ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 27, 1997 TAG: 9703270046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
One erotica filter let a Hustler magazine Web site slip by but blocked another about poet Anne Sexton because of the word "sex" in her name.
Net Nanny can be slow to catch on when Junior takes a raunchy tour of the Internet. But once she does, he's caught red-handed and red-faced.
When the computer censoring program realizes the likes of Deviant Dictionary have been summoned, Net Nanny announces a ``violation,'' shuts down the system and primly records the misdeed for Mom and Dad to see. There's no stuffing the embarrassing evidence under the mattress, like girlie magazines in simpler days.
Net Nanny is one of about a dozen screening programs being marketed to parents as an alternative to federal Internet restrictions overturned by a judicial panel and now under Supreme Court review.
How well do they work?
Plainly, not well enough to replace other ways of dealing with children, like establishing trust. Also, not well enough to draw anything but a ragged line between pornography on one side and disease prevention, sex education and the arts on the other.
But the judges who struck down the federal Internet law last year found such programs preferable to the government controls.
Net Nanny did not mind when a grown-up went looking for love in all the wrong places peeked at relatively mild sites.
Another screening program, Cyber Patrol (motto: ``To surf and protect''), would not let Junior see material on Anne Sexton, the celebrated poet with that three-letter word in her name.
The poet was a``code 5'' violation, not as severe as the code 1 Free Babe Zone but blocked just the same. Even so, the program allowed the Female Appreciation Page, with explicit nudity, to slip through.
Apart from sheer mistakes, a foolproof filter ``is impossible to develop because of the subjective nature of what is considered objectionable,'' PC Magazine says.
Still, they may help children explore the Web ``in relative safety.'' That's a tall order in a medium that connects some 40 million people using more than 9 million computers to find material that constantly changes.
The cybercensors try to do it with lists of sites and words that will set off a trip wire. Sex, violence and language are among up to a dozen subjects that can be screened out.
Even so, censorship programs are hit and miss.
Net Nanny allowed an eye-popping exploration of the Hustler magazine home page before it figured out what was happening and stopped it.
Screening programs may keep kids from becoming accidental tourists in seamy nether worlds. Users may be less likely to trigger graphic sexual content by entering an innocent search phrase for a school project.
That's one worry about a medium that displays racy titles such as Blackberry's and family fare such as WizKids on the same menu screen, to take just one example from the popular Yahoo search engine.
Bawdy material usually carries a warning that it is not to be seen by minors, and accessing it requires a series of deliberate, if easy, steps.
In one attempt at sorting out the smut, Microsoft's Internet Explorer now comes with a security system that offers parents five levels of tolerance for sex, nudity, language and violence. It depends on voluntary ratings.
The system can be tweaked, for example, to allow ``provocative frontal nudity'' or hold the line at ``frontal nudity.''
LENGTH: Medium: 69 linesby CNB