July 2000 Cover
Further Reading
Kids' Rights
Websites blocked by popular censorware products include...
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Sauce for goose only, not gander
In an experiment aimed at exposing the biases and inconsistencies of In- ternet filtering software, the cyber-activist organization Peacefire recently lifted anti-gay texts from the websites of Concerned Women for
America ("...homosexuality is an immoral behavior that can be changed...."), the Family Research Council ("...homosexuality is unhealthy, immoral, and destructive...."), Focus on the Family ("Homosexuality is just one form in
which the brokenness of humanity reveals itself...."), and "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger ("Rights! For sexual deviant behavior there are now rights....").
The quotes were transferred to specially created individual websites housed at GeoCities and other online locations. Once these "bait" sites had been set up, Peacefire reported them to manufacturers
of censorware, pointing out that they met the companies' published criteria for classification as censorable "hate speech."
The companies contacted (CyberPatrol, Net Nanny, SurfWatch, SmartFilter, WebSENSE, and Bess) obliged by blocking the small individual sites. Informed that the offending statements had been
copied verbatim from four unblocked, unfettered, high-profile right-wing websites, all six companies declined to block the sites that had served as sources of the bigoted material.
Peacefire's Bennett Haselton revealed the results of "Project Bait and Switch" in a May 27 press release. "What we found," he reported, "was that, in every case, the [censorware] company will block
certain content hosted on a personal home page, but will not block
identical content on the home page of large, well-funded organizations with lawyers and PR departments and rented Congresspersons leased in their name."
An ounce of prevention...
There is growing concern about the politically tainted absurdities of efforts to curb Internet access in the name of decency or child protection. Censoring software has exploded into a thriving industry in the
past three years. At least 50 censorware systems are now on the market. These blocking devices are sold as "filters," but the less euphemistic, more accurate term
censorware is widely preferred by computer professionals.
The Censorware Project defines
censorware as "software which is designed and optimized to prevent another person from sending or receiving information." Casting its net for both text and
graphics, censorware blocks access to websites, web pages, and newsgroups using secret, encrypted, copyright-protected databases of Internet addresses, key words, or both. While the stated mission of censorware is to sift out
obscene and/or bigoted material, it often serves a hidden political agenda.
Voluntary... not
Censoring software has been touted as a constitutionally viable remedy for the failures of the censorship provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) and its offspring, the Children's
On-Line Protection Act (COPA), both of which were struck down on First Amendment grounds. Promoted as a sound alternative to the intervention of government censors and a means of getting around the inconveniences of the
First Amendment commercial censorware has grown explosively. With increasing regularity, it is becoming mandated by law.
As the number of homes, offices, schools, and libraries with Internet connections increases, legislators ranging from Senator John McCain (R.-Arizona) to rural school board members have been
pushing measures to force schools and libraries to install blocking devices wherever Internet access exists. Utah's 40 school districts are required to abridge student Internet activity via SmartFilter. Public libraries around the
country have been quietly installing products like CyberPatrol, often without public protest, despite the disapproval of the American Library Association. A 1998 federal court ruling against censorware in a Loudon, Virginia,
library has had limited impact elsewhere.
Rabid dog
Censorware owes its success to child-protection fervor, fear of new technology, and declining belief in free speech. Portraying the Internet as neo-Nazi porn hell, censorware entrepreneurs work hard to
make their products warm and fuzzy and emblematic of family protection. Bess, whose logo depicts a cuddly dog, bills itself as "the Internet Retriever" a family watchdog and pet.
But even pro-censorship zealots must admit that these products are flawed. Karen Jo Gounaud, whose Family Friendly Libraries seeks to make library censorship respectable, once endorsed X-Stop,
which claims to block only pornography. She withdrew her support when confronted with the fact that X-Stop blocks an array of non-pornographic sites like that of the
San Francisco Examiner. Utah's SmartFilter has blocked
at least some portions of the Bible.
Some censorware companies claim their products can easily be customized, but to go through the cumbersome process of unblocking sites, you have to know what's being blocked. The ACLU's 1998
analysis of censorware, Censorship in a Box, points out that "the ability to choose which software is installed does not empower a school board or librarian to determine what is 'inappropriate for minors.' Instead, that determination is made by a software vendor who regards the lists of blocked sites as secret, proprietary information."
Owned by a subdivision of the Mattel toy conglomerate, the leading censorware product, CyberPatrol, has blocked such sites as the home page of the city of Hiroshima, the web pages of all
student organizations at Carnegie Mellon, and newsgroups ranging from alt.journalism.newspapers to alt.soc. fat-acceptance. Its "CyberNOT" database, which covers over 50,000 items, plugs allegedly dangerous content into
handy categories like Full Nude, Partial Nude, Sex Acts, Drugs, Violence, and Intolerance. Compiled by a shadowy group of censors, the list is shrouded in closely guarded secrecy. Activists who have decoded the CyberNOT
list and revealed the inner workings of CyberPatrol have been subject to litigation, harassment, and threats.
The most dedicated promoters of censoring software belong to the Christian right, whose support, as "Project Bait and Switch" suggests, is reciprocated by censorware manufacturers. James Dobson's Focus
on the Family, which markets CYBERSitter, had a hand in its development. In March, 2000, Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (itself blocked by CyberPatrol for "intolerance") lost a bitter battle to force
the public library system of Holland, Michigan, to install censorware.
But the impulse to censor has become respectable across the political spectrum. The Jewish, left-leaning Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whose approach to stamping out bigotry has influenced that of the
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), has developed feelgood censorware called HateFilter, a CyberPatrol variant that expressly proscribes racist and homophobic sites like those of the Ku Klux Klan,
White Aryan Resistance, Holocaust revisionists, and the militantly anti-gay Fred Phelps clan.
GLAAD supported filtering software, even serving for a time on CyberPatrol's largely ceremonial Oversight Committee, until the realization struck that a huge volume of gay-positive material was
being blocked. The organization, which no longer endorses the use of censorware, published a cogent assessment of blocking software,
Access Denied, in 1997. An update followed in March 2000.
Among the concerns of GLAAD and other observers is the dwindling number of small, independent Internet service providers dedicated to free speech and universal access. CyberPatrol has formed
partnerships with communications giants like AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, and AT&T, which are actively running small ISPs out of business.
"It is cost-efficient for AOL, CompuServe, and others to hand over 'vigilance' by buying a popular commercial filter and giving their subscribers the choice to turn it on," notes John E. Bowes of the
University of Washington in a report called Fatal
Filtering. "The problem is that software selection may be geared to minimal price, low supervisory overhead, and a common-denominator bland inoffensiveness."
Kids' rights
A diet of the bland and the inoffensive is precisely what some parents think their children should be fed. Peacefire, whose motto is "It's not a crime to be smarter than your parents," disagrees. The
5000-member organization, which promotes free speech and free inquiry for persons under 18, was founded in 1996 by Seattle programmer Bennett Haselton, then 17, to alert young people to sites blocked by CyberPatrol,
CYBERSitter, and other censoring software and to provide them with the means to circumvent those systems. (A lead article on the Peacefire home page is entitled "How to Disable Your Blocking Software.")
Soon after its appearance, the Peacefire website was blocked as "pornographic" by CYBERSitter, presumably for publishing a list of sites, including those of the National Organization of Women and
the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, proscribed by Focus on the Family's censorware of choice. Ongoing legal issues between Peacefire and CYBERSitter excluded the family-values censorware from "Project Bait and Switch."
Haselton stresses that Peacefire is as opposed to suppression of so-called "hate sites" as it is to censorship of gay-positive material or content of any kind. "It's important," Haselton says, "that people know
that statements like that get made and that speech like that exists. And it's especially important that people who are growing up and learning to think have access to every side of every issue."
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