Chipping Away at Web Porn
The U.S. Supreme Court had no choice Tuesday but to reject a 6-year-old law intended to crack down on Internet pornography. The court’s 5-4 decision to bar prosecutors from enforcing the Child Online Protection Act, which would have imposed fines and prison terms on website owners who posted “patently offensive” photos and descriptions, recognized that the law’s goals were both unconstitutional and impossible to enforce.
Such sound legal reasoning doesn’t make the job of parents any easier. The nastiest, most offensive pornography is only a couple of keyboard clicks away, instead of hidden behind curtains in a video-rental store. The least the computer industry should do is make Internet-filtering programs more effective, easier to use and more readily at hand. The market for filtering programs is expected to grow from $360 million today to $890 million by 2008. Still, the market has yet to prove itself more able than courts and legislatures to protect children from porn.
One idea that interests us is a filtering device like the “V-chip,” which Congress has forced TV makers to include in all new sets sold in the United States for the last four years. A PC filtering chip would have to be more sophisticated than the V-chip, a relatively dumb device that simply blocks programming that TV networks and other content providers have themselves flagged as “adult-oriented.” But antivirus software such as Symantec’s Norton Utilities, which can update itself to guard against new computer viruses, shows why sophisticated content filtration is not some pipe dream.
Powerful groups, including the Information Technology Assn. of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filed briefs in the lawsuit opposing the Child Online Protection Act. Now these groups have a moral obligation to come up with alternative ways to give parents a hand. The V-chip took years to develop and involved intense discussion among legislators, regulators and industry groups like the Motion Picture Assn. of America. Unfortunately, it is clumsy to use, poorly advertised and too seldom turned on.
The private sector should do a better job with computer filters, given that the images children can access on the Web are far more disturbing than anything they’ll find on television.
