Web Exon A-rate

[Anonymous]

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.


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