WS Journal, Sept. 8, 1995. Cleaning the Web: Companies to Seek Pornography Blocker Array of Technology Firms Will Join in Effort to Let Parents Screen the Internet By Jared Sandberg Some of the high-tech industry's biggest companies are banding together in a broad-based consortium to develop a way for Internet users to screen out pornography and other offensive material. The group, whose creation is expected to be announced on Monday, is believed to include International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp., telecommunications giants AT&T Corp. and MCI Communications Corp., on-line firms America Online Inc. and Netscape Communications Corp. Entertainment heavyweights Time Warner Inc. and Viacom Inc. also have been approached. People familiar with the plans said the consortium hopes to develop industrywide standards for obscenity-blocking technology as a way to forestall much-criticized proposals from federal regulators. It amounts to an effort to develop a voluntary Internet equivalent of the "v-chip" that has been proposed as a way for parents block sex-and-violence-laden TV programs. The venture will pursue a system that would allow Internet users -- such as teachers or parents -- to prevent pornography from being accessed by children. The group will be led by the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology, executives said. The consortium, funded by roughly 80 companies, aids in the development of the Web, the multimedia portion of the Internet, by producing technical specifications and software. Various companies have worked on ways to shield children from indecent material. The new consortium will pursue an overarching method available to all Internet players -- software firms, access providers and on-line services. MIT will coordinate this "umbrella organization to prevent industry infighting," said one executive. "It's aimed at creating a standard that all the software companies can develop for." A separate project by Microsoft and Netscape, together with two smaller firms, SurfWatch Software Inc. and Progressive Networks Inc., will now be folded into the new consortium, another executive said. The effort follows such proposals as the antipornography provision of Sen. James Exon (D., Neb.), which won overwhelming support in the Senate and would slap prison terms on people who make "indecent" remarks on-line. Most of the proposals have been met with scorn from the Internet industry. Executives have said that legislators could cripple the commercial growth of the Internet before it emerges from infancy. ------