Attempting to legislate morality--and failing

By Brett Bender

Websites such as "Absolute All American Nude Teens" and the "#1 College Teen Sex Site on the Web" await those who enter the keyword "teen" on AltaVista, the World Wide Web's most popular search engine.

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) provided this example of an innocent query producing "indecent material" in a speech supporting his Internet Schools Filtering Act. His legislation would require schools and libraries to filter, or block access, to some Internet sites in order to qualify for a new set of subsidies supplying more computers for classrooms and public libraries. Under the legislation, schools would have to certify with the Federal Communications Commission that they use filtering on all Internet-connected computers so that students cannot access material "harmful to minors."

The Internet has grown in recent years at a tremendous rate. According to Matthew Gray at M.I.T., the number of hosts on the Internet went from roughly five million in January 1995 to around 30 million in January 1998. The amount of information freely and easily available grew even faster, and the number of websites now doubles every six months. Information available on the web runs a wide gamut: from the inane to the sublime, from porn to Planned Parenthood. Right now, the Internet is the newest arena for legislators who believe in filtering technological media. They fail to understand, however, the limitations of their proposed filtering tools.

Filtering tools lack the ability to distinguish between protecting children and preserving the Internet's content value. Most filters function in the same two-fold manner: if a site is on a banned list, then it is blocked; if a document contains banned words, then it is blocked. No methodology has been devised that can discriminate, for example, between Degas' paintings of young ballerinas and child pornography.

The block list of the popular filtering package Cyber Patrol denies access to sites including the Planned Parenthood website, the Mother Jones website, and the soc.feminism newsgroup. Site block lists reflect the biases of those who create them, and often filter out material which is perfectly benign. Consider also the example that opened this column, the word "teen." A filtering package that blocks "teen" may block a document containing "Teen Sex Orgy," but also information on "Teen Smoking" or the band Teenage Fanclub. Effectively, filtering causes large segments of useful information on the Internet to disappear while not properly accomplishing the goal of filtering harmful content.

McCain's bill is troubling for three reasons. First, it insists that filtering software be installed on all computers at a public school that receives funding even though this software is seriously flawed. Second, the bill embodies the unfortunate idea that software should stand in for adult supervision and teaching children to make appropriate choices.

The third problem in McCain's bill is even more egregious: namely, its desire to impose objective law on an inherently subjective topic. While there is indeed content on the Internet that may be considered harmful to minors, the standard for harm is neither consistent nor universal. Rather than teaching children to discriminate between right and wrong by themselves, McCain's legislation relies on technology to filter "wrong" before it reaches them. Such an attempt is doomed to failure, not just because software filters are flawed, but because notions of right and wrong are inherently subjective.

The ultimate arbiter of a child's Internet access should be the child, in combination with the parents. To protect children from harmful content, parents should discuss what is and is not appropriate with them by their standards. By teaching children responsible values, parents instill in them the only filter they need--and indeed, the only filter that can possibly work.

Brett Bender is a junior in Pierson.

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