September 20, 1999

Plan Calls for Self-Policing of the Internet

By PAMELA MENDELS

arents who want to shield their children from pornographic, violent or other harmful material in the mass media are used to relying on industry ratings for guidance about movies and video games. But when it comes to the Internet, they are on their own -- or left to rely on commercial blocking programs that function as censors rather than guides.

Related Articles Summit to Discuss Global System for Rating Internet Content (September 9, 1999) Yale Law Professor Is Main Architect of Global Filtering Plan (September 10, 1999)

Now, an ambitious proposal drawn up by a German policy research group and based largely on the ideas of an American First Amendment scholar urges the creation of an international rating and filtering system for the Internet.

The idea is included in a set of recommendations for how the Internet industry could police itself to stave off regulation by governments.

"The best thing the industry can do is adopt a system that allows parents, who choose to, to decide to filter things for their children," said Jack M. Balkin, an architect of the plan and a professor of constitutional law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School.

But so far, the proposal has received a cool reception from civil libertarians and some major Web publishers who argue that the plan could backfire and chill free speech online.

"This is being put forward as an effort to prevent regulation of content, but there is a very good possibility it could end up inviting official censorship," said David L. Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based civil liberties group.

The proposal, nine months in the making, was written by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a nonprofit group associated with the German media conglomerate, Bertelsmann AG. It was introduced on Sept. 10 at a meeting in Munich sponsored by the foundation and attended by about 300 government officials, scholars, Internet industry representatives and civil libertarians from around the world.

It is part of a lengthy Memorandum on Self-Regulation of the Internet that suggests a number of steps businesses could take to protect children from harmful material on line, including the development of industry codes of conduct to be enforced by self-regulatory agencies.

But the part of the proposal that has drawn the most fire from free speech advocates is the suggestion that the industry develop a global voluntary rating system that parents could use with filtering software to block content.

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
Christopher Barr, left, Cnet's editor at large, says he is nervous about people being able to block Web sites. He is with Hari Sreenivasan, a senior correspondent.

The Bertelsmann memorandum likens its proposal to a three-layered cake. On the first layer, Web publishers around the world would voluntarily describe their sites using a standard set of terms drawn up by an independent, nonprofit organization. At the second layer, organizations representing a range of backgrounds and viewpoints would devise rating systems to evaluate the terms according to their values, spawning a variety of filters reflecting different ideologies.

The third layer refines the scheme by allowing, among other things, the creation of "white lists" of approved sites that may have been unreasonably filtered out -- for example, news sites that might otherwise be blocked because news can be of a violent nature. Parents could choose to block children's access to unrated sites.

Jens Waltermann, deputy head of the media division of the Bertelsmann Foundation, argues that the proposed system, with its heavy emphasis on parental choice, could discourage governments from intervening in content regulation.

But others see dangers in the plan.

Sobel, like the American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech advocates, fears that the system could invite government regulation. For one thing, governments might require sites to rate themselves, perhaps even imposing sanctions on those that mis-rate their content, he said. And, he added, less democratic governments might use the system to filter what citizens see.

Others express the fear that self-rating would invite self-censorship. "If you know you are rating for a particular level of violence or other content, you may try to jigger a story so a wider audience could watch it," said Arthur B. Sackler, vice president for law and public policy at Time Warner.

Christopher Barr, editor at large at the online publisher Cnet and co-chairman of the Internet Content Coalition, a group of Web publishers that includes The New York Times, said that while the white lists are supposed to act as a brake on unreasonably filtered sites, he was nervous about the idea of someone defining news.

"What's a bona fide news site?" Barr asked. "The New York Times? Nudist news? Matt Drudge? Who's to say?"

Supporters of the plan say such fears are either unfounded or addressable.

Balkin says the self-censorship argument is overstated, in part because it is reasonable to expect producers of children's sites to create age-appropriate material, and the proposed system would not bind adults. As for defining what constitutes news, he says, a variety of news white-lists could describe a range of news types.

	Jens Waltermann of the Bertelsmann Foundation favors a proposed rating system.

Balkin also argues that even totalitarian governments may be unable to use the system to censor content, because ratings would not describe political viewpoints and technology could be developed to route around censorship.

Perhaps most important, says Waltermann of the Bertelsmann organization, is the threat of government regulation. "If governments feel that there are no ways for parents to make choices in their own homes," he said, "they could do all kinds of horrible things to make sure people don't have access."

George Vradenburg, senior vice president for global and strategic policy at America Online, says the Bertelsmann proposal lends an "an intelligent and thoughtful voice" to the discussion of ratings and controls. He added, however, that he had misgivings about a global rating system, fearing, like the civil liberties groups, that it could invite government mandates.

The most appropriate place for Internet ratings, he says, may be in those categories of content where parents are accustomed to seeing them in the off-line world -- in movies, games and television shows that migrate to the Web.

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Related Sites
These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.

• "Filtering the Internet: A Best Practices Model," by Jack M. Balkin, Beth Simone Noveck and Kermit Roosevelt, of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School

• Electronic Privacy Information Center

• Bertelsmann Foundation

• Internet Content Summit

• Memorandum on Self-Regulation of the Internet

• Internet Content Coalition

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Pamela Mendels at mendels@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

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