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In an unanimous decision,  three judges of a special panel in US held that the Children's Internet Protection Act is "invalid under the First Amendment" because it requires libraries to use a technology that blocks access to legitimate sites on the World Wide Web, while still giving access to some porn sites.

Is it the end of the road for Cyber Pornography control? What should India do in a similar situation? are the issues that need to be addressed now.

The Indian concern on Cyber Pornography is two fold.

Firstly, the availability of pornographic websites on the Internet which could corrupt the minds of the Indian children.

Secondly, the proliferation of e-mails sent to Indians containing pornographic information or invitations to visit Pornographic sites.

Amongst the two, naavi.org considers the second offence more dangerous than the first and needs a quicker attention.

Controlling Pornographic Websites:

Even though it is an important judicial verdict, India need not be deterred by the US judgment and give up the "Content Filtering Option" to control access to pornographic sites.

The American decision is more influenced by the concern for "Freedom of Speech" and "Personal Liberty" and hence has placed a big weightage on the imperfections inherent in the filtering software and the possibility of "Normal Sites" being blocked.

Even though this is an issue to be of concern, naavi.org advocates "Automatic Filtering with Manually Managed Selective Unblocking and Blocking of relevant sites" as a solution to the concerns.

The way this would work is that a basic filtering software would be installed at the ISP level so that a threshold of filtering is automatically facilitated.  The register of blocked sites may however be modified on request from the public, with specific sites being unblocked if they have been unfairly blocked. Those objectionable sites that have passed through may also be blocked upon receipt of a proper request.

The key to this management is the formation of a Filtering Advisory committee which will be a body of Netizens, to assist the authorities to recommend unblocking or blocking based on a verification of the public notice.

Additionally, a system of a message of modification of filter ist being put up on a notice board for a limited period  can also be followed so that any omissions from the filtering committee can be set right.

A bit of international publicity and enlisting the cooperation of ISP s world over to disseminate this information would be essential. If the proposed system takes off in India, it will soon snow ball into a major international convention and an international body for "Porno free Cyber Environment" would soon emerge.

Beyond this mechanism, if there is a need for some educational institutions and researchers to have access to what is otherwise blocked, just as we license fire arms, a licensing procedure can be introduced taking care that this facility is not misused.

There is a technical issue of the difficulty in unblocking of websites carrying virtual IP addresses which also represent some of the objectionable sites. Despite the opinion of the Mumbai's Expert  committee which analysed the issue in the Cyber Cafe ID case, naavi.org does not consider this an insurmountable technical block.

In the event however this becomes an issue, it would be the responsibility of the ISP hosting the websites to segregate the non objectionable and the objectionable  sites and allocate different IP numbers.

Armed with the Indian regulatory view, it would be the right of the Consumers to demand such a segregation from the web hosting firm or pay damages to the consumer.

Controlling Pornographic E-mails

As already expressed, the more urgent concern is to stop the flow of the pornographic e-mails to the Indian e-mail addresses. Firstly, Indian ISP s such as VSNL may be mandated to run suitable filters to avoid flow of such e-mails. They need to provide a customer service counter to receive complaints and act immediately. Once such a procedure is initiated, pressure can be brought on service providers such as Hotmail or Yahoo mail to follow suit.

Simultaneously, notices should be sent to the respective ISPs abroad from where the mails emanate to stop their erring customers from carrying out promotion of pornographic sites. This is already legally covered to some extent under Spam Control measures.

Such an effort needs the cooperation of the CBI so that there is adequate follow up at international level. A legal threat has to be made working on the delinquent ISPs.

The support of ICANN also has to be enlisted for this purpose so that if an Indian Court or an authorised  Cyber Pornographic Control Committee in India certifies that a particular ISP is a source of Cross Border Pornographic Attack, then ICANN should enforce the UDRP type of procedure to enable eviction of the offending person from Cyber Space.

Obviously, the above recommendations are draconian by themselves. But these have been suggested after great thought and with an objective of protecting the continued and increasing use of Internet amongst  Children. If we can legally ban "Smoking in Public Places" for the health of the nation, the banning of "Cyber Pornography" is also  equally relevant.

If proper protection is not provided to Children on the Net, parents are likely to stop Children from using Internet precisely to avoid exposure to pornography. On the other hand,  if parents feel comfortable to let their children browse freely, there will be lot more educational and beneficial activity that can take place. The schools can then be one of the major beneficiaries and can promote  collaborative learning across different countries and cultures.

Naavi

 June1,  2002

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