The Clinton administration is dropping its hard-line position on Internet smut in favor of an approach that will depend largely on content-blocking devices and industry self-regulation, The New York Times reported Monday.
The Times said the administration is shifting ground in anticipation of losing its defense of the Communications Decency Act before the Supreme Court. The law, passed and signed in February 1996, sought to ban transmission or posting of indecent Net content, to protect children under 18. It was struck down by a federal court in Philadelphia in June 1996. A decision on the law's fate is due by the end of the high court's term early this summer.
The new position, to be disclosed next month as part of a general policy on Internet regulation, leans heavily on the existence of software, and perhaps hardware, to block objectionable content. Three weeks ago, President Clinton told a national town hall meeting on education staged in West Virginia that he supported a V-chip approach, such as that suggested for filtering television programming, to blocking objectionable content.
The other principal precept in the administration's new policy will be to keep regulation of content, as in other areas, to a minimum. The Times report said that in respect to content, a draft of the new policy declares that "unnecessary regulation or censorship could cripple the growth and diversity of the Internet."
