Instead, they argued, Internet content should be controlled by technologies that screen out racy material. Jerry Berman of the Center for Democracy and Technology, which fought the CDA, found himself repeatedly agreeing with Reed, as the evangelical boy wonder went out of his way to downplay his differences with free-speech advocates. Bruce Taylor of the National Law Center for Children and Families, a key CDA booster, tried to warm up to his now-victorious opponents by arguing that the law helped bring attention to blocking software as an alternative to direct regulation. Even in the congenial Colorado mountains, such sweet talk is cause for skepticism. Though it might appear that Reed and Taylor were yielding in the aftermath of their defeat before the Supreme Court, they seem to believe filters and ratings will facilitate censorship better than laws like the CDA ever could.
Scary thing is, they're probably right.
But the technology has its flaws. Cybersitter, for example, is a program that blocks access to the Web sites of the National Organization for Women and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Many also refuse to disclose which sites are on their blacklists, making it hard for adults to figure out what's been banned. Even worse than filtering is the new zeal for rating content. At a White House summit on July 16, President Clinton urged industry leaders to adopt a blocking system similar to television's V-chip and implored content providers to cooperate by rating their online offerings.