World Wide Web browsers are currently configurable to block material
with such tags. Thus, the headers and flags the government may
advocate is currently an ineffective means to ensure the blocking of
access by minors to "adult" material. Even in a predictable future
where there are defined standards for such tags and there are
readably available browsers that are configurable to make use of
those tags, a content provider--e.g., a listserv or Newsgroup poster
or a Web page author--will have little power to ensure that the
client software used to receive the postings was in all cases
properly configured to recognize these tags and to block access to
the posting when required. Thus I feel that the tagging that may be
proposed by the government would in fact not be "effective" in
ensuring that the poster's speech would not be "available to a person
under 18 years of age," as the Communications Decency Act requires.
Although I strongly support both voluntary self-rating and third-
party rating (as described in the preceding paragraph), I do not feel
that the use of tags of this type would satisfy the speaker's
obligation to take effective actions to ensure that "patently
offensive" material would not be "available" to minors. Furthermore,
since it is impossible to embed such flags or headers in many of the
documents currently made available by anonymous FTP, gopher and the
World Wide Web without rendering the files useless (executable
programs for example), any government proposal to require the use of
tags to indicate "adult" material would not allow the continued use
of those methods of communication for speech that might be deemed
"indecent" or "patently offensive."
With the exception of electronic mail and e-mail exploders all of the
methods of Internet communications discussed above require an
affirmative action by the listener before the communication takes
place. A listener must take specific action to receive
communications from USENET newsgroups, Internet Relay Chat, gopher,
FTP, and the World Wide Web. In general this is also true for e-mail
exploders except in the case where a third party subscribes the user
to the exploder list. These communications over the Internet do not
"invade" a person's home or appear on a person's computer screen
unbidden. Instead, a person must almost always take specific
affirmative steps to receive information over the Internet.
7.0 Acknowledgment
I owe a great deal of thanks to John Morris of Jenner and Block, one
of the law firms involved in the CDA challenge. Without his
extensive help this document would not exist, or if it did, it would
be even more scattered.
8.0 Security Considerations
To be actually able to do the type of content access control that the
CDA envisions would require a secure Internet infrastructure along
with secure ways to determine the minor status of potential
reciepiants around the world. Developing such a system is outside of
the scope of this document.
9.0 Author's Address
Scott Bradner
Harvard University
1350 Mass Ave.
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
Phone: +1 617 495 3864
EMail: sob@harvard.edu