Baucus works for Internet safety

Sen. Max Baucus appears to be a voice crying in the wilderness when it comes to protecting children from online pornography.

He and Sen. Mark Pryor, a fellow Democrat from Arkansas, were responsible last year for proposing a bill that would have forced so-called adult content onto Web sites that carried an XXX domain name. Domains that had the usual suffixes such as .com, .gov, .org, and .net would have been banned from containing sexually charged material.

This would have had the advantage of making the location of Internet pornography predictable so that it could be filtered easily and efficiently by parents, and make it less likely that someone could stumble upon sexually explicit Web sites by accident.

The problem with that bill was that it hinged on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) agreeing to establish a new .xxx domain for sexually explicit Web sites. Late last month, ICANN rejected the proposal, partly because it would force ICANN to monitor content (something it doesn't do now) and partly because they said it would not achieve its goal of protecting youngsters.

To their credit, Baucus and Pryor have come back quickly with another proposal, which demonstrates their sincere interest in finding a solution to this problem, instead of just throwing up their hands and surrendering as so many others seem to do these days when confronted with a challenge.

On Wednesday, the senators held a press conference in Washington to announce they were updating their Cyber Safety for Kids Act to reflect the fact that there will be no help forthcoming from ICANN.

Instead, the new bill will require the Department of Commerce to develop an electronic tag for Web sites with sexually explicit adult material in order to allow filtering programs to locate and block obscene and pornographic content.

In addition, the bill would make it mandatory that Web sites with adult content should have a "clean" home page that requires visitors to verify that they are 18 years or older before viewing explicit material.

Between these steps, it will be possible to create filters to block much of the inappropriate content and will also greatly reduce the chance of people viewing sexual explicit material by accident. ICANN will still need to play a role, but enforcement would come through civil penalties issued by the Department of Commerce.

Baucus and Pryor face many challenges. Some say their task is impossible, because U.S. laws can't restrict the internationally diverse Internet. Others say that the First Amendment makes any restrictions inappropriate, even to protect children.

Neither argument has stopped the senators yet, and we encourage them to continue to push forward. Maintaining standards of decency in a civilized society is not optional; it is a necessity. Once standards are gone, so is civilization.

So let's hope that Baucus and Pryor are not crying in the wilderness too long - they ought to be surrounded by friends and supporters who have heard the message and seen the light.

Last year, the Congress was able to pass legislation to restrict Internet gambling, a problem that in general only affects adults. If they could do that, then they certainly ought to be able to pass this bill to protect children.