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Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Net Nanny can be slow to catch on when Junior takes a raunchy tour of the Internet. But once she does, he's caught red-handed and red-faced.
When the computer censoring program finally realizes the likes of Deviant Dictionary have been summoned, Net Nanny announces a "violation," shuts down the system and primly records the misdeed for Mom and Dad to see.
Gotcha! There's no stuffing the embarrassing evidence under the mattress, like girlie magazines in simpler days.
Net Nanny is one of close to a dozen screening programs being marketed to parents as an alternative or supplement to federal Internet content restrictions overturned by a judicial panel and now under Supreme Court review.
How well do they work?
Plainly, not well enough to replace other ways of dealing with children, like establishing trust.
Also, not well enough to draw anything but a ragged line between pornography on one side and disease prevention, sex education and the arts on the other.
But the judges who struck down the federal Internet law last year found such programs preferable to the government controls. Above all, they said the strength of the Internet and liberty is the same: "chaos and cacophony."
Hence, Awesome Babes and Bikiniland.
Net Nanny did not mind when a grown-up "Junior" who went looking for love in all the wrong places peeked at those relatively mild sites.
Another screening program, Cyber Patrol (motto: "To surf and protect"), would not let Junior see material on Anne Sexton, the celebrated poet with that three-letter word in her name.
It also blocked a search for information on Sri Lanka, an exotic country that Cyber Patrol seemed to consider erotic.
The poet and the nation were "code 5" violations, not as severe as the code 1 Free Babe Zone but blocked just the same.
Even so, the program allowed the Female Appreciation Page, with explicit nudity, to slip through.
Apart from sheer mistakes, a foolproof filter "is impossible to develop because of the subjective nature of what is considered objectionable," PC Magazine says.
Still, they may help children explore the Web "in relative safety."
That's a tall order in a medium connecting some 40 million people using more than 9 million computers to find material that constantly changes.
The cybercensors try to do it with lists of sites and words that will set off a trip wire. Sex, violence and language are among up to a dozen subjects that can be screened out.
Even so, censorship programs are hit and miss.
Net Nanny allowed an eye-popping exploration of the Hustler magazine home page before it cottoned on to what was happening and stopped it.
But it was quick to deny access to a discussion of erotic needlework. Junior had to disable Nanny by using the adult password before eavesdropping on mystifying messages:
"Are there male parts to cross-stitch also, like I'd bother to waste my time!"
"Where exactly would you hang this in your house once you stitched it???"
Screening programs may help kids from becoming accidental tourists in seamy nether worlds. Users may be less likely to trigger graphic sexual content by entering an innocent search phrase for a school project.
That's one worry about a medium that displays racy titles such as Blackberry's and family fare such as WizKids on the same menu screen, to take just one example from the popular Yahoo search engine.
Bawdy material usually carries a warning that it is not to be seen by minors, and accessing it requires a series of deliberate, if easy, steps.
In one attempt at sorting out the smut, Microsoft's Internet Explorer now comes with a security system offering parents five levels of tolerance for sex, nudity, language and violence. It depends on voluntary ratings.
The system can be tweaked, for example, to allow "provocative frontal nudity" or hold the line at "frontal nudity." It will permit "clothed sexual touching" or stop at "passionate kissing."
The parent can block all tough stuff, allow fighting, give the green light to "killing with blood and gore" or open the floodgates to "wanton and gratuitous violence."
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