Along with the huge growth of the Internet in recent years has come a concern that obscenity and pornography is easily available to minors. Pornographic material is indeed available on the Internet; and with widespread media attention on the problem, some parents are increasingly concerned about obscene content reaching their children.
Various solutions have been proposed to prevent such content from being available to the young. However, these have all failed to date. Voluntary, self-rating systems are not widely accepted (and suffer from being voluntary), and third party rating systems cannot deal with the scope and accelerating growth of the Internet. Government legislation which regulates the content of the Internet has met with strong opposition.
Increasingly, parents are being encouraged by government to take measures to prevent their children from accessing explicit material on the Internet. This has led to the creation of software products, usually termed a "filter", marketed as tools for parents which allow them to screen out objectionable content. However, parents who are willing to install these filters (and by doing so, are acknowledging that they do not trust their children) will hurt children. By the nature of the technology, parents run the risk of limiting their children's access to legitimate information. Also, they are placing their trust in the judgment of a third party - the creator of the filter - who then becomes the arbiter of what is "objectionable" on the Internet; parents may not share the same view.
On June 26, 1997, the Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act (CDA) places an "unacceptably heavy burden on protected speech," that "threatens to torch a large segment of the Internet community."1 One month after this ruling, Vice-President Gore announced Netparents, an Internet site2 serving as a central resource for parents interested in filtering software for their children. At the same time, President Clinton revealed his Administration's plan regarding obscene material on the Internet:
...the computer industry is developing a whole toolbox full of technologies that can do for the Internet what the V-chip will do for television. Some of the tools are already widely in use... They give parents the power to unlock - or and [sic] to lock the digital doors to objectionable content. Now we have to make these tools more readily available to all parents and all teachers in America...3
Thus, it appears that with the failure of the CDA, the American government is interested in advocating filtering technology as an alternative to legislation to control sites with obscene material. This position has been strengthened with recent bills which have been proposed requiring all Internet service providers to provide "screening software that is designed to permit the customer to limit access to material that is unsuitable for children"4, and that schools and libraries must "certify... it employs a system to filter or block matter deemed to be inappropriate for minors"5 before receiving Internet access. These two bills, if passed, will cause the use of filtering technology to become widespread.
There are three methods used by filters to decide what is objectionable. These are:
Once the material has been deemed unsuitable, access to the entire page may be restricted, or the offending material is deleted, depending on the filter.
It is generally agreed that the use of a whitelist, while the most effective at blocking offensive material, also blocks far too much useful information. This is simply a result of the size of the Internet, and the rate at which it is increasing; this is the same problem that third party rating systems have. Thus, no popular filter on the market today uses a whitelist.
It should also be obvious that blocklists face the same issue. Although proponents of filtering argue that a blocklist is the best way to screen out offensive material6, a review by CNET concluded that "merely checking against a list of 'forbidden' sites doesn't work because URLs change too frequently, and new sites appear every day. That's why a package should check URLs for words deemed objectionable"7.
Thus, some filters supplement the use of a blocklist with content-based filtering. These filters examine the material downloaded through the URL, and deny access if the material is deemed offensive by matching against a set of keywords, such as "pornography", or "sex". Some filters will also prevent access to URLs with objectionable keywords in their address, for example "http://www.phonesex.com".
There are several ethical issues raised by the use of filters. In a home, the installation of a filter on the family computer shows an obvious lack of trust between the parent and the child. In cases where this trust is already lacking, filtering software may cause further breakdown in family relationships. For example, some filters have an "audit trail" feature which logs all sites that a child has been browsing. The EFF raise the concern that "such a `feature' though it may sound good to nosy parents, could actually prove disastrous. Imagine what could happen, for example, after a child's abusive parents learn she has been visiting or attempting to visit sites dealing with teen pregnancy, gay youth support groups, or child abuse."8
The use of filters in schools and libraries raises another issue - whether screening material on the Internet is a violation of First Amendment rights. The American Library Association has resolved that the "use in libraries of software filters which block Constitutionally protected speech is inconsistent with the United States Constitution..."9
However, recent court cases are still in the process of deciding this. An example is a library in Loudoun County, Virginia which chose to install X-Stop filtering software on their Internet access terminals; they are being challenged by plaintiffs whose web pages are filtered by this software (including material on safer sex, banned books, and gay and lesbian teen resources).
Although it is intended that a filter will only screen offensive content, many experiments have concluded otherwise. Keyword blocking is especially faulty, since the technology is often unable to recognize context. For example, in filtering an "objectionable" keyword such as "breast", information on "breast cancer" may be screened.
Several experiments have highlighted these shortcomings:
Two popular filters that were recently awarded awards by PC Magazine are Solid Oak's CyberSitter, and The Learning Company's Cyber Patrol13. Experimenting with a trial copy of CyberSitter dated Mar 18, 1998 further emphasizes the liabilities of keyword filtering; CyberSitter simply deletes keywords that it deems "objectionable" from pages without warning; this feature cannot be turned off, nor can the default keywords be removed. Experiments by the author with a recent copy have shown that this includes:
CyberSitter also prevents the sending of particular keywords by the user; thus, attempts to search for "sex education" or even the word "Sussex" using any search engine fails.
As well as marking material as objectionable without checking the content, keyword-based filters also suffer from a general lack of configurability. CyberSitter is not the only example; NetNanny and CyberPatrol allow phrases and words to be added to the keyword list, but the default keywords cannot be removed. As well, the default keywords chosen by the manufacturer are not made known to the user in documentation or in the program itself. This means that the user typically will not know what has been deleted, or on what basis material has been deemed offensive. This feature, presumably meant to keep the filter easy to use as well as safe from alteration by children, means that much of the useful material on the Internet will be restricted from children.
Blocklists are themselves problematic. Like keyword lists, these are usually not configurable by the user on the local machine - an entry on the blocklist cannot be deleted. As well, blocklists are also stored in encrypted form so that the consumer has no idea what is being blocked by default, and must rely on the judgment of the software manufacturer. Users also cannot delete entries from this blocklist easily. They must submit a rationale to the manufacturer who may then update the "master" blocklist; the user then downloads this new blocklist, or the software will download it automatically.
When attempting to access various sites with the two leading filters on the market, one finds that the blocklist of CyberSitter (as of Mar 18, 1998) includes:
CyberSitter has the added "feature" of not warning that the particular site has been blocked; it simply refuses to allow the browser to connect to the site. Thus, the user has no way of knowing whether a site has been blocked, or whether the address is simply invalid.
Cyber Patrol's current blocklist includes17:
By blocking these sites, filter manufacturers are displaying questionable judgment. For example, there is little basis for blocking the entire DejaNews site based on a limited hierarchy of pornographic newsgroups; DejaNews is invaluable as one of the more important Internet research tools. A survey of the National Organization for Women's web page reveals a great deal of information that does not meet CyberSitter's criteria of "topics such as adult or sexual issues, illegal activities, bigotry, racism, drugs, or pornography"18.
Software manufacturers who maintain these blocklists also show evidence of pursuing personal vendettas. An example: the Ethical Spectacle is a Web magazine which focuses on ethical, law, and political issues in society. On January 19, 1997, the Ethical Spectacle was placed on a blocklist by Solid Oak's CyberSitter software. In their words,
I added a link to the Spectacle top page called `Don't Buy Cybersitter[sic]'... Solid Oak has now responded by blocking The Ethical Spectacle. "I wrote to Milburn and to Solid Oak technical support demanding an explanation," Wallace said. "I pointed out that The Spectacle does not fit any of their published criteria for blocking a site... The Ethical Spectacle includes the internationally respected `An Auschwitz Alphabet', a compilation of resources pertaining to the Holocaust. Sixty percent of the Spectacle's traffic consists of visitors to the Holocaust materials... Now, due to Solid Oak's actions, Cybersitter's claimed 900,000 users will no longer have access to it.19
Cyber Patrol has also placed pages that criticize its product on blocklists in the past:
..the EFF is one web site that was blocked by Cyber Patrol for a number of months... The first article to examine Cyber Patrol in a critical light was Keys to the Kingdom, published by Brock Meeks and Declan McCullagh in July 1996 for the CyberWire Dispatch. The Dispatch was also briefly blocked by Cyber Patrol until the editors discovered the ban, at which point Cyber Patrol un-blocked the Dispatch and apologized.20
Although the makers argue that users can submit requests for sites to be removed from a blocklist, this is still problematic. First, the process is lengthy and tedious - the user must explain in detail why the site should not be banned, and most likely will not bother. Second, if the user is unable to access the site at all due to the installation of the filter, there is no way to tell whether the information is obscene or not. Although in the case of home use, a parent could conceivably judge for themselves by disabling the filter, this is not true in a school or library setting. Filters on these public access terminals cannot be disabled without the intervention of the teacher or librarian.
The use of filtering is being encouraged by the American government as an effective solution to screen children from obscene material on the Internet, since it has generally been unable to pass legislation restricting such material. However, filtering has been shown to work badly in restricting access only to material that may be deemed objectionable. Keyword searching is not at all selective in the material that it screens, and blocklist filtering relies too much on the opinions of third party software manufacturers who have shown ill-judgement in compiling lists of obscene sites.
If one ignores the issue of lack of trust inherent in the act of installing a filter for children, then filtering may indeed be the best compromise to the Internet's perceived obscenity problem. As the ACLU has stated, "While user-based blocking programs present troubling free speech concerns, we still believe today that they are far preferable to any statute that imposes criminal penalties on online speech"21. However, any filter that uses context-based searching must utilise much better technology which is not as blindly selective, and must allow a greater degree of freedom to the user in choosing what to screen. Manufacturers of filters should stop the practice of encrypting blocklists and allow for sites to be removed from a local copy of a blocklist. They should also make clear their criteria for placing a site on a blocklist, or follow independent criteria set forth perhaps by the government.
A better solution altogether is to encourage parents to avoid the use of filters altogether. By instilling a sense of moral values in children, parents can trust that they can use the Internet without the need for constant surveillance. In other words,
As will always be true, the most effective method of getting comfortable with your child's Internet access is to guide them as a parent. No other human being except you knows best what is and isn't appropriate for them. By learning to use the Internet with your child (either one of you can teach the other) you can instill in them the values that you want them to use when selecting material in the Internet, or on television, radio, or in print media. The respect built between you and your child will function when no one is around, and will survive software upgrades, eternally - changing international law, and other unpredictable events.22
| Copyright © 1998 Julian Fong. All rights reserved. |
| Last modified: Wed Nov 24 15:01:11 PST 1999 |