U.S. Congress panel balks at filtering Web smut

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A congressionally chartered panel on Friday will recommend voluntary Internet smut filtering in schools and libraries, a step short of a mandatory child-shielding plan about to be voted on by Congress.

But in a report to lawmakers, the Commission on Child Online Protection (COPA) will decline to endorse proposals to create .xxx domains -- a kind of Internet red-light zone -- or promote labeling of Web sites as adult oriented.

The panel declined to endorse the move in Congress to require blocking and filtering technology for schools and libraries receiving federal technology funding.

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Next week, Congress may vote to enforce such a mandate, even though two previous tries to legislate in this area have foundered in the courts on free speech and privacy grounds.

The commission's report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, is to be made public Friday.

The commission, including representatives of America Online Inc., Yahoo! and Disney's Go.com, concluded that no single technology nor new law would shield kids from smut.

Instead, it found Congress would do better to let parents guide their kids' Internet use with self-selected filtering software, an approach known as "user empowerment."

"Government at all levels should fund, with significant new money, aggressive programs to investigate, prosecute and report violations of federal and state obscenity laws," the panel said.

Such stepped-up law enforcement "should be of sufficient magnitude to deter effectively illegal activity on the Internet," it added, without calculating just how big that might have to be.

Congress enacted COPA in October 1998 and created the commission to gauge the accessibility, cost and effectiveness of protective technologies and methods as well as their implications for privacy, free speech and law enforcement.

Efforts to mandate smut filtering in schools and libraries have been led by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, an Arizona Republican. Opposing the effort is a coalition led by the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Library Association and some conservative civil libertarian groups, aligned on First Amendment grounds.

The panel sought to skate around the constitutional pitfalls that have made the matter so thorny. In 1997, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional the indecency provisions of the first attempt to curb kids' access to "indecent" material online, the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Enforcement of the criminal provisions of Congress's second try -- the COPA law that created the panel -- was prevented by federal courts from being enforced on constitutional grounds and remains tied up in litigation.

Donald Telage of Web address registrar Network Solutions Inc., the panel chairman, said he considered the mass e-mailing of "teaser" ads containing material inappropriate for children to be smut peddlers' most egregious act.

But each of 18 protective tools evaluated, including filters used by Internet service providers or end users, had "pros and cons" in terms of First Amendment values, he said in a telephone interview.

The panel urged the online porn industry to strip explicit graphics and text from front pages of its Web sites. "Teaser pages should be located only beyond the front, public page," it said.

J.T. Edmond of Seattle-based Flying Crocodile Inc., which provides Web services to such sites, welcomed the recommendations, including stepped-up law enforcement.

The Internet lacks a trade association for adult entertainment sites, whose global 2000 revenues totalled an estimated $1.1 billion as of October 1, according to Edmond, who is building a group to represent the "ethical" players.

The commission said "targeted prosecution" in the United States could serve as a model overseas, where it said much of the objectionable content originated.

The United States should seek new pacts aimed at gathering of evidence and extradition in cases involving international distribution of obscenity and child pornography, it said.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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COPA Commission
American Civil Liberties Union
American Library Association
Flying Crocodile, Inc.

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