CENSOR'S SENSIBILITY

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Opponents say the filter companies' banned lists can also reflect ideological biases. CyberSitter, the most aggressively conservative filtering program, is infamous for blocking access to the National Organization for Women's Website as well as entire Internet providers like Echo, New York City's oldest online community. Gay-themed sites--big surprise--suffer mightily. CyberPatrol blocks the Queer Resources Directory; CyberSitter bans the alt.politics.homosexual newsgroup; SurfWatch blocks ClariNet's AP and Reuters articles about AIDS and HIV.

If conservative parents want software that will censor any Website that the Rev. Jerry Falwell wouldn't say amen to, that's their privilege. But free-speech proponents say customers looking for ideology-free screening might not be aware of how much they're missing. Censorware produces unpredictable and often unwanted results (see box), and most filterers consider their blacklists trade secrets. This puts Loudoun County in the position of letting private firms pass judgment on the contents of a medium that's supposed to offer easy access to all--a notion that's especially dubious in the case of the "free public library," Internet provider of last resort for those who can't afford a computer. "We serve the information needs of the whole community," says Judith Krug, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom. "Identifying one standard for everyone violates the rights of everybody else."

Such First Amendment echoes make even conservative Congressmen nervous. "I endorse the notion of filtering devices at home," says Bob Goodlatte, a pro-CDA Republican Representative from Virginia, "but there's certainly a legitimate debate as to how to do it in libraries without introducing a major form of censorship."

There are, however, minor forms, including asking the Websites to rate their content "voluntarily." Chris Hansen, senior staff counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, is particularly disturbed by the growing political support for self-censorship. "Rating systems may work, however badly, in TV or movies, where there are relatively few programs and armies of lawyers," he says. "But with E-mail, chat rooms and newsgroups, the sheer volume is overwhelming."

Nonetheless, self-censorship is starting to look like the wave--or at least one very big wave--of the future. Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser already includes a ratings program called RSACi. It has emerged as the leading Net-rating system that allows Web proprietors to rate their own sites instead of letting NetNanny and SurfWatch employees pass judgment for them. And rival Netscape, bowing to pressure from the White House at last month's censorware summit (Bill Clinton, predictably, loves ostensibly family-friendly software filters), has agreed to use rating systems in the next version of its browser. Even news organizations, whose free-speech obsession borders on the fanatic, are rating themselves (see THE NETLY NEWS). The Webmasters' private initiative, though, may not cool legislative ardor for rewriting the CDA. Neither filtering software nor self-rating is sufficient to clean up the Net, in the view of Senator Dan Coats of Indiana. Filters are "a good first step," he says, but "it's a tax on the family--the innocent family." Of course, the same could be said for clear-cutting the Web's forests of unfettered speech.