Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 73

TECH TIMES Web senices face pressure to exclude hate sites VIDEO GAMES BY ROBB GUIDO New York Times Yahoo's strategy has gained some allies, too. The Center for Democracy and Technology, die American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued tiiat large Web services should preserve the Internet's open atmosphere even if that means providing a platform for information about groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of White People (founded by David Duke, a former Klan leader) and die World Church of the Creator. (The latter group once included Benjamin Smith, who committed suicide while being sought as a suspect in the shootings of Jews, blacks and Asian-Americans in Indiana and Illinois over three days in 1999.) Alan Davidson, an attorney for the Center for Democracy and Technology, is most vocal about the effect of international interference. If an order like the one issued in France is allowed to stand, he said, it could set a disastrous precedent for Internet companies. They might, he argued, be forced to alter services to avoid breaking any law in any country or locality, a requirement that would not only trigger what he called "a race to the bottom" fin which any questionable material, however mild, would be banned) but also would cripple a company's ability to move quickly in a changing marketplace.

Instead, he said, "the focus should be on the end user," so residents of France, for example, would be punished for gaining access to illegal material in their country, not American companies. Some civil libertarians acknowl-w edge that the answers become fuzzier when the question shifts from what a government should allow to what a private company may do on its own turf. Yahoo could decide to become much more strict on what it allows without fear of breaking U.S. laws; companies place restrictions on their customers all the time. for hate, yet diey do not want to exert too much control over what appears on their Web sites.

They see themselves as providing a neutral arena for users to publish or sell what they want, and they shrink at the idea of having to make judgments about what appears there. Greg Wrenn, an attorney for Yahoo, said the issue raised this question: "Do Americans really want Internet service providers and portals deciding what they can and cannot post, if it is otherwise legal?" In fact, many of the services in question, including Yahoo, state in their policies that hate-fostering speech is prohibited, especially if it incites violence. But they refuse to monitor or actively seek out violators. During die airport meeting, Yahoo representatives agreed that some online clubs should be banned under Yahoo's policies. And the company has since removed the club that displayed the noose.

But in an interview a week later, Mark Hull, a senior producer for Yahoo communications services, said he wanted to be careful not to delete information simply because some vocal organizations found it upsetting. The bottom line is tiiat we are trying to promote inclusiveness and a wide range of free expression," Hull said. It is that same philosophy, Yahoo officials said, that is spurring them to question the French order and to resist the urgings of American groups to change its policies. So far, the company has declined to follow the lead of eBay, which decided last spring to prohibit the sale of Nazi or Han items that are less than 50 years old. EBay added that restriction, which was intended to allow for die collection of historical material, after receiving letters of protests from several organizations, including die Wiesendial Center and BiasHclp of Long Island, a support service for hate-crime victims.

Auction sites such as eBay, as well as those run by Yahoo, have been the subjects of protests for allowing the sale of items such as Nazi flags and Klan hoods. Amazon.com and BarnesandnobIe.com have come under fire for selling Mein Kampf, Hitler's autobiography. Some sites such as Yep.com have been asked to re-evaluate the way their search engines retrieve results; Yep.com, which gives ratings to sites based on data including loading speed and rankings from previous visitors, decided to rename its system "usability ratings" instead of "quality ratings" after realizing it was posting what looked like positive reviews of racist Web sites. In the meantime, online services are facing the wrath of organizations and governments outside the United States. While the First Amendment allows Americans and American companies to distribute even die most venomous speech, countries such as Germany, Austria, France and Canada prohibit the sale or promotion of hate-related material.

In November, for example, a judge in France ruled that Yahoo was violating French law by delivering Nazi material to people in France via the company's online auctions, even though the service is based in the United States. Yahoo was acting illegally, the judge said, even though the company has created a separate French site that, unlike the broader Yahoo service, follows French law. The company was ordered to use filtering technology to block hate-promoting material from appearing on computers in France or face fines equivalent to 13,000 a day. Yahoo, which argued that filters could block legal material, is considering an appeal. Instead of agreeing to scrub their services of disturbing material, many Web services are trying to sustain a precarious balance: They say they want to avoid becoming a safe haven In November, in a cramped airport lounge in San Jose, two seemingly unrelated parties sat down to talk about hate.

On one side of a conference table sat researchers from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization in Los Angeles dedicated to the margin-alization of groups such as the Ku Klux Wan. On the other sat representatives of Yahoo, arguably the most popular site on the Web and, at that moment, home to dozens of online clubs with names such as White Knights of die KKK. The gathering, which was convened at the airport for the convenience of both groups, was intended to be a congenial, informational meeting. But according to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean at the Wiesenthal Center and one of the participants, it also was intended to serve as a wake-up call for Yahoo. Cooper said one of his associates opened a laptop and displayed a screen capture from one of those online clubs.

A noose appeared with the words "Hang 'em." "Some of the stuff we showed them was as explicit as you can get," Cooper said. The exchange was one of many uncomfortable moments experienced by Yahoo and other popular Internet companies over the past year regarding neo-Nazi or Wan material on their sites. According to the Wiesenthal Center, the Internet harbors more than 2,000 groups promoting anti-Semitism or white supremacy, at least twice as many as the center found in spring 1999. To stem the proliferation of these sites, organizations dedicated to eradicating such hatred have started to exert pressure on online services and shopping sites that deliver, however inadvertently, bigoted and racist views to a worldwide audience. Jarrett Labonte Stock Car Racing SYSTEM: PlayStation MAKER: Codemasters PRICE: $39.99 This stock car game has it all: day and night racing, 40 cars, 23 tracks and damage effects.

With 14 cars on the track at once, things can get hairy, but the cars spread out after a while. This one's a definite pleaser for race fans. Grade: Austin Powers: Oh, Behave! SYSTEM: Game Boy Color MAKER: Rockstar PRICE: $29.99 I love Austin Powers as much as anybody, but thaf not enough to make me like this non-game. There are a few activities and some funny sound bites, but it takes more than that to be groovy. Grade: Austin Powers: Welcome to My Underground Lair! SYSTEM: Game Boy Color MAKER: Rockstar PRICE: $29.99 This Dr.

Evil tide features different voices and activities from the Austin version, but there's still not a lot of game play. Td take it, but only for $1-million. Grade: Unreal Tournament SYSTEM: PlayStation 2 MAKER: Infogrames PRICE: $49.99 First-person death matches have never been so dramatic. Loads of weapons, over-the-top demises and several fun modes for up to four players compensate for the simple premise. Grade: Power Rangers to the Rescue SYSTEM: Nintendo 64 MAKER: THQ PRICE: $49.99 This awful action game is repetitive and boring.

Players take the Rangers through level after level in search of hostages. "Go, Go, Rangers" is right Go far away. Grade: Cool Boarders 2001 SYSTEM: PlayStation PRICE: $39.99 MAKER: 989Sports I've praised tliis series for the past two years, but Cool Boarders 2(X)1 is a title I would skip. It has a nice selection of events and one of the more advanced trick systems, but it really doesn't differentiate itself from Cool Boarders 3 and 4. Plus, the graphics seem poor, especially after sampling SSX for the PlayStation 2.

Grade: Robb Guido is an avid gamer who lives in Tampa. BIueLightcom's goal: Turn subscribers into shoppers turn, inherit all die costs. Charles Ardai, president and chief executive of Juno Online Services, said dot-com advertising began drying up in die tiiird quarter. In Juno's case, its ad revenue per free a'tive subscriber per month feD from $1.20 in its second quarter to $1.10 for its diird quarter. The company has 2.95-miIlion active free subscribers and 800.000 paying subscribers.

An active subscriber is someone who has used die service at least once during die month. Juno is now beginning to ask its heaviest users to pay $9.95 a montii for service, which comes widi some upgrades. "We are having to make die same decision" as the people at Bluelightcom, he said. Detroit Free Press BlueUght.com plans to announce a reward system this month that it hopes will turn its free Internet subscribers into online Kmart shoppers. The dot-com arm of Troy, Kmart Corp.

is mulling possibilities to limit its free Internet access service to 25 hours a month. One idea could be offering more free access hours based on items purchased, BlueLight spokesman Dave Karraker said. "We want to focus it to die people who are shopping," he said. Bluclight.com of San Francisco, a popular online retailer, is caught in a market shift that has forced many companies offering free Internet service to fold. Dot-com advertising, which once covered the cost for free Internet service, has dried up.

Companies are now paying die bills for everyone, including the small percentage of heavy users who stay connected but don't buy products or services. The shift already has brought an end to free Internet service providers lstUp.com, Freewwweb and WorldSpy. BlueLight.com, Juno Online Services and NetZero Inc. are among the handful of free ISPs still operating. In early December, NetZero placed a 40-hour-a-month cap on its free Internet access.

Karraker said the free subscribers dominating BlueLight. corn's Internet time are small businesses, game players, Napster fans and people surfing for pornography. "It's a very small percentage but they are eating up our telecommunications costs," Karraker said. However, it costs an average of $2 to $3 per month to keep an active subscriber online. BlueLight.com has 5.5-million subscribers, of which about 2.5-mil-lion are active users, according to industry analysts.

Karraker said that when BlueLight.com was launched, Internet service provider Spinway Inc. covered the connectivity charges. Spinway was generating revenues from advertisements to cover die costs of offering the free service. When Spinway announced it was folding last month, Bluelight.com was forced to buy the ISP and, in TIMES MONDAY, JANUARY 1 2001 1 3E.