A - Parental Involvement

President Clinton six months ago announced an expansive plan to build a family-friendly Internet by giving children a "seat belt" for cyberspace. The White House plan called for cooperation from the Internet industry to provide parents and teachers with "easy-to-use" child protection technology. It also promised continued enforcement of existing laws designed to protect children in cyberspace and encouraged parents to learn more about the Internet in order to help guide their children online.

Ultimately, the parent's involvement is critical for successful online experiences - just as it is to avoid other pitfalls of life such as alcohol or drug abuse. Parents need to educate their children about online safety, including the possibility of encountering pedophiles, which means that parents themselves must become familiar with the medium. This may mean exploring Cyberspace alongside their children, and giving worldly guidance and wisdom screen-by-screen, in exchange for technical tips from their offspring.

The key step is for parents to become involved, regardless of their level of technical savvy, and maintain a continuing dialogue with their children. Parents should make it clear that the child can safely bring online incidents to the parents' attention, without being blamed or having the Internet banned from the home. Without this trust, the parents will simply never hear what happens online, whether in the home, at school or in the library.

Although the important initial step of becoming involved requires willingness, not technical knowledge, parents do need opportunities to improve their Internet savvy - not to engage in a battle of Internet knowledge with their offspring (which they are destined to lose), but to act as better mentors for the decisions their children must take. Parents cannot make informed decisions unless they understand the scope of material available online.

Parents can implement non-technical rules of the road. For example:

• Put any computer with Internet access in a central area of the house, not in a child's bedroom or a secluded area.
• Caution children not to give out personal information such as their full names, address or telephone numbers to anyone on the Net without parental permission .
• Do not permit face-to-face meetings with people met on the Net, unless they are in a public place and a parent is present.
• Get to know the children's online friends.
• Don't permit online profiles or personal web pages which give out children's personal information (such as age, school, town, etc.).
• Teach them to be good netizens and to follow netiquette.
• Become knowledgeable about the tools in the digital toolbox.

B - Digital Toolbox

If parents have the ultimate responsibility for their children, it is the "Internet industry" (in its broadest sense) which is uniquely positioned to either help or hinder the parent. The industry is closest to the medium, understands the technology and can develop and deploy an effective, easy-to-use "digital toolbox" of user empowerment tools - including codes of conduct to guide the development of the Internet.

As more industry groups realize that addressing parents' concerns is good business, undoubtedly more and more creative solutions will be developed. Better education about available tools, simpler methods of operation and greater flexibility will be significant steps forward in giving parents the tools needed to maintain family standards of behavior online.

Sometimes a combination of tools from the digital toolbox may be applicable to meet the needs of parents. A list of software tools and parental control options has been compiled in conjunction with the Summit, and is referenced as Appendix I.

Parental controls:

The starting point for many families using online service providers (OSPs) such as America Online (AOL), CompuServe, and Prodigy is the service's included parental controls which come with the online service software, at no additional cost. Parental controls can allow parents to curtail e-mail, instant messages, Internet access, online access beyond a closed system, and chat room access beyond monitored chat rooms. Although they may use the same technology as the most popular software programs below, they are more limited in scope and thus easier to set for those with some familiarity. One OSP (Microsoft Network (MSN)) has simplified installation by making "controls on" the default setting for their browser.

Blocking and filtering software solutions:

These software programs are installed on the home computer, and include CyberPatrol, Net Nanny, Surf Watch and CYBERsitter, among others. Most of the parental control programs have predetermined "bad sites" which are blocked when the program is activated, and screen other sites based upon certain content and keyword preferences set by the parents. The database of "bad sites" needs to be updated regularly, and some companies charge for update subscriptions. Some of these programs monitor computer activity both online and offline and may provide a two-way blocking feature to prevent your children from sending certain information to others.

Although filters are a partial solution, they are not a substitute for parental oversight. The software, although improving daily, is still imperfect and tech savvy kids have been known to circumvent it. Some parents find them difficult to install and configure.

Server-level filtering:

This approach means that you don't install the filtering software on your computer - your OSP or Internet Service Provider (ISP) does. It's easier to use, since no installation is done by the parent and updating is carried by the access provider. Some products permit customizing at the desktop level. It's also harder for children to by-pass, and some ISPs are beginning to offer this service. Legal protection to the ISP for possible "leaks" comes from the clients' written acknowledgment that the results are "best efforts" (rather than guaranteed) and the Good Samaritan provisions of the Communications Decency Act. In an age of one-stop shopping, it is no surprise that many parents would prefer the option of obtaining "already-filtered" Internet access instead of "do-it-yourself" filtering. Since this service is a customer choice, freedom of speech is not an issue.