What do Baywatch star Pamela Anderson Lee and dead poet Robert Frost have in common? Their works both run afoul of would-be Internet censors. Lee's very name is beyond the pale for software such as CYBERsitter, designed to keep children and teenagers away from undesirable stretches of the infobahn. Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" uses the word "queer," a word proscribed right along with "fairy," "gay" and "nigger" as signals of forbidden access.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to put an end for the time being to government attempts to legislate the content of Web sites, newsgroups and e-mail. Although a number of state legislatures have passed laws regulating on-line material, they are not currently being enforced, thus leaving the bowdlerization business to the private sector. About half a dozen software packages compete for the job of making sure that only a sanitized Internet reaches the computer screens of those who use them, and sales claims total well into the millions.

Although CYBERsitter, SurfWatch, Net Nanny, Cyber Patrol, Net Shepherd and other programs first sprang up in response to fears about children downloading pornography or being entrapped by child molesters, the range of topics that can be blocked is much larger. Depending on the program in question, users can restrict Web pages that feature drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, extreme bad taste, radical politics of the left and right, explosives, safe sex or the existence of homosexuality. Parents (or, in some jurisdictions, teachers and librarians) can choose which particular shibboleths they want to defend against. SafeSurf, for example, has developed a rating system that includes 10 different kinds of dangerous information (and nine levels of concern within each category). Some programs can be configured to permit access to only a small list of sites known for safe content and links.

Even more thorough are those blocking-software packages that vet Web-page text, e-mail and anything else a computer receives on the basis of key words and phrases. As America Online found out last year, blocking access on the basis of keywords--even with the best of intentions--can lead to embarrassment. The on-line service had to rescind its proscription of breast-cancer support groups and stop barring mention of medieval liturgies (cum Spiritu Sancto). Similarly, Solid Oak Software, makers of CYBERsitter, probably never intended to censor students' reading of Frost or keep them from finding out about the company DTP Express, a small Web-site design firm owned by one P. J. Lee. The same goes for sodom.mt.cs.cmu.edu, home of a thoroughly unremarkable bilingual Web site by an Italian graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University.

But when CYBERsitter's president engaged in a public flaming bout with critics last winter--using language that cannot be reproduced here--the software's criteria became rather more narrowly encompassing. Try accessing a Web site that incorporates the phrase "Don't buy CYBERsitter." Better yet, try "Bennett Haselton." That happens to be the name of a student who published a list of some of the words and sites the program blocks. In fact, the company threatened legal action against anyone who disclosed what sites were blocked--even though the program logs such information in a text file for parents to monitor their children's activity.

Don't Look SafeSurf's categories of adult themes for restricting access (adapted from http://www.safesurf.com/ssplan.htm): 1. Profanity 2. Heterosexual themes without illustrations 3. Homosexual themes without illustrations 4. Nudity and consenting sex acts 5. Violent themes--writing, devices, militia 6. Sexual and violent themes, with profanity 7. Accusations/attacks against racial or religious groups 8. Glorification of illegal drug use 9. Other adult themes A. Gambling B to Z. For future expansion of categories

Such shenanigans are not necessarily typical of blocking-software companies, of course. Microsystems Software, makers of Cyber Patrol, offers a Web page where visitors can search to find out which URLs are blocked and which ones aren't. The company has also enlisted the help of both GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance against Defamation) and the National Rifle Association to make sure that its ratings are as accurate as possible. Several blocking-software companies tout their commitment to free speech, and the existence of commercial blocking software was a key point in legal arguments this past spring against federal regulation of Internet content.

Nevertheless, given the millions of links that constitute the Web and the dozens of megabytes of e-mail and Usenet articles that cross the Internet daily, distinguishing the good from the bad and the ugly may be an impossible task. Net watchers concerned with promotion of alcohol have tagged the Dewar's scotch Web site, for example, but not the one for Absolut vodka. And those looking out for cigarette promotion have unaccountably missed www.rjrnabisco.com, even though tobacco products appear many times in its pages. (Observers rating sites for their promotion of drug use, meanwhile, snagged at least one Web site containing largely academic studies of drug policy.) Hence, it appears that blocking software neither allows people using it to reach all the information they should, given its criteria, nor does it keep them from all the information they shouldn't see.

Are such shortcomings the price of not watching children's every keystroke? Some parents (and school administrators) clearly think so. Other adults may not be so happy with the idea of introducing the Internet to young people as a universal library with a police informer behind every bookcase and under every desk. And for the time being, adults at least are free to make these decisions for themselves.

--Paul Wallich