Filters, laws, parenting?

It never hurts to have another tool in tech-parenting toolboxes, and good sense, software, and laws are among them. The Journal News in Westchester County, N.Y., suggests that parents are increasingly using filtering software as a stopgap for younger Web surfers when they can't be looking over surfers' shoulders. "The increasing reliance on technology comes in the absence of enforceable laws that regulate pornography on the Web," the Journal News reports, though "the lack of laws is not for lack of trying." There have been many legislative efforts, but the First Amendment keeps bringing online child protection back into parents' hands, which is probably best because that's the only place where solutions can be tailor-made for each child. The Journal News mentions the latest legislative effort, Cyber Safety for Kids Act of 2006, a proposed law from Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AK) and Max Baucus (D-MT), "that would create a new [.xxx] domain for adult Web sites" with "the idea that filtering software could then easily identify which sites to weed out." It, too, will probably face big hurdles because a body outside the US government, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), is what creates Web domains, the .xxx idea has been stalled there for years, and meanwhile US courts (including the Supreme one) are still trying to figure out what to do with the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (stay tuned for the next set of arguments in the federal court in Philly in the fall).