[More examples of the split within the "cyber-rights" community. --Declan] ===================== Chicago Tribue, November 30, 1997 HEADLINE: MANY VIEWS COULD SNARL 3-DAY WEB CONFERENCE; HOW TO SHIELD CHILDREN THE BIGGEST ISSUE BYLINE: By Frank James and Shirley Brice, Washington Bureau. DATELINE: WASHINGTON BODY: [...] One of the conference's main themes will be educating parents about how filtering software can help them "keep their children out of the red-light district," Berman said. The emphasis on the use of filtering software and expected talk about Internet ratings systems has prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to dub the event the "censorware summit." The ACLU, which played a major role in opposing the decency act, doesn't oppose filtering software in principle, but it asserts that parents who buy it should be able to learn exactly what sites the software blocks and what criteria were used in deciding to block those sites. [...] Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the ACLU, fears that eventually there would be "one or two centralized ratings systems that will reflect particular moral values and have the effect of limiting the breadth and variety of speech on the Internet." "The way these rating systems are going to work," he said "is that parties other than (consumers) are going to decide whether to employ the ratings systems. Sites that are rated unfavorably are going to be blocked out, rendered invisible to the average user." Berman expressed frustration with the ACLU's criticisms. "The court said there were less restrictive ways than government censorship, and they pointed at these filtering tools. It was endorsed by the Supreme Court 9-0. If you take those tools away, what do parents do?" The conference's organizers, Berman said, also want to let parents know about the efforts of companies with major Internet presences to make the Web more family-friendly. [...]