65 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
65 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
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How Parents Can Filter Out the Naughty Bits
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BILL DUVALL WANTS TO FIND PORN ON the Internet, He wants to so
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badly that he pays Stanford University graduate students to track
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it down for him. Those bright-eyed bounty hunters of smut are
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efficient, finding between five and 10 places a day that meet
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Duvall's single criterion: sexual explicitness. On a typical day
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last week, his free-lancers Internet addresses of computers that
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images from Playboy, erotic bedtime !;tories and stag party-style
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X-rated video snippets. All of 1-hem went into a kind of address
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book that has well in excess 1,000 entries.
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But Duvall is no ordinary pornography collector. His
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little black book is built into a program called SurfWatch that,
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instead of connecting to the electronic hot spots, automatically
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blocks access to them. SurfWatch of Los Altos, California, is one
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of a growing number of computer programs designed to answer a
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fundamental concern of parents, educators and even employers:
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How can porn be prevented from coming into computers? Fearful that
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Congress will try to stifle cyberspace with overly broad antismut
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laws, computer hackers and civil libertarians are promoting such
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desktop remedies as a way to keep censorship where they think it
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belongs-in the home.
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"I'm not in the position to be a censor-that responsibility
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should be at the parents' level, or whoever controls the
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terminal," says Gordon Ross, chief executive officer of Canada's
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Vancouver-based Net Nan*ny, a program that allows a parent or
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guardian to monitor everything passing through
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the computer. Net Nanny users, for example, can phrases as
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"Whats your name?" and "Whats your phone number?" in a phrase
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book. When the software detects one of the targeted phrases
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printing across the terminal-say, in a chat room of a commercial
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online service-Net Nanny harrumphs and pulls the plug on the
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conversation by logging off the service. The program is
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effective in direct proportion to the monitor's ability to predict
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all the permutations of blue outthere.
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Naturally, the national online-service providers, such as
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Prodigy, America Online and CompuServe, are watching these
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developments closely. They are gated communities, with local
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ordinances that prohibit red-light districts. But once their
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gates are open to the Internet, how do they protect their
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customers? CompuServe posts only a written notice, warning people
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to be careful when they venture forth. "The internet is a
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completely different place,' says spokeswoman Michelle Moran.
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"You're on your own. We're not responsible for lost or stolen
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items." At Prodigy the registered head of the household, using a
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credit card for verification, must activate an Internet connection
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for each family member. That way, access can be denied to the
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kids. Or a husband.
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What's missing from all these solutions is something that
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would give responsible parties more specific guidance about which
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Internet material is appropriate and which is not. Earlier this
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month a consortium of information-highway companies that includes
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Microsoft, Progressive Networks and Netscape announced a plan
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that should help. By year's end the consortium is expected to
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come up with a rating system akin to the one used for movies.
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Anyone for a nice
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G-rated Web site?
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TIME, JULY 3,1995
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-By Joshua Quittner
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