[An editorial in today's Washington Post, about blocking software and the CyberWire Dispatch that Brock and I sent out earlier this month. --Declan] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1996-07/15/006L-071596-idx.html Editorial: "BLOCK, BUT VERIFY" Monday, July 15 1996; Page A18 The Washington Post THE NEXT generation of highly publicized Internet products may have less to do with what you can get from the Net than with what you can protect yourself against getting. In the wake of the concern over pornography that sparked the now-overturned Communications Decency Act, vendors have rushed to market software with names like SurfWatch and NetNanny. [...] Some incidents of what might be called over-screening are accidents resulting from the overzealous use of keywords or other sweeping means by the inexperienced. Others are exactly what the products' makers intend... An on-line article by cyberjournalists Brock Meeks and Declan McCullough reported on a product called CyberSitter, marketed by the conservative group Focus on the Family, that blocks access to any discussions of homosexuality. It's advertised as a product for families who want just that: a relatively G-rated version of cyberspace. The feasibility and ready availability of such products is, of course, a strong argument that the government needn't meddle. Anyone, not just those worried about porn, should soon be able to find software that edits what a family wants edited and lets through what it wants to read. One pitfall, though, as Messrs. McCullough and Meeks observe, is the commercially inspired reluctance of many of these producers of software to specify exactly what they are blocking. Though understandable, this raises obvious dangers that products meant to block one type of transmission -- violence, for example -- will in fact muffle wider areas of debate. Smart consumers will want, and demand, to know what they're not getting, the better to make use of the information they have.