http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40653,00.html How X Rates With 'W' by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 8:00 a.m. Dec. 13, 2000 PST WASHINGTON -- Advisory committees inside the federal bureaucracy usually inhabit that featureless terrain between obscurity and futility: There's no pay, scant power and little prestige. But when a group is created by the respected National Academy of Sciences, and when the topic is the politically heated brew of sex, kids and the Internet, traditional rules no longer apply. With an eye to making a recommendation to Congress next year, the academy's committee on Internet pornography and inappropriate material met on Wednesday to hear social science experts describe the effects of smut and violence on the youth of America. It's a sure bet Washington will be paying close attention to the results. Republicans have pledged that the Justice Department will pounce on "obscene" websites should George W. Bush gain the presidency. Bush himself has railed against offensive content online, and he has endorsed library and school filtering. "One of the reasons we've had very little success (getting sex and violence off TV) is that television controls the message," said Joanne Cantor, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin. "The positive thing may be that television is more willing to focus on the horrors of the Internet than the horrors of television," Cantor said. Cantor, like the other presenters, didn't confine her remarks to porn. Although figuring out how to shield kids from digital prurience is the group's primary task, it's also charged with considering "other inappropriate Internet content." That's arguably a pretty vague mission, but the committee members were too busy agreeing with the speakers to quibble. [...] Wednesday's meeting of the National Academy of Sciences panel was designed to explore "non-technical" strategies for protecting children from offensive material -- such options include providing guidelines for parents and educating kids about sexuality. Technical options the panel will weigh include filtering software, the creation of a new top-level domain, rating systems, and regulations or new laws directed at sexually explicit sites online. The committee's stated goal is to "provide a foundation for a more coherent and objective local and national debate on the subject of Internet pornography" while avoiding "specific" recommendations directed at new laws or regulations. This week's meeting is the third. The group will next meet in March in the San Francisco area to discuss technical options, and finally in June 2001 in Chicago. [...]