Parents have real concerns and the industry is responding. We are trying to come up with solutions that are wholly consistent with the civil libertarian ethos of the Net and this country's tradition of free speech. We think the Exon bill is exactly the wrong approach. It imposes severe penalties on distributors of sexually explicit material on the Internet.
Critics say it is overly broad and possibly unconstitutional.
The House passed the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act, which calls for industry to set standards and develop software for filtering content. A conference committee will attempt to reconcile the two pieces of legislation in the next several weeks. Having widespread, unified industry participation will significantly accelerate our efforts. Some incorrect initial news reports said the W3C consortium was seeking to create a rating system, similar to ones used for films, to address the problem of indecent and pornographic materials moving over the Internet. Mr. Vezza is a senior research scientist and associate director of the Laboratory for Computer Science, one of the two W3C locations.