Web Censorship: Governmental, 
Commercial and Parental Responsibilities

Unfortunately the same characteristics of cyberspace that make it so attractive to curious children also make it a haven for some of the more noxious elements of the world. In the early days of the Internet, most parents seemed to hold the naive assumption that whenever their kids were using the computer, they were doing something “educational.”

    As more adults are catching up to their computer-savvy juniors, there is growing concern for much of the content to which children can be exposed in cyberspace: “The Internet presents a new and dramatic challenge for parents and teachers alike. Those who desperately want children to be protected against the more menacing aspects of life in general are frightened at the free reign the net seems to hold in terms of children’s vulnerability” (Kehoe and Mixon, 1993). Parents these days have the added responsibility not only of patrolling what their children do outside of the house, but within it as well. Luckily, they have some help. When the Communications Decency Act, proposed in 1995, was overturned as unconstitutional in 1997, many parents found themselves in the unfortunate position of being torn between being overly restrictive of their children, or letting them roam freely in the anarchic matrix that is cyberspace. Fortunately, a form of self-policing was born on the WWW: PICS. The Platform for Internet Content Selection is a technology standard actually devised by a World Wide Web consortium who felt threatened by the potential impositions proposed by the CDC (Dyson, 1997). The philosophy of PICS was to give parents the tools to filter content for themselves and their children, while not impinging on the freedom of expression of others (Dyson, 1997). PICS is not itself a rating system; rather, it represents a “set of Web-oriented protocols for how ratings can be expressed, distributed, and parsed,  . . .” (Dyson, 1997). The nice thing about PICS is that it isn’t a single, arbitrary system of ratings that everyone needs to subscribe to. Unlike the way in which television programs and movies are rated, the PICS format allows for a considerable degree of individual choice as to the type of content that is to be filtered. That is, parents can choose a particular rating system consistent with their tastes and thereby have relatively good idea of the material to which their children will be exposed.

    In addition to the PICS format which rates individual web sites for content, there are “filtering” strategies that can be employed either via the ISP or special software programs. There are a variety of these filtering approaches available to parents (i.e. Cyber Patrol, Net Nanny, etc.) that are capable of blocking objectionable content, preventing computer access for specified hours during the day, and even preventing access to Internet Relay Chat services (www.privacyrights.org). Parental control software programs such as these can also prevent the transmission of outgoing personal information, an especially important capability given

From the Flinstones to the Jetsons:
How Technology is Sprocketing the American Family into the New Millennium

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This project was produced for Psy 380, Social Psychology of Cyberspace, Spring 1999,  at Miami University.  All graphics in these pages are used with permission or under fair use guidelines, are in the public domain,  or were created by the authors.  Last revised: .   This document has been accessed   times since 1 May 1999.  Comments & Questions to R. Sherman