More on filters

[Steve Hoffman]

New Rules on Internet Content Fuel the Battle Over Filters

NY Times 1/6/98


Supporters say it enables parents, with one click, to set Internet
surfing standards that protect their children. Opponents are
criticizing it as a new tool for widespread Internet censorship. 

It is called Platform for Internet Content Selection Rules, or
PICSRules, a computer technology that has become the latest
battleground in the war over rating, filtering and censorship in
cyberspace. 

The consortium that sets standards for the World Wide Web last week
endorsed the rules, a standard that developers say will make it
easier for parents to adjust their browsers to pick and choose
between the variety of rating systems and filtering software being
developed for the Internet. 

The Global Internet Liberty Campaign, a collection of civil liberty
and privacy groups, however, says the rules go beyond the original
concept that many groups endorsed after the Supreme Court struck down
the Communications Decency Act last summer. Rather than just block
sites based on voluntary rating systems, they will also make it
simple for third parties to block whole domains and Internet
addresses, or URLs. 

"The fear the Global Internet Liberty Campaign has is that you are
turning over to the censors of the world a censor-friendly
architecture of the Internet. And it doesn't take a great leap of the
imagination to understand what the Singapore government, the Chinese
government or even the U.S. government will want to do with the
system that allows whole domains to be blocked out, or whole nations
to be blocked out," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil
Liberties Union, which helped form the campaign. 

"A lot of people in the industry believe they need to move toward
this as a way to forestall further action by the U.S. government,"
Steinhardt said. "But the irony is that they are not going to
forestall further government action. They are going to encourage it.
They are going to create a road map for Congress for a system that
requires by law that all sites be rated. Or that sites mis-rated be
punished. And that is going to be a much more difficult
constitutional question than any version of the CDA or son of CDA." 

One of the authors of PICSRules, Paul Resnick, a University of
Michigan assistant professor, emphasizes PICSRules is not a ratings,
filter or censoring system. 

"PICSRules are about making it easy for parents to install filtering
software," he said. "That's important for parents, not governments." 

Currently, he said, parents have to go through several steps to
install filtering software, which can be difficult for the average
home computer user. Once PICSRules are commonplace, users won't have
to configure the software. 

"You can simply go to a Web site, say 'I like the filtering rules
they suggest,' and you click and it automatically gets installed on
your computer," said Resnick, who has set up a sample site. "You could
easily switch, so you could have different rules for your 6-year-old
and your 12-year-old."

PICSRules are already in the Microsoft Internet Explorer, but the
default is off, meaning users can use the Microsoft browser to work
with any PICS rating system on the Internet "but you have to do a
little work," Resnick said. He estimated it would be a few months
before browsers are on the market that will allow installation of the
various filters with just one click of the mouse. 

The Global Internet Liberty Campaign sent its first formal protest of
the recommendations, then just in the proposal stage, just before
Christmas. 

"It seems apparent that PICSRules have been developed in response to
calls from governments who seek a more efficient and effective
technological means of restricting human-to-human communications.
European and Australian governments, at the least, are involved in the
development of a global rating system which will be enabled by
PICSRules 1.1," the group wrote. "Mandatory labeling of content has
already been proposed in the UK, Australia, USA. The ability of
governments to restrict access and freedom of expression through the
use of firewalls/proxies will be enhanced by the adoption of
PICSRules 1.1." 

Fifteen groups signed the letter: the ACLU, the Bulgarian Institute
for Legal Development, CommUnity - The Computer Communicators
Association, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility,
Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties, Electronic Frontiers Australia,
Electronic Privacy Information Center, Electrónicas España, Human
Rights Watch, Imaginons un Reseau Internet Solidaire, NetAction,
Peacefire and Privacy International. 

But Tim Berners-Lee, the director of the consortium and founder of
the World Wide Web, last week endorsed the rules for widespread use,
essentially putting them in place for the Internet community. 

"I appreciate your concerns," Berners-Lee wrote the coalition.
"Whilst I tend personally to share them at the level of principle, I
do not believe that the PICSRules technology presents, on balance, a
danger rather than a boon to society. I can also affirm that the
intent of the initiative is certainly not as a tool for government
control, but as a tool for user control, which will indeed reduce the
pressure for government action" 

He also wrote that "one-click configuration by end-users is crucial
to the original PICS vision of diverse rating services and end-user
empowerment. Your letter suggests that the expressive power of
PICSRules is at odds with the goal of end-user control, but quite the
opposite is true. Without an interchange format like PICSRules, it
will continue to be too difficult for most end-users to set
filtering. This could lead to a tendency for users to simply rely
upon the default options provided to them. Or, it could lead to
government efforts to legislate about those settings." 

Steinhardt said the campaign will continue its opposition in letters
to the consortium's membership, which is a group of computer,
software and related companies. 

"We plan to make a very concrete response and suggestions for
changes in the rules," he said on Monday. "The response is in the
process of being drafted and then will be circulated to the GILC
membership. We expect to send our response in the next 10 days to two
weeks." 
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