I'm sitting in the National Press Club, in front of a dozen television cameras, where a conservative press conference on Kids and the Net is starting. Groups like the Family Research Council and the Christian Coalition are complaining that the Internet industry isn't doing enough to label, filter, and rate the Net and is instead looking to "make a few quick bucks." What prompted this event is a two-day summit about to start here in Washington, DC, where high tech firms are joining senior administration officials. The industry's goal: to head off the sequel to the Communications Decency Act. Sen. Dan Coats (R-Indiana), the bill's chief sponsor, is here today. "It has only been the threat of government involvment that has prompted this industry to take any steps at all," he's saying. "There is a dark side to the Internet. That dark side brings unrestrained, unrestricted pornographic material into every home, every library, every school." Now Karen Jo Gounaud is blasting the American Library Association for the unlikely offense of condoning bestiality. "Parents cannot being to handle these problems alone. It's a village problem and it demands a village solution," she says. The solution, these groups say, is to pressure Internet providers to adopt their "Code of Ethical Conduct." It says: "Will adopt terms-of-service policies stating that it reserves the right to take action in good faith to restrict availability of material that it considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." Among other things, the code calls for Usenet filtering and "parental controls as the default settings" for minors. In a few hours (in the same room, in fact), civil liberties and journalism groups are going to be arguing against "mandatory voluntary" rating systems and pointing out their flaws. This leaves the White House precisely where it wants to be: squarely in the middle. More on this later. -Declan