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The peak of rhetorical obviousness was scaled by the Vice President, who told his audience with an approximation of forcefulness that "the solution that you're developing must be a solution that works." Advocating neither censorship nor license--and perhaps mindful of a recent New Yorker piece that claimed President Clinton is worried that Gore will fumble the New Democrat legacy--the V.P. suggested that the industry find "a third way, an American way." No skin off anyone's nose there.
Gore was really speaking to, and in some ways for, the people who hope to make money from the Net. The commerce-minded don't want government regulation of cyberspace any more than the A.C.L.U. does, but they realize that the only way to turn the Internet into a genuine mass medium and make a real pile of money is to convince the public that it is a clean and well-lighted place. The industry's mantra has been "Patience! Technological refinements will soon be able to protect everyone's interests." This is why the summit opened with demos of various programs that can block out unwanted Websites and E-mail or provide parents with a log of what their kid has been doing on the computer. "This has sometimes seemed more like a trade show than a summit," complained Barry Steinhardt of the A.C.L.U. But that was precisely the p.r. message that the summit's organizers--including America Online, AT&T and this magazine's parent, Time Warner--were trying to convey to the public and Congress. As a Santa's-helper questioner asked AOL chairman and CEO Steve Case during a panel discussion, "Steve, do you believe the private sector can deal effectively with these issues?" Guess what--he did.
Away from the microphones, one of the summit's more prominent voices gave it a slightly more cynical spin: Now Congressman So-and-So can go to the Christian Coalition and talk technology, technology, technology. Not that there aren't still a few bugs. Many of the software programs block out innocuous Websites as well as toxic ones; others are cumbersome or do unpleasant things to your computer's operating system. Many in the online industry are touting a new "platform for Internet content selection" (PICS) system that is a kind of V chip for the Internet. But as participants in the summit's one contentious and genuinely thought-provoking panel pointed out, V-chipping the Net is no snap. Who would rate the Websites, and what criteria would be used? How do you keep pace with a medium that grows by 4,000 sites a day? How do you enforce U.S. standards and regulations on a global medium?