When Senator Patrick Leahy proposed that the US take a serious look at technological alternatives to the regulation and censorship of the Net that the Exon Amendment calls for, the Vermont Democrat was probably thinking of something like SurfWatch.
SurfWatch is an extension that lives invisibly on your Mac or PC and automatically blocks access to any Web files or sites that contain pornographic material. Naturally, it blocks the Penthouse, Playboy, and Hustler sites and alt.sex newsgroups. It even takes care of many of the lesser-known porn pages like www.paranoia.com/~gyrotech/pix/trigger.jpg.
A team of Net-surfing college students continually trolls for smut and reports back to the team of SurfWatch "editors" so they can judge each URL and update the list of objectionable sites. "Objectionable," according to SurfWatch spokesperson Jay Friedland, is whatever the team of "parents and educators" would not want the average 14-year-old to see.
SurfWatch also uses a second, much less intelligent method to stomp out porn. The program scans all URLs and file names and blocks all files containing strings such as "XXX" or "porn." But in addition to stopping any suspected pornography, it could also suppress discussion of the issues, as happened when it blocked HotWired's "Journoporn" site, which contained no pornography but an analysis of Time magazine's cover story on the topic.
As new sites spring up daily, SurfWatch offers a US$6 per month subscription to an ftp site where you can get the latest list of what's naughty on the Net. Customizable versions of this software won't be available until next year, which means that for now, only SurfWatch gets to decide what's OK for your kids to see.
Of course, if some seventh-grader really wants to get pornography off the Net, there are ways around SurfWatch - just like there are ways for minors to buy Playboy. The program can do nothing, for example, to stop e-mail attachments from schoolmates whose parents don't own the smut screen.
SurfWatch is a leaky and imperfect filter. Yet for all its shortcomings, it still has one huge advantage over Senate Bill 314. You can turn it off whenever you want.
SurfWatch: US$49.95, update subscription $5.95 per month, discount for schools. Contact: (800) 458 6600, +1 (415) 948 9500, e-mail info@surfwatch.com, on the Web at www.surfwatch.com.
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