Parental Hand on the Control : High-tech consortium offers rating plan to shield kids on Internet

Congress made a mistake last year when it approved a hastily conceived and constitutionally dubious measure to regulate “indecent” content on the Internet, but it was right to say that children must be protected from violent and sexually explicit material purveyed by computer. Now, a consortium of respected computer and software makers, responding to growing parental concern, has demonstrated a better way to address the problem, through self-policing and the free market.

Last week 39 companies--including Microsoft, Netscape and America Online--announced agreement on a common, industrywide technology that would allow parents, churches and other groups to develop content-ratings systems and would allow a person to install the software of his or her choice to bar access to objectionable material. Nothing would be banned from the Internet, but adults would have some guides regarding the suitability of material for their children. And in the absence of a parent, the blocking software would bar a child from certain Internet sites.

For many reasons, most notably the constitutional right of free speech, tailored ratings systems are preferable to government controls on content. While the newly agreed-on ratings are restrictive, it is the parent rather than the government who makes the choice. In contrast, the controversial Communications Decency Act embraces an approach to regulation that is centralized and overly broad.

The act, part of the massive 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act but not in force now because of a court challenge, makes it a crime to transmit “indecent” materials over the Internet. However, that legally imprecise term has become a hot potato in the courts because it doesn’t distinguish between the ribald and the obscene. Censorship schemes have always stumbled over such distinctions.

In the movie industry, voluntary, posted standards have become proven winners, and similar standards are now being adopted by television networks. Video game makers have also joined the list of self-policing industries. But no decision in these matters is better informed than a parent’s. The computer world, like that of films and TV, has now put the option to click on or click off back in the hands of the people who know their children best.