No. 36
November 15, 1999
Sonia Arrison*

Recently, 300 government officials, academics, and high-tech business people from all over the world gathered in Germany to discuss a proposal to rate Internet content on a global scale. If this plan is embraced, free speech and the growth of the Internet face dangerous times.

The plan, produced by the German-based Bertelsmann Foundation, but based on the ideas of Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin, has three main components. First, it would ask Web-publishers to voluntarily rate their site(s) based on a so-called objective "basic vocabulary." For example, a web publisher may need to specify whether or not his or her site contains "small" or "large" amounts of blood. Next, Internet users would install software known as "filters" for their web browser that would only allow access to sites compatible with the basic vocabulary that the filter specified. And last, third-party ratings, such as a rating on a numerical scale from an organization such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) or the NAACP, could be factored in, if desired.

At first glance, the plan sounds compelling. Its goal is to protect children from harmful Internet sites without resorting to government regulation. One must commend the Bertelsmann Foundation for this intention – for, as they have indicated, the Internet will continue to bring prosperity to many around the globe only if it is left free from government regulators’ heavy hands. However, the proposal is inherently flawed and unlikely to bring about a global self-regulation revolution. In fact, it is more likely to accomplish the opposite. The problem is that the plan is a centralized response to a decentralized medium.

The Bertelsmann plan depends upon two occurrences: that all participants agree on universal rating standards and that all web publishers objectively rate their own sites. In other words, not only do you need to get French, Turkish, American, Iranian, and other web operators to agree on the meaning of a basic vocabulary, you would then need each of the millions of web operators to objectively judge their own sites. Since one person’s art is often another person’s pornography, this is an impossible task.

A single rating standard used objectively by all web sites around the world requires a global regulating body with the authority to centrally rate sites and then force the sites to post the ratings. What this means is that the Bertelsmann self-regulation conference might as well have been called the conference for global content regulation.

For those who care about free speech and the continued growth of the Internet, this is a dangerous development indeed. But what about protecting kids from on-line harm?

Thankfully, methods have already been devised—though perhaps not yet popularized —to protect children from inappropriate material. These can be implemented without the risks to free speech or high compliance costs that the Bertelsmann proposal would involve.

Parents wishing to protect their children have two easy choices, both produced through market demand. The first option is to purchase and install a PC-based software filtering program that will block objectionable material based on the content in each site. While there have been some problems with these programs, they are improving rapidly.

The second option, sure to become more popular, is to sign up with one of the many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that will do the filtering for parents before the Net even reaches their home. The real advantage with this method is that since the filtering is done before it reaches the home, parents can be assured that their "whiz kid" will not be able to disable the filter. One of the most popular, Rated-G Online, costs only five dollars more than the $19.95 industry standard.

Such market-driven options preserve both free speech and Internet prosperity, which the Bertelsmann Foundation’s proposal, despite professed good intentions, fails to accomplish. Screening web-sites should be left to consumers, not to global regulators or governments.

* Sonia Arrison is director of the Center for Freedom and Technology at the California-based Pacific Research Institute.