Online Policy Group

Although everyone who spoke agreed that stalking of children online and dissemination of child pornography online are serious problems that are increasing in frequency with increasing worldwide use of the Internet, all of the solutions proposed to the Commission seem riddled with issues of one kind or another. Aside from expressions of the core problem and the general agreement that law enforcement personnel should enforce existing laws, there was no evident agreement of the Commissioners on any other specific recommendations. Commissioner James Schmidt, a professor at San Jose State University, even suggested that Commission's mandate to study materials harmful to minors was too restrictive in focusing only on sexually explicit materials.

It comes as no real surprise that law enforcement officials and some Commission members will recommend increases in funding for law enforcement. What may be more surprising is that some law enforcement experts, such as Dr. William Tafoya, Professor of Criminal Justice at Governors State University and a former FBI agent, emphasized the role of parental guidance for children as a primary preventive for the problem.

One idea proposed in much of the testimony is the Internet "red light" district in the form of a dot XXX marker in the domain name of all "adult-oriented" sites. Some proposed this as a voluntary solution with testimony from two adult entertainment businesses--Danni's Hard Drive and Flying Crocodile Inc.--in full agreement.

However, what happens when a web site publisher refuses to place a pornographic site into a .XXX domain? Should there be a law that restricts X-rated material to a .XXX domain? Who should decide what is X-rated and who should enforce such a decision? And how does such a solution get implemented in light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Communications Decency Act which specificed that online obscenity is in the eye of the local community and cannot be legislated on a broad nationwide basis?

Of course the Internet is a global medium representing various cultures and countries that have moral standards and practices that are quite different than in the United States. For example, as Marcel Machill of the Bertelsmann Foundation testified, German citizens are much more tolerant of nudity than U.S. citizens, whereas the opposite is true for violent or hateful content.

Another idea is the "green space" zone created as a place that contains only content safe for children. William Clinger, Vice President of Engineering at the Clinger Corporation, suggested a longer-term solution implementing a green zone mechanism using numerical web addresses (IP addresses), rather than by alphabetical domain names. Especially if it constitutes only a small portion of the overall Internet, the green zone idea may help to avoid problems related to constitutional protections on free speech, but the problem of who rates the sites according to which standards and with what enforcement mechanisms still remains. COPA Commission Chairman Donald Telage noted that the proposal could only work as a longer-term solution once plans to expand Internet to over 65,000 times its current size are put into place.

Stanford University Professor Gio Wiederhold even proposed a hybrid voluntary solution with a red zone, a green zone, and an additional grey zone for content that does not easily fit in either red or green categories.

A debate raging below the surface of most of the Commission testimony is whether or the software filtering technology currently on the market is an appropriate solution to block materials that is harmful to minors. With what was apparently a bullet-proof vest visible under his white collared shirt, Bennett Haselton of Peacefire.org presented convincing testimony about the ineffectual nature of filtering software. By contrast, Andree Wright, of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, presented a six-month status of Australia's implementation of a mandatory nationwide Internet filtering law. Wiederhold advised the creation of a consortium for the purpose of centralizing the gathering and updating of web address lists for the use of all software filter companies, with those companies competing on feature comparison and ease-of-use rather than on block lists which are too resource-intensive for any single company to maintain.

Commissioner George Vradenburg of AOL asked John Litten of Microsoft Corporation if it would be possible to set filtering on by default in the Internet Explorer web browser. Litten reported that the Internet Explorer product team discussed the possibility at a meeting last week with Commission Chairman Donald Telage.

Andrew Seybold offered the Commission an update on wireless technologies which he said by 2001 will start to stream high-bandwidth real-time video onto wireless devices. As a result, it will no longer be possible for parents to supervise children's use of the Internet simply by bringing the child's computer into the living room.

Nancy Willard, the Director of Responsible Netizen, presented the most compelling case -- educate children, parents, teachers, librarians, and other community members as a means of reducing exposure to inappropriate sexual contacts or materials. Judith Krug, Director of the American Librarian Association, pointed out that librarians have successfully been handling these issues through development of Internet use policies that are tailored to local community concerns. Commissioners pointed to efforts such as NetWiseNow as first steps toward educational programs and Jan D'Arcy, Co-Director of the Media Awareness Network, reported on Canadian efforts to educate the public on safe use of the Internet by children. Catherine Davis, Producer of the child-oriented Yahooligans section of Yahoo!, discussed the idea of online resources created by and for children.

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