infamous for blocking access to the National Organization for Women's Website as well as entire Internet providers like Echo, New York City's oldest online community. Gay-themed sites--big surprise--suffer mightily. CyberPatrol blocks the Queer Resources Directory; CyberSitter bans the alt.politics.homosexual newsgroup; SurfWatch blocks ClariNet's AP and Reuters articles about AIDS and HIV.

If conservative parents want software that will censor any Website that the Rev. Jerry Falwell wouldn't say amen to, that's their privilege. But free-speech proponents say customers looking for ideology-free screening might not be aware of how much they're missing. Censorware produces unpredictable and often unwanted results (see box), and most filterers consider their blacklists trade secrets. This puts Loudoun County in the position of letting private firms pass judgment on the contents of a medium that's supposed to offer easy access to all--a notion that's especially dubious in the case of the "free public library," Internet provider of last resort for those who can't afford a computer. "We serve the information needs of the whole community," says Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. "Identifying one standard for everyone violates the rights of everybody else."

Such First Amendment echoes make even conservative Congressmen nervous. "I endorse the notion of filtering devices at home," says Bob Goodlatte, a pro-CDA Republican Representative from Virginia, "but there's certainly a legitimate debate as to how to do it in libraries without introducing a major form of censorship."

There are, however, minor forms, including asking the Websites to rate their content "voluntarily." Chris Hansen, senior staff counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, is particularly disturbed by the growing political support for self-censorship. "Rating systems may work, however badly, in TV or movies, where there are relatively few programs and armies of lawyers," he says. "But with E-mail, chat rooms and newsgroups, the sheer volume is overwhelming."

Nonetheless, self-censorship is starting to look like the wave--or at least one very big wave--of the future. Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser already includes a ratings program called RSACi. It has emerged as the leading Net-rating system that allows Web proprietors to rate their own sites instead of letting NetNanny and SurfWatch employees pass judgment for them. And rival Netscape, bowing to pressure from the White House at last month's censorware summit (Bill Clinton, predictably, loves ostensibly family-friendly software filters), has agreed to use rating systems in the next version of its browser. Even news organizations, whose free-speech obsession borders on the fanatic, are rating themselves (see THE NETLY NEWS). The Webmasters' private initiative, though, may not cool legislative ardor for rewriting the CDA. Neither filtering software nor self-rating is sufficient to clean up the Net, in the view of Senator Dan Coats of Indiana. Filters are "a good first step," he says, but "it's a tax on the family--the innocent family." Of course, the same could be said for clear-cutting the Web's forests of unfettered speech.

--Reported by Declan McCullagh and Bruce van Voorst/Washington

With reporting by DECLAN MCCULLAGH AND BRUCE VAN VOORST/WASHINGTON