Net Nanny CEO and Peacefire Filter Foe
Face Off
Bennett Haselton, the college student who founded the anti-filtering teen group Peacefire in 1996, and Gordon Ross, CEO of the filter-manufacturing firm Net Nanny, faced off in a one-hour debate April 16 at the Spring Internet World trade show in Los Angeles. But their appearance generated far less interest there than it might have at a library venue: Only some 20 people came to the session.
Haselton told American Libraries that when he pressed Ross about why Net Nanny’s blocks have included some text-only newsgroups, the executive cited sexually explicit conversational threads, as well as the recommendations of “outside groups” such as Cyberangels or law enforcement agencies. Ross, who told AL he belongs to Peacefire, said his product screens e-mail and chat rooms because one child duped by a cyber-predator “is one child too many.” Agreeing that people “should always know what’s being blocked,” Ross said he also emphasized to Haselton that Net Nanny makes its proprietary stop-list available online to customers.
Posted April 26, 1999.
|
