Filtering rules

[Steve Hoffman]

Rules for Filtering Web Content Cause Dispute

NY Times 1/19/98


In a private vote by e-mail a few days before Christmas, a group of
about 200 computer scientists and engineers endorsed a set of rules
that could govern some of the most fundamental ways people around the
globe will get electronic information -- and will be prevented from
getting it -- in years to come. 

Members of the group, the World Wide Web Consortium based at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, say they were simply agreeing
on a technical standard to allow much-needed filtering of the Web's
vast store of information. 

They were building a tool, they say, not passing a law. And in that
spirit, little notice was taken of their action, which revolved
around the arcane technical specifications and lines of computer code
that define the Platform for Internet Content Selection or, in the
trade, PICS. 

But a growing number of civil libertarians argue that these
technologists are in some ways acting as an unelected world
government, wielding power that will shape social relations and
political rights for years to come. In cyberspace, these critics
assert, computer code has the force of law. 

The filtering system, a technology for defining what parts of the Web
will be accessible from a particular computer or group of computers,
was originally conceived as a way to head off government regulation
of speech in cyberspace. 

After the Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act
last June, declaring it an unconstitutional restraint of free speech,
such technology was widely seen as the best alternative, because it
would enable parents to shield children, with a few clicks of a
computer mouse, from information deemed harmful. 

But in an increasingly vigorous debate, civil-liberties groups are
condemning the PICS technology as a mechanism for censorship, while
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the
consortium that approved the standard, is defending it as a force for
social good. 

Critics argue that repressive governments can use the filtering
technology as a tool to screen political speech and that in the
United States the most likely application will effectively block much
of the constitutionally protected expression that has made the Web a
particularly democratic communications medium. 

"This is a technique that is designed to enable one party to control
what another can access," said David Sobel of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center. "The most palatable formulation of that is
parent-child, but the fact is it also allows a government or an
Internet service provider to take on that parental role and decide
what anyone downstream is going to be able to see -- and no steps
have been taken to prevent that." 

Microsoft Corp. has already incorporated an early version of the
content-selection technology into its Internet Explorer Web browser.
But free-speech advocates fear that the rules endorsed last month will
speed up the technology's adoption by making it far easier to use. 

Which is exactly the point, the defenders of the filter standard say.
At a recent meeting of Clinton administration officials and Internet
industry representatives in Washington, Vice President Al Gore
stressed a need for the information industry to provide parents with
easy technological fixes. 

Berners-Lee, who invented the Web at the CERN laboratory in Geneva as
a seamless world of information accessible from any kind of computer,
insists that the benefits of the "PICSRules," as the recent addition
to the standard is known, outweigh its drawbacks. 

"I appreciate your concerns," he wrote in response to a statement
from a civil-liberties coalition, the Global Internet Liberty
Campaign. "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." 

Whatever the merits of the opposing claims, the controversy
underscores the exceptional influence that technologists wield in
formulating the rules that govern cyberspace. It also presages
increasing tension between the architects of the Internet and the
people who use it, as profound policy implications of technical
decisions also loom for privacy and intellectual property. 

Traditionally, the technical rules that allow computers to perform
tasks like sending and receiving electronic mail or documents were
developed by organizations that represented the institutions,
companies and individuals that most used the medium. 

But at a time when the global computer network is no longer the
private preserve of scientists and academics, the procedures of
groups like the one headed by Berners-Lee -- the World Wide Web
Consortium, known as W3C -- are being called into question. 

Indeed, many of the civil libertarians who oppose the filter
technology initially touted it as an alternative to government
interference. More recently, they have concluded that
speech-regulation features woven into the Internet may be as
threatening to free expression as legislation. 

"The W3C is taking on a quasi-governmental role, and to the extent
that the standards it adopts become the basic standards of the
Internet, it will have more influence than most national governments
will have," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American
Civil Liberties Union. "These are not mere technical standards that
engineers should be establishing. This platform raises fundamental
questions about free speech, and that debate should occur in public." 

In a recent interview, Berners-Lee portrayed members of the group as
social activists conscious of their legislation like power and
struggling to exercise it responsibly. 

"Most of the people who are working on the Web are not doing it
because they have a frantic urge to program," Berners-Lee said.
"They're doing it because they have a vision of how society should be
improved. The difference is, now people can make social things
possible by creating technology, whereas before, to make social
things possible, really all you could do was make laws." 

Ultimately, how effective such standards are will depend on whether
the major Internet browser companies apply them. Thomas Reardon,
Microsoft's program manager for Internet architecture, and a member
of the World Wide Web Consortium's advisory council, said the company
was continuing to evaluate whether to include the technology in future
versions of its browser. 

"We're certainly looking at which users get the most from it, and
we're also aware of the downsides of government abuse, especially in
foreign situations," Reardon said. "The company is going through a
process of trying to look at it more formally." 

The World Wide Web Consortium's 231 members include most computing
and telecommunications companies that have significant stakes in the
Internet, some government agencies and several nonprofit groups.
Membership fees are on a sliding scale, from $5,000 to $50,000. The
group's stated goal is "to realize the full potential of the Web." 

The challenge in keeping the group apolitical, Berners-Lee said, is
to create ways of achieving social goals that are "policy
independent." 

The platform selection technology, for example, is not itself a
rating system but a labeling system that enables Web publishers to
rate themselves or to be rated by third parties. 

Labels are essential to the growth of the Web, proponents of the
filter standard argue, because while browser software cannot now look
at the millions of sites on the Web and determine which contain
violence or nudity, it can sort by looking at labels that describe
the site's content. 

Under the model endorsed last month, anyone or any group -- from Good
Housekeeping magazine to the government of Singapore to the Christian
Coalition -- could create a ratings system, and parents could select
the one that best represented their values. Aside from any benefits to
children, widespread adoption of labeling would allow sorting by
quality of information according to particular sources or other
criteria. 

A problem is that the Web is vast and rating is labor-intensive.
Civil libertarians say that the most likely outcome in the United
States will be dominance by a few ratings systems that will probably
exclude much of the material on the Web. Nor, they point out, would
there be anything to prevent Congress from passing a law requiring the
use of such systems. 

More frightening, the critics say, the new version of the filter
specifications allows third parties to block all material originating
from a particular Internet address like a political organization, a
country or a group of nations. 

The European Commission has expressed interest in using the filters
to enforce a policy to block illegal content. China, which recently
announced new Internet censorship rules, and Singapore are widely
cited as likely to use the filtering technology to impose censorship.

Paul Resnick, one of the inventors of the content selection system,
has created a sort of incubator at the University of Michigan, where
he is an associate professor in the School of Information, to
encourage the development of multiple ratings systems. 

"In the information age, issues of how information flows are going to
have a huge impact on commerce, society and politics," Resnick said.
"That's why this debate is happening. I think we as technologists
have a special responsibility to educate policy-makers, to educate
the public about what's possible. I think we also have a
responsibility to invent new technologies that meet public goals with
the fewest negative side effects. 

"But," he added, "if I go over a certain boundary and say what the
public's goal ought to be, then I think I'm overstepping my bounds
and abusing my power." 

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
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