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

