Word: filteration
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Although the tech community may recoil at such a proposal--and at Bush's remarkable denial of personal volition--the plan makes political sense. It takes what most people see as a technological dragon and promises that it will be slain by a technological St. George, filter software that can scan through the Internet and block access to anything objectionable--pornography, hate speech, bomb-making instructions, you name it. Since it's a technical issue, the computer experts will handle it, and the electorate can go back to sleep. Unfortunately, the problem isn't that simple: Filter software is beset...
...addition to blocking too much, the filter programs also generally block too little. The Internet is a rapidly changing environment, in which new sites emerge and disappear on a daily basis. No team of investigators could possibly catalog all the objectionable material to be found there--and even if they could, they'd need to start over in a week. Furthermore, Internet gateways and proxy servers allow for enterprising individuals to evade many filter programs. Until we can develop artificial intelligence more astute than Justice Potter Stewart (who couldn't define pornography, but said, "I know it when...
Such problems might be mere annoyances if schoolteachers and librarians exercised actual control over what would be blocked. However, the only trade secret of a filter company is its list of banned sites; if that were public, any competitor could introduce an equally good product. As a result, the lists are fiercely guarded, meaning that there is no simple way for the purchasers of filter software to verify a manufacturer's claims--or for those whose sites are wrongly labeled as pornography or hate speech to find out and complain. Even if the programs offer some nominal degree of choice...
...light of these difficulties, filter software has the added disadvantage of being unnecessary. I am certain that no filter in the world would be a greater deterrent than the disapproval of Mrs. Beamer, the school librarian, when she sees a student with pornography on the screen. More generally, in today's society, those under 18 are exposed to a great number of influences outside the home; parents who have not prepared their children to face such influences without letting their hearts be "turned dark" cannot expect society to shield their virgin ears. The federal government does not need to interfere...
...politically, none of this matters. Filter software has become the cause du jour because it lays to rest nagging questions of content and responsibility--it is just a cover for our actual confusion, a whited sepulcher concealing the ugly fact that society hasn't yet dealt with the Internet's implications. In the old days, a flawed culture could be healed by dragging a bunch of network executives up to Capitol Hill and giving them a stern talking-to; through the democratized medium of the Internet, content can be distributed worldwide after it has been reviewed by only one moderator...