Netly is running Josh Quittner's column in this week's Time Magazine as our story today. It's about the perils of self-labeling systems for the Net, especially for news organizations. Stop by and check it out. Also, on p48-49 of this week's magazine is a look at censorware programs and public libraries. It's called "Censor's Sensibility: Are Web filters valuable watchdogs or just new online thought police?" Bruce van Voorst and I worked on the story from the Washington bureau. (It's not on pathfinder.com yet, so you'll have to pick up a physical copy.) Also, stop by our Netpolitics chat area where we're discussing self-labeling and censorware: http://cgi.pathfinder.com:80/cgi-bin/boards/read/206/9 -Declan --- http://pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1247,00.html The Netly News Network (http://netlynews.com/) August 4, 1997 The Big Sellout by Joshua Quittner (quittner@pathfinder.com) The greatest threat to free speech these days is coming from the most unlikely quarter: journalists. It's happening - where else? - on the Net. A self-appointed council of "industry representatives," including people from the Wall Street Journal, the Newspaper Association of America, CNET, Wired and - no surprise! - Microsoft, is debating whether the online world might be a safer, happier place if a subcommittee of the council decides what's news and what's not. Anything deemed "not news" would be forced to submit to a rating system or risk being blocked by software browsers. And being blocked on the Web could mean extinction for small, independent-minded online publishers - the very folks who have benefited most from the Internet revolution. The whole thing reeks of the powerful beating up on the weak. The roots of the betrayal go back to June 1996, when the notion of rating Web content first took off. That was when Microsoft forced its myriad web sites to adopt a system that analyzes content according to the degree to which it contains sex, nudity, violence or obscene language. The official reason for this was to make the Net a "safe place" without government censorship - which made sense, I guess, given that the Supreme Court had not yet ruled the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional. It also made good business sense for Microsoft to adopt an idea that adds value to one of its key products, the Internet Explorer. Explorer is the second-most popular browser on the Web; a software component that gives parents the option to filter out the naughty bits is a big selling point. But what's good business for the software industry is nonsense for journalism - as the folks who run Microsoft's news web site quickly realized. [...] ------------------------- Declan McCullagh Time Inc. The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/