The Dark Side of the Web

Rick Eng

Special to the Mirror

   I make my living designing web sites and developing online content, so I would be the last person to shine too bright a spotlight on the Internet's negative impact. But I feel a need to voice some concerns in light of a disturbing trend in which racists and political extremists have deemed the Internet as the medium of choice for their dark ideologies.
   The Internet is a godsend of convenience and productivity. Like many millions, I use e-mail for communication, shop for consumer goods and search for useful information in the online world. But as a web developer, I see too clearly the dangerous dark side of the web's global sweep.
   Technology has always brought us a mixture of blessings and woes. Some economic and social displacement occurs. We see a gradual downsizing of traditional businesses that are increasingly redirecting their distribution channels thanks to cheaper, online technologies. Educators are fighting to narrow the gaps of the computer "haves" and "have-nots" as learning methodologies shift from broadcasting to more interactive. Change is the anathema of the status quo.
   A more insidious effect of the Internet's inherent openness are numerous swindles, shams and scams that piggyback honest business pursuits. From get-rich-quick deals and dubious discounters to questionable health and financial experts, it is the consequence of the tradition of an open society. Scarier still are the preachers of racial, gender and class hatred who use the technology as recruitment tool for society's disenfranchised.
   There were detractors of the telephone who mourned the loss of privacy, the art of writing, the charm of distance. But no one can argue that the telephone has played a significant role in shaping our modern society. It was born in 1876 when Bell uttered those famous words to Mr. Watson, but it did not proliferate as a common household product until what was regarded as the second greatest invention in telephony: automatic switching. Before switching all outgoing calls required the assistance of an operator on a switchboard who acted as an electronic Vergil in the Dantesque negotiation for a connection to the designated party.
   The Internet was developed for exclusive use by the U.S. Department of Defense as a way to connect computer systems across the country in order to multiply their processing power. The established electronic links allowed universities to share resources and results. But it was the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1989 that made the internet truly accessible to the general public, and thus sparked a communications revolution that continues to make individual, social, political and economic reverberations on a worldwide scale.
   The web, too, has its share of critics but we cannot really mete final judgment since the dynamic nature of its technology renders a decisive conclusion impossible. The process of reinvention is ongoing and does not pause to accommodate reflection or evaluation. The benefits and fortunes created by the web continue to overshadow the cries of naysayers registering little more than a marginal shrill until the murderous shootings at Columbine and the recent bloody spree of supremacist Benjamin Smith.
   These events may have been a clarion, uniting parents, educators, public officials and activists in a chorus of concern as to the danger of accessibility without responsibility. Never in our history has such raw power of communication been available on a massive scale. For every new e-commerce web site making its debut in the electronic marketplace, the internet spawns darker storefronts who sell nothing more than hate and echo desperation and hysteria.
   With these tragedies, the web's implications seems to have become fodder for public policy debates. Should there be limits of access? Should there be guidelines for self-censorship? Though not a big fan of curbing the free expression of ideas no matter how noble or offensive, I believe electronic unpleasantness can be curbed to some extent. Screening technology exists but how effective is it in the hands of the public, particularly to stem the rise of hate group web sites protected by Free Speech.
   The policies adopted by certain foreign governments contradict our democratic traditions of a free, open society. China requires all domestic Internet users to register with the police and have imposed highly restrictive content distribution criteria to companies offering Internet access. In 1997, CompuServe effectively cut off Germany from its global Internet network because it refused to comply with country's demand to remove several dozen newsgroups that dealt with sex-related topics because it violated particular German laws that protected minor.
   Here in the U.S., success has been mixed. American Online committed a public relations gaft when its word-screening software closed a forum on breast cancer because of the word breast. Despite our best domestic screening efforts, the most determined users have proven successful in circumventing many of the security gates blocking access to indecent materials.
Don't look too soon to government: legislating protection proved to be fruitless. The U.S. Communications Decency Act of 1996 was declared unconstitutional soon after Congress passed it into law because of the court's definition of the internet as private rather than public medium, thus making it difficult to regulate.
   The law also had intended to make it a criminal offense for knowingly transmitting materials deemed "obscene and indecent" to minors. The case was tested by a number of First Amendment advocates citing the law as a violation of free speech as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the lower court's decision that the nature of the Internet deemed it impossible to enforce any regulations that applied to broadcast companies, who are not only content publishers but the conduits to the audience.