INTERNET CENSORSHIP
The budget bill that Clinton signed into law in October was 4,000 pages long, so you probably didn't get through all of it. But buried inside is the Children's Online Protection Act, aka CDA II - legislation that threatens to hide everything from obgyn.net to frisky Yahoo! keyword searches behind age-verification checkpoints. According to the law, commercial sites distributing material deemed "harmful to minors" must implement a process - say, credit card registration - to keep the under-18 at bay.
With the ACLU and the EFF challenging CDA II in court this winter, many Web site owners are already behaving as if the law were DOA. But if CDA II stands - a very real possibility (see "The Perils of CDA II," Wired 6.11, page 92) - it could create significant hassles for webmasters and radically reshape the Web's information ecology.
Search directory-cum-portals like Yahoo! face some of the most serious and bedeviling challenges: Consider potentially "harmful" links to outside sites, pointers to "adult" chat and clubs, even links to ecommerce areas that hawk dildos. Currently, Yahoo! users searching for risqué content are served adult ad banners, not to mention pointers to genuine porn. Under the proposed law, the company could be fined for simply offering such links. Robert Corn-Revere, a former FCC lawyer who is now a partner at DC law firm Hogan & Hartson, says CDA II "leaves a wide gray area" about whether it's illegal to "make information available." John Place, Yahoo!'s general counsel, says Yahoo! is "still evaluating the law" regarding its impact on credit card verification requirements for adult chat and auctions.
So what about the Persian Kitty porn portal? Beth Mansfield's site doesn't post its own erotica, but it dishes up plenty of X-rated links. Mansfield says she won't put age checks in place until there's a general shift toward age verification systems online. But just to be on the safe side, she's toning down the spicy ad banners that adorn the site. "If this law ends up pertaining to who you link to," she says, "it will break down the structure of the Web."
The new law also creates the typical censorship conundrums. The Body, an AIDS and HIV resource site developed specifically for those under 18, challenges the distinction between "helpful" and "harmful" to minors. And Nerve, a plaintiff in the ACLU appeal, begs the question of quality: Is "literate smut" the same thing as porn?
But whether it's his links or his literature that are in question, Nerve founder Rufus Griscom refuses to card users at the door - at least not, he says, "till someone picks a fight."
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