Battle lines drawn over Web ratings

An upcoming brainstorming session on Web ratings could be the flash point in a debate over Internet censorship that has been simmering in the six months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Communications Decency Act.

Some high-tech industry observers who normally find themselves on the same side of an argument are at odds over the issue of content ratings, which is set to be addressed at the summit meeting in Washington, D.C., next month.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, which opposed the Communications Decency Act, is sponsoring the industry powwow, dubbed the Internet/Online Summit: Focus on Children. The CDT's executive director, Jerry Berman, is adamant that such a system won't be a threat to free speech in cyberspace -- which is the exact opposite view of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"The CDT has continually been opposed to any kind of unilateral ratings system," Berman said. The summit participants "are not advocating censorware," but are pushing the concept of choice for parents, he said.

"We'll be looking at whether we can solve some of these problems without a big-government solution," he said. "To say that parents shouldn't have these tools is misunderstanding the whole issue."

But the EFF's program director, Stanton McCandlish, said it's naive to expect ratings systems and filtering programs to replace the parents' role in guiding their children online.

"We don't think there's a need for this at all," McCandlish said of the ratings systems. "They tend to have a censorious effect by definition."

McCandlish was especially critical of the White House's role in the summit meeting, which is being organized by a coalition of industry advocates and high-tech companies, and is expected to feature a speech by President Clinton.

"The White House doesn't need to be involved in this. This is more about giving our government a role in defining content than in giving parents a choice," he said.

The meeting, set for Dec. 1-3, is also being sponsored by some of the companies that make filtering software, including Microsystems Software and SafeSurf.