Badpuppy Gay Today

Monday, 05 May, 1997

Bennett Haselton, the 18-year old founder of Peacefire, a teen organization that fights Net censorship, has produced the "Cybersitter codebreaker", claiming that Solid Oak, which sells site-censoring software, is advertising its product falsely. Solid Oak's software, purportedly, promises parents the "ability to limit their children's access to objectionable material on the Internet."

Haselton believes that Solid Oak's product--the Cybersitter,-- violates free speech rights for both adults and teenagers and his campaign to circumvent the software is causing problems for Solid Oak president, Brian Milburn, who insists that his company has "never misrepresented our product---ever."

The teen, a junior at Vanderbilt University, is flying directly into the face of Cybersitter's warnings, which state: "Unauthorized reverse engineering of the software, whether for educational, fair use, or other reason is expressly forbidden. Unauthorized disclosure of Cybersitter operational details, hacks, work-around methods, blocked sites, and blocked words or phrases are expressly prohibited."

Such threats are lost on Haselton who says, "I've talked to a lawyer who offered to represent me in the event that Cybersitter goes after me." He adds that the software does not "protect" kids from smut, but just prevents their learning about new or unusual matters.

"Blocking software is not the solution to all our problems. What's dangerous is not protecting (teenager's free) speech on the Net as well," he continues, "This is the age when you form your opinions about social issues, human rights, and religion. We need to keep free ideas on the Net for people under 18."

The Solid Oak software also blocks other Net content, including an array of sites that relate to gay and lesbian issues, including access to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. References to genitals, sex, nudity, porn, bombs, guns, suicide, racial slurs, and other violent, sexual and derogatory terms are also blocked.

Haselton's "codebreaker," is being used to crack a coded list of the sites that Cybersitter blocks. The list is distributed to Peacefire subscribers, telling them which sites have been blocked.

Simultaneously, the European Parliament is calling for European and international action to drive pornography, pedophilia, and racist material off of the Internet. The Assembly admits that it is difficult to police the Internet, but is calling for action that would range from industry-self-regulation to teams of cybersleuths who would monitor international agreements and prosecute criminals who misuse the global computer network.

European MPs say Internet service providers should be held criminally liable for putting illicit material on their systems or for knowingly transmitting "cyber-filth" created by third parties which, the MPs believe, it is a provider's responsibility to remove.

This viewpoint was recently at the fore when German authorities indicted, in Bavaria, the head of the German branch of Compuserve. Compuserve argues that service providers are no more responsible for transmissions than are telecommunications companies when callers use obscenities on private phone lines.