In addition, user-based filtering software is presented as an option for parents and educators so that they, instead of governments or ISPs, can engage in blocking sites considered unsuitable for children.Some of the better known packages available to assist them are Net Nanny, SurfWatch, CyberPatrol and CyberSitter. Each user installs the program on his or her home computer and turns the blocking mechanism on or off at will. Users of some of these programs can also block speech based on keywords.

In mid-1997, the U.S. government held a voluntary summit meeting to encourage Internet users to self-rate their speech and to urge industry leaders to develop and deploy the tools for blocking "inappropriate" speech. What came out of the meeting were announcements by industry leaders to work toward the goals of the summit by using the existing ratings and blocking systems. For instance, Netscape announced plans to join Microsoft, which, together, control at least 90% of the Web browser market, in adopting PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) as the ratings standard to establish a consistent way to rate and block online content. As well, IBM announced that it was making a US$ 100,000 grant to RSAC to encourage the use of its RSACi ratings system (Microsoft's Internet Explorer already employs the RSACi ratings system and Compuserve encourages its use.) Four of the major search engines - services that allow users to conduct searches of the Internet for relevant sites - also announced a plan to cooperate in the promotion of "self-regulation" of the Internet.

However, both the short- and long-term implications for free expression on the Internet if such ratings and blocking schemes are to become widespread, in the United States or elsewhere, are serious. Turning to the ratings scheme, one potential problem with PICS is that, instead of being a voluntary system as first envisaged, current consideration of mandatory rating could lead to the enforcement of PICS under the threat of government intervention. As for RSACi, there would be many categories of material that would prove difficult, even impossible, to rate under the RSACi system. Additionally, the RSACi content categories are not specific enough to encompass easily rating a great deal of contentious material about which many parents would have concerns, such as gambling, drugs, extremist political viewpoints and bomb recipes. As for Safesurf, its detailed list illustrates the complexity of rating Internet content. The problem becomes even greater when one considers that material will have to be rated under all of the main ratings system contenders in order to be widely accessible.

To make individuals and groups self-rate their Web sites poses a host of seemingly insurmountable problems. For one, it could lead to the silencing of controversial speech. One representative case cited by free speech advocates is that of the site for an AIDS awareness project in the U.S. that includes safer sex information presented in coarse language and with explicit diagrams so that it can reach a wide audience. If the authors were to rate their site as "explicit," then it would be labelled under "pornography" and blocked. If the site went unrated, then it would be blocked as an unrated site. If the author of this, or any other site containing controversial material, decides to give it an innocuous label such as "safe for minors" so that it will encourage greater hits to his or her site than would otherwise have occurred had it been given a restrictive rating, there is a danger that governments could penalize the individual for mis-rating a site. There is legitimate concern for this: legislation has already been proposed by at least one politician in the U.S. calling for criminal penalties for mis-rating.

Other self-ratings concerns need to be addressed. What if chatrooms or newsgroups were to be rated? Since most discussion groups are not controlled by a specific person, it would be difficult to find someone who would be responsible for rating them. As well, if one country decides to institute a ratings system, then the citizens of that country will be unable to access sites in other countries that lack a ratings system. Consequently, those countries' sites, which are unrated, will not be available to individuals residing in the country with the ratings system. This is particularly alarming since most speech and information originates from outside any one country's borders. Finally, the procedure of self-rating sites and Internet information is expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome, especially when one takes into consideration sites and sources of information on the Internet that run into the hundreds, if not thousands of pages. In this instance, only well- financed individuals and organizations would be able to comply with the ratings edicts. Others who are financially unable to self-rate would see their sites virtually "disappear" from cyberspace.

The proposed solution of independent third-party ratings systems, claimed by some as the answer to the concerns posed by self-rating, is also problematic. When prioritizing which sites are to be rated first, it is possible that third-party raters will rate the most popular Web sites first, marginalizing individual and non-commercial sites. Third-party ratings might also apply subjective and value-laden ratings that could result in valuable material being blocked to adults and older minors. Above all, third-party ratings systems end up taking control away from parents and individuals.

However, giving control to individuals and organizations, in the form of user-based filtering software, is not without its drawbacks. The list of Web sites blocked by each software package is generally a closely-guarded secret. Although some products allow individual users to add or subtract particular sites from a list of blocked sites, they must ultimately rely on the judgment and policies of the companies responsible for the software, raising the spectre of corporate-controlled censorship. Furthermore, several of these products have been shown to block access to a wide variety of information that many would consider appropriate, such as safe sex information, human rights cases, as well as general information of interest to the gay and lesbian community. There are also countless absurd examples of blocked speech occurring based on keywords. For instance, such sites as www.middlesex.gov or www.SuperBowlXXX.com can be blocked because they contain the keywords "sex" and "XXX." Such inaccuracies in the software, troubling in themselves, pose a particular threat to such traditional bastions of free speech as libraries, where talk in the U.S. of mandating the use of blocking software could deny access to many areas of social, historical and scientific research.

Generally speaking, the implication of ratings systems and filtering software could inevitably lead to, in a worst-case scenario, a bland and homogenized Internet. People who disseminate idiosyncratic speech, create individual home pages, post to controversial news groups or create Web sites with contentious material would be among the first Internet users blocked by filters and be silenced by the ratings systems built into search engines or by a self-ratings system.

© The Canadian Committee to Protect Journalists (ccpj@ccpj.ca)