[The Washington Post has it right. This is what many civil libertarians have been warning about for months: the industry and some advocacy groups (who should know better -- http://www.netparents.org/summit_part.html) are falling over themelves in a rush to label, sort, and filter. They hope to stave off a CDA II. But their frantic scurrying is "voluntary" only in the sense that "voluntary" is newspeak for the threat of government censorship. --Declan] ***************** The Washington Post November 10, 1997 EDITORIAL; Pg. A20 'Self-Regulation' and the Net CLOSE WATCHERSs of the long-running TV ratings fight could read it as a series of tussles over exactly how far the government can go in pushing the proprietors of an expressive medium -- such as TV -- to curb that expression through "voluntary" action. When do carrot-and-stick become just stick? That story isn't over yet: Congress, though antsy, has so far managed to stay on the safe side of the line that separates pressure from outright censorship, and the different responses of different networks is ironic proof that the policy isn't completely coercive. But those who want to see yet more variations on the theme can watch the whole pattern play out again in White House efforts to encourage self-regulation on the Internet. The administration, after coming to grief over its dogged support for the unconstitutional Communications Decency Act, now takes the position that it's up to software providers, parents and citizen groups to make the Internet safe for children, though the government has a beefed-up role to play in enforcing existing laws in cyberspace, for instance, those against child pornography, stalking or harassment. As an accompaniment, though, it is putting considerable public pressure on Internet players to develop a system of ratings and "taggings" for sites that would allow parents to sort Internet access by a few broadly agreed-upon categories. In a July announcement of steps taken by several large software companies to include "family-friendly" sorting features in their browsers, the president emphasized the importance of law enforcement and parental involvement alike in making sure "we do not allow pornographers and pedophiles to exploit a wonderful medium to abuse our children." The vice president, praising the various filters on the market, called them "safety belts for children traveling the Information Superhighway" -- though surely he's the only person who still calls it that. Last week, though, Ira Magaziner, the administration point-person on Net issues, took a different tone in a speech to Internet advertisers. The "tremendous economic benefits" of the Net won't work, he said, "if we don't get efficient industry self-regulation on issues like privacy and content. . . . If you fail, we will have to go the legislative route. That gets caught up in the political process and will be less rational and efficient." Well, yes -- and also less legal. Don't get us wrong: Self-restraint, in some of these cases, is a pretty good place for the providers of what's now called "content" to end up. But the line between urging self-restraint and threatening government censorship is a thin one. The White House, no less than Congress, needs to watch its step.