Medium Sorely Lacks Accountability For Internetx Censorship It’s Our Social Responsibility

Freedom of speech has remained a virtue, so far in our history, because there are some things most people just won’t say or do in the presence of others who know them.

But the Internet, unlike any communication medium society has confronted, is exempt from the selfregulating power of personal accountability. Users can distribute or receive material in complete anonymity. There is no shame, no editing, no reponsibility to be truthful, no need to face a dissenting idea that might expose a misconception.

While television took 30 years to become a sewer, the Internet is a bottomless pit, by definition. Child-raping pornographers, slanderers, con artists, sex predators, copyright violators, political terrorists, Nazis, demagogues and criminal conspiracies have, in this medium, a wide-open opportunity.

Yet the Internet also is a medium with tremendous potential for good. For the sake of that potential, users should support the development of systems to limit the network’s dark side.

But how? Because it supersedes national boundaries, governments can’t play the censor’s role. Nor should they, given their tendency to twist the censor’s power to self-serving political objectives.

Instead, those who use the Internet - businesses, educators and individuals including parents who wish to protect their kids - ought to look to communications software providers and to commercial Internet access providers such as Compuserve for help. It is already possible to buy software that automatically blocks access to pornographic web sites. Compuserve recently cut smut sites out of its loop.

Other tactics also have potential: Smart law enforcement agencies already patrol the web for criminal predators and conspirators. Software companies attempt to deter copyright violators via legal action. Employers can discharge, and support criminal charges against, employees who use workplace computers for illicit purposes.

Finally, computer engineers ought to work on ways to trace Internet communications and give this medium the accountability that goes hand in hand with healthy freedom.

Yes, efforts like these require the willingness to make value judgments and keep communication in bounds. That’s not heresy. It’s social responsibility.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view see headline: A new medium but an old story

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From Both Sides