Part 1 - Washington - December 1997

Happy Holidays! Because of a certain much-discussed conference - the Dec. 1-3 Internet Online Summit: Focus on Children in Washington - we have so much good material for you this month we have to send it in two pieces: a news chunk and a more reflective one looking back on Web ’97 and ahead to ’98.

Here in Part 1, we bring you an interview with summit chairperson Christine Varney, as well as our own on-site report and a full list of ’Net safety options either in the works or now available to families. We’ve devoted a lot of "space" to the summit because it was and is important to the Sage community - as an indicator of where the Web is headed for families and of how the many Internet interest groups are staking claims and making plans. There was a lot of excellent coverage in the conventional media and their Web extensions, and we don’t duplicate it here (there are links at the end of this issue to what we found to be the best of that reporting). Instead, we bring you what we’ve not found elsewhere. Here’s our table of contents:

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The Internet Online Summit was a response of the diverse groups concerned about kids online to President Clinton’s call for the Internet industry to take responsible action after the Supreme Court last June ruled the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional. Media coverage at the summit was extensive; please see our links at the bottom for the best of it. We have a report of our own below, too, but first: perspective from the chief summiteer....

We asked Christine Varney, Internet summit chair and former Federal Trade Commission member, how she came to be involved with the Internet - whether it was through her 7- and 10-year-old sons, the way so many parents have been introduced to cyberspace. No, Christine said, her husband had been in the business for many years and she had used technology in a number of settings. Working on the Clinton campaign in ’92, she said she used technology to manage large amounts of information. And when working in the White House in early ’93, she asked staff members to show her the Internet. It wasn’t long before she "and a couple of other people put the White House on the Web in 1994," when whitehouse.gov was to become one of the most popular sites in cyberspace.

Clearly, working with her sons to make good use of the Internet has had an impact on how Christine approaches the ’Net professionally, and we thought what she had to say about the former was the most interesting part of the interview. But first, a few questions about the summit:

Sage: What was your overriding impression of the summit?
Christine Varney: "It was tremendously succesful - we made a lot of progess on building bridges between diverse groups of people and some understanding on how to attack the problems of illegal material on the Internet while protecting constitutional freedoms and statutory safeguards for individual rights and liberty."

What would you say was accomplished? Mostly improved public awareness?
"Awareness, and we announced some partnerships between law enforcement and ’Net service providers and unveiled a public education campaign on Internet safety."

What’s next?
"More summits on different topics. I’m not doing them, but there will be one on content, one on privacy, and on marketing and advertising."

Before it started, the Family Research Council called the summit a potential "Internet love-fest" and "an expensive public relations stunt on behalf of the Internet." Were they right?
"It was so torturous to get to where we were that to call it a love-fest is ignoring the huge amount of effort people went to to find consensus. You accomplish a lot when you’re seeking consensus and actually narrowing the differences in the process."

Who’s in front in the race for influence right now - civil liberties or conservative groups?
"I think market forces will prevail, and I think there’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs to make tools for parents that will be easy to use."

We understand you’re the mother of online kids. Can I ask what your solution to ’Net safety has been?
"We have a 7-year-old and 10-year-old. The 10-year-old is allowed to go online as long as he tells us he’s going on and where he’s going, and as long as we’re home. He’s also not allowed to chat - he can’t go into any chat rooms - and of course he knows not to ever give out his name and address, or any of that information. He knows the rules of the road and that he’s to come and get us if he finds something inappropriate. He uses the Internet for research, for fun, e-mail with friends - lots of things.

"My 7-year-old is not allowed online unless we’re sitting there with him. He must be accompanied by an adult whenever he goes online. He has to prove his responsibility before he can go online by himself. His brother’s had several years’ experience with the rules so we don’t have to be in the same room with him.

"Every family needs tools and rules that reflect their family’s values. Our basic rule is that if there’s anywhere you want to go, just tell us. We can’t imagine there’s a place you can’t go as long as you’ve told us about it. [And having to tell a parent where you’re going is probably the most effective "screening" there is!]

"We had this great conversation after I asked our 10-year-old if he had ever come across anything inappropriate: He said, ‘You mean like stumbling onto playboy.com?’ I said, ‘Yes, have you been there?’ He said, ‘No, I haven’t been.’ ‘Then how do you know about it?’ I asked. ‘Mom, everybody knows about playboy.com.’ ‘What’s there?’ I asked him. ‘You know - pictures of naked women.’ So we sat down at the computer and pulled it up, and there was the cover. I tell you, there is nothing on the magazine racks that you can’t get online for free...."

We asked Christine if he wasn’t too embarrassed to look at naked women with his mom. And she said, "Oh yes, of course, but it was just too big a deal for him to be able to go to playboy.com; he couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity. We didn’t go to the centerfold or anything! It was an opportunity to tell him how I thought this stuff was exploitive of women. And then we talked about the First Amendment - what does a 10-year-old know about that?! - and people’s right to publish what other people might not approve of and the influence publications can have on people."

So it was a learning experience?
"Oh, absolutely. He understood then that there is no place he can’t go as long as I’m with him and we can talk about it. Of course there are sites much worse than playboy.com, but I didn’t tell him that. There is no point in highlighting them for him."

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Our summit report
Sage’s Jenny Ambrozek attended the summit last week. Here’s her perspective:

Acceptance of the Internet and responding appropriately to its implications was a theme of the Washington Internet Summit - a theme that takes us well into 1998. Obviously, the concern about children being exposed to ’Net-based pornography, pedophiles, and unwelcome e-mail is a crucial issue and the one that gets media attention. But the summit also gave the many interest groups a chance to remind us of other important concerns: protecting privacy, quality of content (represented forcefully by the Center for Media Education), and the one with longer-term social and economic implications: equality of access. As an attendee, I was genuinely impressed with the steps already taken and announced at the summit and with ongoing initiatives to address the issues. These include:

For Sage, this plan for a National Teach-In sets the scene for families online in 1998. Usage will grow. Meanwhile, software companies will be racing to produce better and more user-friendly filtering programs while free speech groups will be voicing their concerns about those products; content providers, ISPs, and online services will be creating more and more family content packaged as "green spaces" for children; libraries will be trying to meet the demand for Internet instruction; advocacy groups will be fighting for children’s privacy and protection against the ’Net’s seamy side; the FTC will be tackling the privacy issue; the Justice Department will be working on better law enforcement on the ’Net; free speech advocates and the industry will be lobbying against government regulation; and, across the country, educators will be establishing policies and programs and seeking funding for Internet use in schools.

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Tools and options for family Web use
Exactly what are the various options everybody’s talking about? We thought it might be useful to you to have them all right here, in one place. This list represents the full spectrum of ’Net safety options now available to online families - with their pluses and minuses:

Software filters - Programs that screen out lists of sites deemed inappropriate by the program’s makers (for a fulsome list, see the wonderful resource Netparents.org’s "Blocking Software" page). You can see it coming: The problem is, how does the software company decide what is and isn’t appropriate. You would want to check. But the lists of sites generally aren’t published. So some of these applications block material that your family thinks is perfectly fine - possibly for homework research. The other substantial problem right now is, many of these applications are still too complicated to use.

Rating systems - There are two categories of these: 1) Sites’ self-rating on the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) scale of 0-4 (described at Netparents.org); parents set their browser according to the rating that works for their family. The potential problem? Useful sites that choose not to rate themselves - say, news organizations’ - could be left out. 2) Third-party rating: Sites rated by an organization of the family’s choice - for example, the Christian Coalition or the American Libraries Association. As the New York Times points out (see coverage links below), the problem is, this would be an expensive, time-consuming effort for any organization, which means one or two rating systems could become the de facto standard.

Web-use monitoring - An emerging tool type, it doesn’t block any sites, but rather allows parents to reconstruct a child’s session on the ’Net; the deterrent model, you might say. A full list of examples can be found in AT&T’s "Technology Tool Kit" prepared for the summit. The downside? Some parents would find it less "safe" because it requires responsibility on the child’s part. It can be a good thing to develop, but it takes communication and education.

Control through an ISP - This is help that many Internet service providers (or online services like AOL or Prodigy) offer parents to control what children can access. The ISP helps parents configure their computers to customize what their kids receive. Netparents.org provides a useful list of ISPs offering this service. The downside is similar to that of software filters: A "blanket solution" for all subscribers may screen out material a single family deems useful or appropriate.

White lists - Companies like Disney. and Yahoo! and organizations like the ALA provide lists of sites recommended for youth. There’s no filter involved, though - all the objectionable sites out there could still be reached. Again, education and communication would be required.

Education - This has been discussed a lot, pre-summit and during; it’s an umbrella term referring to education of parents and educators by the Internet industry, government, advocacy groups (and by their children!); education of government policymakers and legislators; education of children by their parents and teachers. And it refers to education about both constructive use of the Internet and the potential threats therein to children’s rights and privacy.

Legislation - Another potential safeguard, but not necessarily new legislation. That was tried, with the Federal Communications Decency Act (CDA - struck down by the Supreme Court last June) and it’s being tried currently by Sen. Dan Coates (R-Ind.), and it will be an ongoing effort. But another piece of this is extension of existing laws into cyberspace (e.g., FTC and FCC laws about solicitation via phone or fax and US Postal Service laws). This, too, requires education on the part of law-enforcement and other government officials. We don’t see a downside to informed enforcement of existing laws.

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The following links present information on all aspects of the ’Net safety discourse - tools for parents, law-enforcement, education for parents, organizations on both sides of political spectrum....

Official summit site
"Internet Online Summit: Focus on Children"

Summit coverage

Web safety resources Summit participants
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 Where do you stand on ’Net safety for kids - what are your preferred solutions? We’d like to hear. Do e-mail us!.

Stay tuned! Later this week we’ll be sending you Part 2 of our December issue - looking back over Web ’97 and peering into ’98.

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