This article is Copyright (C) 1997 by the Los Angeles Times, reproduced here with their written permission. ********************************** Los Angeles Times, 1/6/97 Site-Filtering Controversy Likely to Heat Up By DAVID PESCOVITZ, Special to The Times Brian Milburn, president of a Santa Barbara company called Solid Oak Software, is not a man to shrink from a fight. When a pair of well-known Internet journalists late last year attacked his company's main product--a so-called filtering program known as Cybersitter, designed to block children from visiting Internet sites their parents don't approve of--Milburn and one of the writers, Brock Meeks, engaged in a vicious "flame war" in which Milburn denounced Meeks as "a trickle of piss in the river of life." Several months later, when a young cyber rights activist named Bennett Haselton posted similar criticisms on his Web site--alleging that Cybersitter had a hidden political agenda--Milburn responded with legal threats and added Haselton's Web site to Cybersitter's list of blocked sites. He also e-mailed Haselton: "Get a life! Go hang out at the mall with the other kids or something!" Milburn's combative tactics have helped land him at the center of a simmering controversy over filtering software that promises to grow more heated in the months ahead. Almost everyone agrees that filtering programs--including Cyberpatrol, SurfWatch and NetNanny--are in principle a good way to keep children away from adult material and otherwise enable parents to regulate what their kids do on the Internet. The programs block access to any Web site contained in their special databases. Because the companies keep their lists of blocked sites secret, some free-speech advocates worry that the lists contain political agendas and give the companies too much power to determine the fate of specific Web sites. Cybersitter, for example, blocks the National Organization for Women's Web site because the page includes links to lesbian Web sites. Cyberpatrol prohibits access to the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, an online newsletter that, along with "Torah Thoughts" and recipes, features personal ads Cyberpatrol deems inappropriate. While the general criteria for filtering are usually listed in documentation that accompanies the programs, none of the companies provides a list of the sites or words they deem inappropriate. There's a certain irony in the recent attacks on the filtering programs, since their development was encouraged as a free-speech alternative to the Communications Decency Act, a law passed last year curtailing "indecent" material on the Internet. A federal court in Philadelphia ruled in June that the CDA is unconstitutional, with the judges specifically citing blocking software as a more appropriate alternative for shielding children. The matter will go before the Supreme Court later this year. "If you put the choice of whether or not children should view some of the stuff on the Internet in the hands of the parents, you have a democratic solution instead of the government imposing Cybersitter-like standards on everyone," says Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In theory, parents can choose among filtering software products. The Recreational Software Advisory Council is also trying to develop an industry standard in which sites rate themselves via a questionnaire. But the secrecy of the databases in the programs now on the market means that parents never know what they're denying access to. "Cybersitter's activity is constitutionally protected, but that doesn't mean it isn't damaging," says Haselton, who plans to create Web pages critical of other filters. Milburn says secrecy is necessary for competitive reasons. "We spend between $8,000 and $10,000 a month maintaining the list," Milburn says. "We're not about to make it public to make people like Bennett Haselton happy." Haselton began his crusade after Meeks and co-author Declan McCullagh's July 1996 article in the online muckraker CyberWire Dispatch criticized blocking programs. The story included elements of Cybersitter's encrypted database and filtering engine that notices "offensive" words and blocks pages that use them. After the article was published, Milburn's attorneys contacted the authors announcing that his company would seek felony criminal prosecution for copyright infringement. Attorneys for the CyberWire Dispatch replied that the article was protected by the 1st Amendment and the "fair use" exemption in the copyright laws, and the FBI never came calling. In the fall, Haselton began testing Cybersitter himself and listed on Peacefire, his anti-censorship Web site, examples of sites the software blocks. In addition, he noted that entire servers are blocked if any of their clients offer information that goes against Cybersitter's policies. He contacted Solid Oak and eventually reached Milburn, who maintains that entire domains are blocked to ensure that the database doesn't get filled with so many site names that the program slows to a crawl. Milburn makes no apologies for blocking sites that contain content including "adult and mature subject matter of a sexual nature," racism, computer hacking, drug use and copyright violations. "We're not politically conservative, we're morally conservative," Milburn says. "We have a published list of criteria, and if a site falls in that list then we block it. But if our customers wrote to us and said, 'Just block violence and porn and include gay sites,' then we would. We're a profit-oriented corporation and we respond to the wishes of our customer base." Milburn contends that Haselton posted "cracks" to the Cybersitter software on the Internet and also accused him of "ghost-writing" the original CyberWire Dispatch article after breaking the Cybersitter code, a charge Haselton denies. Excerpts from the e-mail flame war between the two was posted regularly on anti-censorship e-mail lists and newsgroups, where Haselton's battle with Milburn has been a hot topic. Early last month, Milburn demanded that Haselton's Internet service provider, Media3, drop Peacefire or all the sites on their server would be blocked. Haselton had made it "his mission in life to defame our product" and may even be responsible for illegally cracking the Cybersitter database, Milburn wrote in e-mail to Media3. Milburn informed the Software Publishers Assn. and says he will take legal action against the CyberWire Dispatch and Haselton "if they [the SPA] ask us to and if it's in the interest of the software industry in general." Godwin has volunteered to represent Haselton, but his services may not be necessary. "Solid Oak is a software company, we're not professional litigators," Milburn says. David Pescovitz is co-author of the book "Reality Check" (HardWired, 1996). He can be reached via e-mail at pesco@well.com