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Government officials and online service providers announced plans at a December summit to protect children from Internet obscenity, but some conservative Christian organizations believe the gathering amounted to little more than family-values window dressing.

The three-day "Internet/Online Summit: Focus on the Children" assembled government, school, library, computer-industry, and child-advocacy group leaders in Washington, D.C. While representatives did not agree on the best way to restrict youth from viewing pornography geared to adults, Vice President Al Gore announced a "zero tolerance" policy on Internet pornography depicting children and the creation of a "tip line," where parents can report child pornography.

Online providers are supporting the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children "CyberTipLine" initiative. Parents will be able to notify authorities of incidents of child pornography and child predators in cyberspace. The line will serve as a clearinghouse for tips on enticement of children for sexual exploitation, as well as information on the possession or distribution of child pornography. The new Web site is www.missingkids.com/cybertip and the center's hotline is 1-800-843-5678.

During the Clinton administration, as the use of graphics on the Web has increased and Internet technology has developed, the number of Justice Department agents patrolling cyberspace has risen from a handful to more than 100, and FBI arrests have led to the convictions of more than 100 online child predators.

Gore also unveiled a public education campaign to teach parents how to protect children surfing the Internet. While online providers say parents have primary responsibility to monitor the computer behavior of their children, at the summit several announced pre-emptive plans in an effort to prevent government intrusion.

For example, America Online unveiled a package of initiatives to make online navigation safer for children. AOL, the largest online service in the world with 10 million subscribers, will soon feature a permanent parental controls button on the welcome screen that enables adults to lock children out of anything but approved areas, chat rooms, and Web sites. In addition, AOL will activate a button to allow members to report inappropriate chat room, e-mail, and instant-message activity immediately.

SCREENING NO PANACEA: The Vice President did not heed the requests of profamily organizations to increase government restrictions to protect children. Instead, Gore's public-education campaign will rely on parents to monitor the online behavior of their children.

However, according to a new survey by FamilyPC, few parents avail themselves of commercially available parental control software designed to combat access to pornography. The survey of 750 families whose children use the Web showed only 26 percent use some form of parental-control software—mainly controls built into their Web browsers or offered by their Internet service provider. Only 4 percent had purchased parental-control software such as Cyber Patrol, SurfWatch, or Net Nanny on their own.

With only a few mouse clicks, anyone can access one of an estimated 72,000 pornographic sites on the World Wide Web. Many of them are illegal sites because they meet the definition of hard-core obscenity, depicting such behavior as incest, bestiality, and mutilation.

Screening technology alone is inadequate, critics contend, and further legal regulation of indecent content is necessary. "No screening technology blocks all sites containing harmful sexual content," says Morality in Media (MIM) president Robert W. Peters.

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February 9 1998, Vol. 42, No. 2