The place of 'childhood' in Internet content regulation

A R T I C L E

INTERNATIONALjournal of

CULTURAL studies

Copyright © 1998 SAGE PublicationsLondon, Thousand Oaks,

CA and New DelhiVolume 1(2): 271–291

[1367-8779(199808)1:2; 271–291; 003570]

The place of ‘childhood’ in Internetcontent regulationA case study of policy in the UK

● David Oswell

Brunel University, London

A B S T R A C T ● This paper discusses recent policy calculations in the UKconcerning the Internet and child protection issues. Through an analysis ofofficial documents, conference presentations, interviews and press reports, astory is pieced together of the culture of policy making. Problems are madevisible, social agents mobilized and techniques invented for the enactment ofpolicy. Central to my argument is an analysis of how childhood is figureddiscursively as a particular problem for regulation. Policy decisions are made, notin relation to ‘real’ children, but in relation to their representation and theauthority of those who claim to represent them. I focus specifically on thecirculation of three images of the child: the child-as-victim, the child-in-dangerand the dangerous child. ●

K E Y W O R D S ● childhood ● cultural policy ● Internet ● regulation ●

technology

Introduction

We are often told that the Internet is ungovernable. For example, ‘telecompioneer’ John Gilmore is quoted as saying: ‘The Net interprets censorshipas damage and routes around it’ (Rheingold, 1995: 7). We know that dedi-cated hackers will be able to navigate their way around forms of Internet

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regulation and censorship.1 But then we know that dedicated criminals willalways be able to route their way around the law, whatever the law. We mustaccept that regulation will have its ‘blindspots’ and that total governance isnot a possibility. But this should not stop us from thinking about possibleforms of regulation. Indeed, this has not stopped government and industryfrom thinking about forms of regulation. Let us be clear here: regulatoryinitiatives concerning the Internet are being discussed, investigated andoperationalized. The issue, then, is not whether or not to have regulation,but what form of regulation (and whose interests are being served).

In this paper I specifically look at the Internet in relation to child protec-tion issues and I consider how policy and regulatory initiatives haveaddressed the issues in the UK. I structure my paper as follows: (a) definitionof problems, social actors and policy initiatives in the UK; (b) constructionsof the ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ in policy discourse; (c) discussion of privacyand suggestions for future policy initiatives. The paper comes out of ongoingresearch on policy calculations in the UK concerning the Internet and theprotection of children.2 I use a mix of ethnography and discourse analysis.I investigate policy documents and statements in the press, attend industryseminars and conduct interviews with key decision-makers. These elementsare analysed as aspects of policy culture.3 I observe policy as a particular setof cultural practices in order to show how the relation between the Internetand children is configured as a problem for regulation. My discussion feedsinto wider debates concerning technology, regulation and childhood.

Problems, social actors and policy initiatives

In recent policy documents the European Commission has posed the problemof content regulation in terms of illegal and harmful material (see 1996a,1996b). For example, a recent Green Paper defined the issue as one of accessto illegal material that ‘may be banned for everyone, regardless of the age ofthe potential audience or the medium used’4 and access to harmful material‘that might affect the physical and mental development of minors’ whichshould be ‘allowed only for adults’ (Commission, 1996b). In the UK the dis-tinction has clearly been reproduced in policy calculations and initiatives overthe last year. Even so, in the lived culture of policy practices – in the mobiliz-ation of support and the identification of positions – the distinction has beenless than clear. Moreover, a slippage between the two has allowed policy todevelop in certain directions rather than others. I want to focus on two recentevents that have been important in identifying the seriousness of the problemand in galvanizing a group of social actors (including the press, law enforce-ment agencies, government, industry and pressure groups).

The first event involves the meeting of representatives from the Depart-ment of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Home Office, the Metropolitan

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Police Clubs and Vice Squad and the Internet Service Providers Association(ISPA) and the circulation, on 9 August 1996, of a letter from the ChiefInspector Stephen French concerning Newsgroups which contained, at thattime, ‘pornographic material’. The letter identified a list of Newsgroupsholding ‘offensive material’. These included titles such as ‘alt.binaries.pic-tures.lolita.fucking’ and ‘alt.sex.paedophile.pictures’. The letter states: ‘weare looking to you to monitor your Newsgroups identifying and takingnecessary action against those others found to contain such [offensive]material’. It ends with the following proposition: ‘We trust that with yourco-operation and self-regulation it will not be necessary for us to move toan enforcement policy.’

The meetings and the letter have a clear purpose. First, there is the identifi-cation of a problem concerning pornographic material and, although childpornography is not specified in the text of the letter, it is clear from the listof Newsgroups that such material is the object of concern. However, the listalso included Newsgroup titles such as ‘alt.fan.cock-sucking’, ‘alt.bina-ries.pictures.erotica.spanking’ and ‘alt.sex.homosexual’. Although childpornographic material is certainly distributed through legitimate News-groups (or Newsgroups with legitimate sounding titles), the fact that aNewsgroup for gay men could be included in this list clearly posed aproblem for civil libertarians and activists in the area of sexual politics.5 Theuse of the list, then, serves to elide differences between legal/illegal and nor-mative/non-normative pornographic representations. The totality of the listbecomes identified as a problem of child pornography.6

Related to this is a desire for transparency between the name of the News-group and its content. Despite numerous problems associated with such anotion of transparency – discussed, for example, in the philosophy of lan-guage – these issues do not concern those whose intention is to police Inter-net content.7 More generally, the desire for transparency is not simplybetween name and content, but between part and whole.8 We might citehere filtering devices which, for example, identify nudity on the basis of thevolume of skin tones and body curves.

Second, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are constructed as responsibleagents involved in the policy calculus and as the means through which polic-ing is enacted. There is an attempt to construct ISPs as ‘publishers’, ratherthan as simply ‘common carriers’.9 The consequence of this is that ISPs areseen to be responsible for content that infringes existing legislation and theirreconstruction as responsible agents makes possible a policing at a distance.10

However, the process whereby ISPs are constructed as responsible is far fromstraightforward. The problem rests upon the question of representation. Onthe one hand, there were different interest groups within the industry wantingto speak for the industry and to represent those voices not heard. Possiblecontenders included the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA),London Internet Exchange (LINX) and the Internet Developers Association

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(IDA). There were also other, less organized groupings. On the other hand,the police wanted to talk only to agents who could represent the industry asa whole. For the police, it was seen as unconstructive to be talking to a diversecollection of industry actors. The police needed a single body to activate asa responsible agent, as a means of policing the industry as a whole. In thissense the process of becoming representative is caught up in a complexprocess of translation of different interests (cf. Callon, 1987; Latour, 1987).There was a problem though. The ISPA put itself forward as a representativeof the industry and attended the meetings with the police and government,but it had not, at that time, mobilized sufficient support within the industrynor could it claim to have translated the different political and commercialinterests.

The second event was more public, visible and demonstrative. Initially itinvolved the publication, in the Sunday national newspaper The Observer,of a series of articles on ‘child abuse’ on 25 August 1996. The front page ofthe newspaper carried the headline, ‘We know who they are. Yet no one isstopping them.’ Beneath the headline were two images. One image was ofClive Feather, a director of the ISP Demon Internet. Beneath this image laythe copy: ‘The school governor who sells access to photos of child rape.’ Byits side lay an image of Johan Helsingius, who ran an anonymous remailingservice, with the copy, ‘The Internet middleman who handles 90 per cent ofall child pornography.’11 Inside the newspaper was a three-page ‘specialreport’ on ‘child abusers’ which included reports on the Dutroux paedophilescandal in Belgium, the internationalization of child prostitution and thelisting and tracking of sex offenders. The Observer conflated a number ofissues – concerning child-sex abuse and surveillance of abusers, childpornography on the Internet and child-sex tourism – into a single problemconcerning child protection.12 As a piece of journalism, the articles trans-lated concerns which had been the property of a small group of experts intoa wider ‘public idiom’ (cf. Hall et al., 1978: 61ff.). This was an issue madepublic in order to construct consensus and to galvanize support for regu-lation or legislation. In doing so, the pressure to close the circle of signifi-cant actors and to bring any defiant ISP (rebels within the industry) into thefold intensified.

The industry in quick response, and under the guise of the IDA, organ-ized a day conference to discuss the issues. Many of those present were ISPsand content providers, but the event also included journalists, police, aca-demics and regulators from television and film. The delegates comprised aninformed public sphere of decision-makers.13 The opening address to theconference was from Superintendent Mike Hoskins, Metropolitan PoliceClubs and Vice Squad. Standing before the gathered ensemble, he showed(in photographic form) the shocking evidence of child pornography andthen presented three possible responses to the problem of Internet obscen-ity:


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● The ISPs do nothing as it’s too difficult or impossible.● The police arrest owners of ISPs, confiscate hardware and seize assets.● The ISPs could work with the police.14

The rhetoric of the three-part list was visible on the overhead projector (cf.Atkinson, 1984). The argument was made. And the attendant delegates con-ceded their resistance in the demonstration of an inexorable logic. This wasnot simply a presentation, but the enactment of a strategic mobilization,such that an industry, which only a few months previously had been cast interms of a libertarian wild frontier (an industry beyond the law), was nowcaught up in the problems of governance.

The UK government, as did the European Commission (EC), welcomedindustry self-regulation as an efficient and appropriate means of governance.Ian Taylor, then Minister for Science and Technology, stated that: ‘This isnot a question of censoring legal material or free speech. The Internet hasnever been a legal vacuum. Responsible service providers want to see thelaw upheld “on-line” as well as “off” ’ (1996). Similarly, the governmentresponse to the report by the House of Lords Select Committee on Scienceand Technology recommended industry self-regulation (House ofCommons, 1996). And, in the Communication from the Commission onIllegal and Harmful Content on the Internet (Commission, 1996a) and theGreen Paper on The Protection of Minors and Human Dignity in Audio-visual and Information Services (Commission, 1996b) industry self-regu-lation is seen as an initial solution to the problem of coordinating Europeanpolicy across the different member states (with their different cultural cri-teria for assessing ‘harmful material’).

Two initiatives were identified as suitable methods of self-regulation (bothin the UK and at an European level): (a) the establishment of a monitoringbody; (b) the development of filtering software as a technical means of pro-viding the ground for labelling and rating Internet sites. In the UK, at theIDA conference, Peter Dawe, founder of the ISP Pipex, announced a pro-posal that would lead to the setting up of the Internet Watch Foundation(IWF) on 3 December 1996.15 This initiative followed the example of theMellpunkt service in Holland which monitors child pornography on theInternet and reports it to the police if it has not been removed once identi-fied. The IWF has a wider brief. It does not itself monitor ‘offensivematerial’, but intends to mobilize the public to monitor such material andreport it (via its hotline). As yet IWF neither has the capacity nor resourcesto properly publicize itself and hence mobilize the wider public. IWF investi-gates whether material is illegal, informs the ISP and, in the case of contentoriginating from overseas and child pornography, the police. In this sense itdraws upon an older technique, which broadcasting has used to regulateitself. For example, members of the public are able to write letters to theBroadcasting Standards Commission (BSC) or the Independent Television


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Commission (ITC) and those complaints, if valid (i.e. if agreed on by thebody), will be acted on. Between December 1996 and March 1997 IWF hadreceived 200 reports, concerning 654 items. Of these reports, 34 reports(referring to 440 items) were passed to the ISPs and 50 reports were passedto the police. Most of that material would seem to have originated fromoverseas (most probably from the US).

Whereas IWF has been set up primarily to tackle the problem of ‘illegalmaterial’ (mainly child pornography), the second initiative concerns thedevelopment of filtering software used to restrict access to ‘harmful’ andillegal material. We can identify three main models:

● Blacklisting classifies a limited range of sites according to categories suchas violence, nudity, drugs, etc.

● Whitelisting blocks access to sites not indicated on an authorized list.● Neutral labelling allows sites to be labelled, filtered and blocked accord-

ing to third parties.

Although blacklisting and whitelisting software (e.g. Surfwatch, CyberPatrol, Net Nanny, etc.) is currently in use, there is much enthusiasm forneutral labelling provided by PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection).PICS is ‘a set of technical specifications that help software and rating ser-vices to work together’.

With its recent explosive growth, the Internet now faces a problem inherentin all media that serve diverse audiences: not all materials are appropriate forevery audience . . . we can meet diverse needs by controlling reception ratherthan distribution. In the TV industry, this realization has led to the V-chip, asystem for blocking reception based on labels embedded in the broadcaststream . . . PICS . . . establishes Internet conventions for label formats anddistribution methods, while dictating neither a labeling [sic] vocabulary norwho should pay attention to which labels. (Resnick and Miller, 1996)

At a technical and administrative level, PICS makes possible the rating ofInternet sites (websites, Newsgroups and so on).16 The rating of sites maybe carried out by content providers or by third-party rating and monitoringbodies. It is argued, for example, that the technology allows parents torestrict their children’s access to sexual or violent images, businesses toprevent employees from visiting recreational sites during work time, andgovernment to prohibit access to illegal material (Resnick and Miller, 1996).

The beauty of the system is its facilitation of choice. For example, someparents can restrict their children’s access according to their own tastethresholds using one rating system, whereas other parents might use com-pletely different rating systems and set their own levels accordingly. A keyconcept here is ‘appropriateness’. Paul Resnick and James Miller suggestthat appropriateness is ‘neither an objective nor universal measure’. Theyargue that it depends on at least three factors: the supervisor (‘parenting


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styles differ, as do philosophies of management and government’), the recip-ient (‘what’s appropriate for one fifteen-year-old may not be for an eight-year-old, or even all fifteen-year-olds’) and the context (‘a game or chat roomthat is appropriate to access at home may be inappropriate at work orschool’).

Computer software can implement access controls that take account all thesefactors . . . The software checks the labels to determine whether to permitaccess to particular materials. It may permit access for some users but notothers, or at some times but not others.

Nevertheless, the diversity of choice is dependent on the diversity of ratingsystems available and the diversity of criteria for rating. At present, RSACi(Recreational Software Advisory Council), which is based in the US, is theonly major rating body. However, the EC are keen to develop their ownrating system(s) so that users do not have ‘to rely on rating systems devel-oped for the US where there may be a different approach on what is suit-able content for minors’ (Commission, 1996a). IWF has been givenresponsibility for developing a rating system for the UK (and possibly forthe EU) and has set up an advisory committee to investigate and developsuitable criteria for such a system.17 As yet, there seems to have been littlereal discussion of the criteria for rating and of the methods of assessment,with the favoured method being some form of social psychological contentanalysis (i.e. measurement of content, such as violence, nudity, etc.) whichhas no sensitivity to context.18

These problems have by and large been ignored in the push to make theInternet a safe and secure space: namely, a mainstream commercially viablemedia. PICS is seen as a solution to some of the major problems concern-ing ‘harmful content’ and has gained the consent of the main decision-makers in the UK, in Europe and globally. As it makes possible the ratingof content by the consumer and by third parties (such as commercial orgovernment or other bodies), both libertarians and moral entrepreneurslook set to favour it becoming an industry standard.

The protection of children (vis-a-vis the Internet) is thus clearly definedin relation to the two problems concerning ‘material offending humandignity’ and ‘protecting minors from harmful content’. Decision-makers,such as those already discussed, are quick to confirm the validity of the dis-tinction. And yet, in the mobilization of agents and the construction of anobject of concern, the two problems become elided such that ‘harm’ isanchored through the panic about illegality. Moreover, although dissidentand critical voices have been heard in the national and Internet press, on-line and at the margins of industry and policy conferences, they have beenquiet (even silent) in policy discussions and in the design of initiatives.Critics, such as free-market libertarian, Russell Earl Whitaker, have arguedthat any attempt to regulate the Internet amounts to censorship. In relation


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to the Home Office Report on Computer Pornography, he argued (1994)that:

A favourite tool of the would-be controllers of the free flow of informationis the moral panic . . . Citing ‘crimes’ of dubious existence, the controllers,through the blunt instrument of State edict, have classed certain textual andvisual representations of information as intrinsically evil, and therefore illegal.

Such criticism, though, appears wild and misses the mark by a long way. Itfails to engage with the exigencies of policy calculation and merely offers acritique based on idealism. More generally, such libertarian critique shareswith much policy discourse a lack of thinking about the embeddedness ofthe Internet within existing cultural and social relations. Any policy dis-course which takes child protection seriously needs to consider the socialrelations through which the Internet is woven into children’s lives. Similarly,if communications technologies are intimately caught up in the social con-struction of ‘childhood’ (as Neil Postman argues (1983) in relation to printand television), then the Internet’s availability and accessibility might poseproblems and possibilities not simply for children, but for childhood. In thefollowing section, I look specifically at the constructions of childhood,explicit and implicit, in existing policy discourse.

Displays of the ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ in policy discourse

In Internet policy culture – in conferences and committee rooms, throughface-to-face conversation and at a distance, in official documents and so on– the child is imagined, and childhood is figured, as a particular problem forregulation.19 Given the absence of actual children in policy calculations, thechild is represented through a mix of expertise and common sense. Policydecisions are made, not in relation to real children, but in relation to the auth-ority of their representatives and their representation. There have been threemain figures of childhood in Internet policy discourse: the child-as-victim, thechild-in-danger and the dangerous child. In recent discussion the visibility ofthe child-as-victim has, to a large extent, shielded the latter figures from view.

The construction of the child-as-victim dominates discourse on childpornography and the Internet. These images repeat earlier ones concerningthe child as victim of sexual abuse. This is hardly surprising given that thedominant arguments concerning child pornographic images on the Internetfocus on:

● the image as the document of a crime committed in real life;● the image as a form of seduction of the child.

Internet child pornography is seen as an extension of actual child sexualabuse such that the Internet makes possible the wider distribution of images,


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the construction of an extensive community of abusers and the commercialexploitation of the abused child. But the Internet is also seen to make poss-ible the circulation of pornographic images which are in turn used to enticethe child into sexual relations with the adult and to normalize such relations(cf. Williams, 1991; Ennew, 1986). Notwithstanding the urgent need to actagainst such abuse of power and to find appropriate means of action, it isimportant to investigate the image of the child-as-victim in policy discourseand policy formation.

Jenny Kitzinger, in her work on representations of childhood in childabuse, has argued that ‘child sexual abuse is presented as, above all, a crimeagainst childhood’ (Kitzinger, 1990: 157). The image of the child-as-victimbrings into play a certain defence of ‘childhood’. The protection of childrenfrom abuse is intimately caught up with the protection of a particular con-struction of childhood. Kitzinger talks about how the press, in reportingchild sexual abuse cases, ‘dwell on child-specific attributes such as thevictim’s favourite plastic purse with the rainbow handles, her pony tail,Paddington Bear watch and sailor suit dress’. This should not be read assimply encouraging sympathy for the victim of the crime (as we might expectin the reporting of all crime (cf. Young, 1996)). What is significant is thenature of the signs used to tell a story about childhood.

Not surprisingly, the use of the image of the child-as-victim in policy dis-course galvanizes support for adult responsibility and action to curb suchabuse. Moreover, in Internet policy discourse the seriousness of the imageis seen to be dependent on its relation to the crime, on its being a record ofthe real. In doing so it ignores an important feature of digital communi-cations: namely that images can be pieced together with the verisimilitudeof an image which has, or had, a referent. An image can be constructedwhich does, or did, not ‘in reality’ exist. It can be the product of ‘morph-ing’.

In 1994, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act amended a loopholein the Protection of Children Act (1978) which allowed morphed images ofthe sexual abuse of children to be distributed.

. . . simulated indecent photographs of children . . . have been manufacturedon computer by the manipulation of different photographic images withsophisticated computer graphics. For instance, a pornographic image of awoman’s body may be modified anatomically in such a way as to resemblethat of a child. This modified image is then combined with the head of a younggirl in order to produce the finished product of a simulated indecent image ofa child. Since the resulting images are not in fact indecent photographs of chil-dren they [were] unlikely to be covered by existing legislation. (GovernmentReply HC 126, 1994, cited in Standen, 1996)

However, the problem is not easily solved. The phenomenon of morphingis disturbing because it forces us to question an argument concerning the


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documentary nature of the image and refocuses our attention on the imageas a construction of childhood. Who is the victim, when the image is notthe record of a crime in real life? We are disturbed because the image createsthe same feelings of disgust and yet we can no longer draw on existing dis-courses of legitimation concerning the document of a crime. We are forcedto think more specifically about the image and its regulation. We are forcedto consider the signs of childhood (and the crime against childhood) and notsimply the crime against the child. For example, we recognize a child as achild, but what are the signs that make possible that recognition, thatidentify the child?

The construction of children as innocent, passive and vulnerable is apowerful tool in correctly identifying the perpetrators of abuse and inmobilizing popular consensus for action against such people. However, it isa double-edged sword (cf. Kitzinger, 1990). Its deployment in policy dis-course (as a form of demonstration) can also reinforce adult authority andpower over children.20 As decision-makers we can be positioned as anal-ogous to the perpetrators of abuse.21

The figure of child-as-victim in Internet policy discourse overshadows thecirculation of the two other images of the child: the child-in-danger and thedangerous child. Whereas the former figure emerges in relation to concernabout child pornography, the latter images tend to emerge in relation toquestions concerning children’s access to and use of ‘harmful material’. Thediscourse of the child-in-danger and the dangerous child has a longer geneal-ogy dating to the 19th century (cf. Rose, 1985). These figures constitute linesof consent and mark out boundaries between ‘us’ (normal) and ‘them’(pathological) (cf. Oswell, 1997).

First, the child is seen as in danger from contact with ‘harmful’ material.The European Commission, in its Green Paper on the Protection of Minorsand Human Dignity, states that one of its aims is to prevent ‘minors fromencountering, by accident or otherwise, material that might affect theirphysical and/or mental development’ (Commission of the EC, 1996b: 6).Harmful material is defined in terms of content which is ‘allowed only foradults’ (ibid.). As yet definitions of ‘harmful content’ seem to be potentiallywide-ranging. For example, Nigel Williams, Director of Childnet Inter-national, in his response to the European Commission Green Paper statedthat ‘harmful content . . . would include much pornographic and violentmaterial aimed at adults, bad language, but might also extend to materialtouching on subjects which many parents would consider unsuitable foryoung children eg material promoting the use of drugs or alcohol’ (Williams,1996: 1). Similarly, early research suggested pornographic material waswidespread on the Internet. For example, Marty Rimm (1995) has claimedthat pornography accounts for 83.5 percent of images on Usenet. Thisresearch has since been severely attacked (cf. Godwin, 1995). It has never-theless helped to construct a picture of the Internet as a potentially


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dangerous space and, as such, it feeds into calculations concerning youngpeople’s accidental access to harmful material.

Such discourses draw upon earlier discourses which construct youngpeople as being in danger from media and communications content. Forexample, Wilson-Thomas, in her paper on the need for reform of obscenitylegislation in the UK, discusses the Internet in relation to books, magazines,newspapers, videos, television and telephone (Wilson-Thomas, 1996).22

However, despite such discussion, there has been no significant researchspecifically concerning the Internet in this area. In fact, given the dominanceof concern over child pornography, the figure of the child-in-danger hasoften been elided with that of the child-as-victim such that ‘harmfulmaterial’ is discussed as if it were/should be ‘illegal material’. Again the dis-course says more about the protection of childhood than the protection ofchildren. Significantly, discussion in this area has, as yet, not considered thedefinition and use of harmful material by young people.

Second, the child is constructed as intentionally seeking out porno-graphic content. This is a construction of the child as dangerous. Whereasthe child-in-danger is seen as passive and weak, the dangerous child is seenas active and aggressive. This child is constructed predominantly as male.The young male is presented as a prototype of the violent, rapacious, crim-inal man. For example, at a recent conference on policing Internet content,a psychologist and human rights campaigner presented the image of ayoung boy who takes a picture of his female teacher, scans it into his com-puter and reconfigures a computer game so that the teacher becomes theobject of various aggressive, sexual fantasies.23 This example is used byMonika Gerstendorfer, the expert in question, to make visible the lack ofparental knowledge and surveillance concerning their children’s use of thecomputer. It was used by Gerstendorfer not simply as an anecdotalexample, but as a way (along with other examples of the distribution ofimages of rape, etc.) of punctuating her talk with the real.24 The punctua-tion is similar to Hoskins’s use of the child pornographic images at the IDAseminar. It demonstrates a truth whose logic appears incontestable. More-over, it is a demonstration which pathologizes the male child and drawsupon a lineage of images that goes back, in its immediate history, to thelate 1950s and early 1960s concerning the introduction of television on apopular scale in the UK and elsewhere. At that time, psychological researchconstructed a pathologized image of the solitary working-class boy unsu-pervised in his television viewing (cf. Oswell, 1994, 1995). The image ofthe boy in a darkened room, with the steely flicker of the television screenon his face, is one that is now repeated in popular discourses concerningchildren’s use of computers.25

The intensity of investment in these images impacts upon forms of regu-lation proposed. Images of childhood underpin discussion concerning theregulation of illegal and harmful material on the Internet. On the one hand,


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there is a neo-conservative line of thought which would wish to see the Inter-net cleaned up, as Mary Whitehouse wished television to be cleaned up fromthe 1960s. This line of argument would wish for the Internet in its totalityto be a safe place for children. There would be no dangerous or adult spaces.It would wish to see a bowdlerization of the Internet.26 The Communi-cations Decency Act in the US (February 1996) was a rather clumsy and ill-thought-out device for creating such a space. Thankfully, it was declaredunconstitutional by the Supreme Court on 26 June 1997.

On the other hand, there is a libertarian line of thought that suggests thatthe use of regulation to create a safe space for children is nothing short ofauthoritarian and treats everyone as if they were children. For example,Chris Ellison (1996), from the Campaign for Internet Freedom, argues that:

Those who seek to foster the new morality, who would like to appoint them-selves onto the growing army of regulatory authorities, shouldn’t be surprisedto find themselves in the midst of the boots of the boys in blue. For those ofus who want to be treated like adults, opposing all attempts to censor theNet, either self-imposed or otherwise, must be our first step.

Ellison’s argument leaves unquestioned the notion of ‘adulthood’. Whatdoes it mean to be ‘adult’ in the context of Ellison’s argument? Does it meanbeing able to look at scenes of violence, abuse and violation? Is adulthoodbeing defined, unproblematically, as a space free from regulation? He con-tinues by saying:

The unquestioned assumption in all the debate is that the availability ofpornographic images on the internet poses a significant threat to society,especially children. However, the idea that children are adversely affected bycertain ideas and images is entirely spurious. For most children the onlyexcitement to be had from a pornographic image comes from the fact adultshave made them taboo.

This libertarian line of thought (whether of right or left) continues an earlierphilosophy of the Internet as a frontier space of rugged individualism.Whereas the neo-conservative argument is clearly framed with a genuineconcern about the well-being of children, the libertarian argument seemsonly concerned with the freedom of adults.27 But both are problematic andboth seem to ignore the way in which communications technologies are con-stituted within existing social and power relations. Moreover, both argu-ments rest upon an intense concern about childhood. The child is discussed,debated and problematized in order that certain arguments about the regu-lation of adulthood can be presented.

Furthermore, the circulation of these images of childhood legitimatepolicy initiatives most notably in relation to parental responsibility for regu-lating children’s access to and use of the Internet. Such policy offers theparent greater control over their children, when it is not clear whether


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‘parents’ constitute a unitary constituency or whether more parental controlis needed. It is important to remember that ‘parent’ is a blanket term whichignores social, economic and cultural difference and that appeals to ‘parents’may obscure such differences. It is also important to recognize that ‘par-enthood’ is an effect of being addressed as such by particular policy dis-courses. It is not simply a free-standing attribute of having children (cf.Showstack Sassoon, 1983). In Internet policy discourse, the parent isaddressed only inasmuch as s/he is different from those experts involved inpolicy calculation and inasmuch as their agency functions as a relay for suchexpertise and the translation of power.

Also, given that much abuse takes place in the home, by parents, whyshould policy be directed toward restricting young people’s access to newforms of knowledge and community? Why should those who might abusetheir power over children be in a position of prohibiting them from con-tacting others who might offer support? Would an Internet version of Child-line, which gave space to children to discuss their abuse with others insimilar circumstances, be deemed ‘obscene’? Should this type of Internetservice be the focus of greater parental control, when it might be that parentsare the problem? Internet policy discourse draws upon a wider communi-tarian shift in discourses of child abuse. There has been a shift from a notionof the abuser in the home, which came to prominence in the 1980s, to anolder notion of the abuser as stranger, the abuser in the neighbourhood, theabuser in the community.28 The home and parent are configured as pointsof safety and security. The Internet is seen as problematic (and dangerous)because it allows the dangerous adult outside to invade the sanctity of thatprivate space. The Internet has now become a focal point for public dis-cussion of child abuse and for shifting the terms of debate away from thehome and family as a problematic space.

Conclusion and future directions

My argument is not antipathetic to those who wish to see the Internet prop-erly regulated. On the contrary, I argue that regulatory initiatives are beingpursued and that to hope otherwise is sheer foolishness. The problem,rather, concerns the question of what form regulation might/should take andwhat relations of power might/should be inscribed in such measures. Mystarting point has been to consider how the ‘child’ has been figured in Inter-net policy culture and to argue that more careful consideration needs to bemade concerning the way the ‘child’ is conceived as an object of policy. Infalling back on particular existing figures of childhood, policy could poten-tially work against the best interests of the child.

Discussion over Internet content and child protection issues needs to beput in the frame of the bigger picture concerning children’s access to and


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use of the Internet. Many – for example Nigel Williams, Director of Child-net International, and Kathryn Montgomery, Director of the Centre forMedia Education – have argued that the Internet should be both properlyregulated to protect children from ‘harmful’ material and properly devel-oped as a space for children’s learning. So far policy calculations have failedto consider the bigger picture and have kept discussion of content regu-lation separate from that of the Internet’s learning potential. It is impor-tant, I argue, to look at both together in terms of the general well-being ofthe child. A starting point might be to reconfigure the problem in terms ofchildren’s right to privacy, rather than the ‘protection’ of children.29 It isuseful to learn from innovative work in child abuse studies. As Kitzingerargues:

Protection, then, is neither a long term, nor even a short term, ‘solution’ tothe exploitation of children. Such paternalistic approaches can, in fact, actagainst children’s interests. Reforms which impose restrictions on children –‘for their own good’ – are routinely turned against the very people they aremeant to protect. (1990: 167)

Thinking about children’s Internet rights might lead to ideas concerning chil-dren’s right to spaces free from adult intrusions (of whatever kind) and theirright to access the Internet free of parental surveillance. It is worth, at thispoint, making reference to Freda Lingstrom, Head of Children’s TelevisionProgrammes, BBC, who saw children’s television as analogous to the timespent walking to school free of parental and teacherly control:

As soon as the door had closed behind me I stepped into another world – theentrancing world of the street. I forgot my family . . . My state of mind wasexpectant and blissful. I skipped along seeing strangers, dogs, a few friends,the milkman; with luck I might find a penny or see an accident or a deadhorse. The external world unfolded itself before and around me – an enchant-ment. (1953: 99)

It is not beyond technological, economic and political means to allow chil-dren access to secure, adult-free Internet or Intranet spaces. For example,access could be in schools and public libraries. Adults could ensure that onlychildren have access to the Intranet and, once on, children could feel securethat their environment would not be invaded by unwanted adults. Thiswould, of course, be no Utopia and would become the site, undoubtedly, ofintense intra-child power differences and struggles.

Nevertheless, it would allow children to dominate a communicationsenvironment (in terms of production and consumption) which has beenunheard of before. At present the limitations on this space of freedom aresuch that it appears unrealistic. This is fair enough. What is not clear is whythis is not seen as a future objective, however distant. This suggests thatadult power is not the solution to the abuse of adult power.


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Finally, one of the major stumbling blocks in the debate has been thedichotomy between neo-conservative and libertarian arguments concerningregulation. It is important not simply to impose old means of regulationonto this new and exciting technology, but to investigate new forms of regu-lation that might provide spaces of liberty for those denied such freedom inthe past: namely to conceive of regulation as productive of liberty.

Notes

My thanks to Nigel Williams, Ruth Dixon and my other respondents for theiradvice and information in writing this paper and to my two anonymous readers.

1 The issue is not simply that hackers will circumvent the law, but that theInternet is seen as a communications technology that in itself makes regu-lation difficult or impossible. For example, Regan Shade (1996) reproducesthis argument of the Internet as a monolithic ungovernable medium.

2 It will be clear toward the end of this paper that I believe that the notion of‘protection’ needs to be rethought.

3 My research feeds into the recent work on cultural policy (cf. Bennett, 1992;Cunningham, 1992; Frith, 1991; and McGuigan, 1996), but focuses morespecifically on the cultural practices of professionals, policy-makers anddecision-makers.

4 Such material is defined in terms of ‘a general category of material that vio-lates human dignity, primarily consisting of child pornography, extreme gra-tuitous violence and incitement to racial or other hatred, discrimination, andviolence’ (Commission, 1996a: 6).

5 The letter was quickly leaked and circulated around libertarian and lesbianand gay Internet sites.

6 On the use of the list as a technique of inscription see Stokes (1997).7 The relationship between Internet regulatory discourse and its implicit epis-

temology would be a fruitful subject of research. Such research might tra-verse the writings of Wittgenstein (1953), Pecheux (1982) and thepsychoanalytic writings of Lecercle (1985) and Zizek (1989). In doing so thequestion of naming/labelling might be realized as more problematic than atpresent seems.

8 It follows the logic of synecdoche: one part of the picture is taken as indica-tive (representative) of the totality.

9 Later discussion, including a wider range of representatives, merely reaf-firmed the responsibility of the ISPs. Conceptions of the Internet as a publicspace, similar to a park (cf. Browning, 1996), were either contested orignored. For a useful discussion of some of the issues see Barrett, 1996.

10 Existing legislation includes the following Acts of Parliament. The ObscenePublications Acts of 1959 and 1964 deem an article, or items within an


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article, to be obscene if its effect is to deprave and corrupt persons (cf. Hail-sham, 1987). The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 ‘extendsthe remit of the Obscene Publications Acts to include the transmission ofelectronically stored data which, on resolution into user viewable form, isobscene’ (Standen, 1996: 13). The definition of publication remains unal-tered, covering any distribution, circulation, sale, giving, lending, or dis-playing of an obscene article. The Protection of Children Act (1978) wasamended in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act to cover computer-manipulated images. The UK Telecommunications Act (1984) deems itillegal to use a public telecommunication system to send offensive, threat-ening or obscene material. The Indecent Displays Act (1981) covers obscenematerial which members of the public might observe through happenstance.Thus Internet material accessed through a payment system is not covered bythis legislation.

11 Anonymous remailing services allow Internet users to post messages withouttheir address being identified. For example, if I was using the Internet toconduct research into a sensitive area, such that my respondents did notwant to be identified, then the respondents could have emailed informationto me via a service such as anon.penet.fi.

12 A report by the All Party Family and Child Protection Group on ‘Violence,Pornography and the Media’ (distributed to both Houses of Parliament on25 June 1996) had similarly configured these different issues as a singleproblem. A number of this group, including David Alton MP, Dr CliffordHill and Professor Andrew Sims, had been involved in the 1984 ‘video nasty’moral panic (which led to the Video Classification Bill (1985)) and the panicfollowing the murder of James Bulger in Liverpool, England. The group alsoincluded Claire Wilson-Thomas (Researcher for Christian Action Researchand Education).

13 As the field was, at this stage, emergent, the decision-makers were bothactual and potential: the meetings, seminars, etc. helped constitute thedecision-makers as such.

14 In a conference on ‘Policing the Internet’ (Association of London Govern-ment, 13–14 February 1997), Martin Jauch, Metropolitan Police Clubs andVice Squad, made a similar set of points.

15 The initiative was originally called Safety Net Foundation, but changed itsname due to the existence of another company of the same name. Until June1997 Internet Watch Foundation was underwritten by the Dawe CharitableTrust. However, changes are afoot. A new management structure is beingput into place and funding will now come from industry.

16 It is important to note here that the PICS strategy relies on relatively staticcontent. If, for example, content providers constantly change the contentpresented, it becomes extremely difficult to attach a descriptor. It is antici-pated that commercial interests will work toward maintaining some consis-tency in terms of the content provided on Internet sites.


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17 The advisory committee comprises: Nigel Williams (Childnet International),Janet Henderson (British Telecom), Roger Blamire (National Council forEducational Technology), Laurie Hall (Video Standards Council), SarahHarrison (ICSTIS), John Carr (consultant for NCH Action for Children),David Kennedy (Chief Executive ISPA), Clive Feather (LINX), Diana Whit-worth (National Consumer Council), Gail Dawe (Dawe Charitable Trust),Mark Stephens (solicitor, nominated by Liberty) and Roger Bennet (Elec-tronic Leisure and Software Publishers Association). The structure of theadvisory board has recently undergone certain changes. It will now be calledthe Policy Board and appointments will normally be made for one year. Eachongoing board will select the incoming one.

18 It is useful here to refer to the discussion of ‘violence’ in the ‘media effectsdebate’ as parallels can be clearly drawn (cf. Barker, 1997).

19 In this section I draw on recent work in the sociology and anthropology ofchildhood (cf. James and Prout, 1990; James and Jenks, 1996) and otherresearch on the construction of childhood (cf. Holland, 1992).

20 Claude Rosental (1997) develops the notion of ‘demonstration’ in relationto the example of fuzzy logic.

21 Let me be absolutely clear here. I’m not talking about the distribution of childpornographic images generally, but the use of child pornography, recoveredby the police, in policy discussion with experts and decision-makers.

22 For a critique of this type of approach see Barker and Petley, 1997.23 The conference was ‘Policing the Internet’. It was sponsored by the Euro-

pean Commission.24 See Barthes’s analysis of the ‘punctum’ in photography (1982).25 Kember refers to an edition of the current affairs programme, World in

Action, which reproduces the notion that boys are computer addicts and shediscusses this in term of the psychoanalytic notion of splitting. She talksabout the splitting of childhood into innocent and demonized (cf. Kember,1995). For a useful discussion of boys’ use of computers in the home seeFurlong, 1995.

26 There seem to be two logics at play here: one concerning the Internet as achild-safe space, which John Hartley (1987) has discussed in relation to tele-vision in terms of ‘paedocratization’, and the other concerning the con-struction of community. Kevin Robins describes the latter logic as follows:‘Solidarity in cyberspace seems to be a matter of extending the security ofsmall-town Gemeinschaft to the transnational scale of the global village’(1996).

27 Avedon Carol (1994), though, insists that a libertarian argument is consist-ent with the protection of the rights of the child (vis-a-vis child sexual abuse).

28 For a discussion of earlier discourses on child sexual abuse see MacLeod andSaraga, 1988 and Kelly, 1988.

29 My thinking is in terms of children’s privacy vis-a-vis their rights to associ-ation, rather than simply their individual rights per se (cf. Raab, 1997).


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● DAVID OSWELL lectures in the sociology of media andcommunications. He specializes in research on childhood, technologyand culture and is currently conducting research on the professionalcultures of children’s television broadcasting and on constructions ofchildhood in Internet policy cultures. He is also writing a genealogy ofchildren’s television broadcasting for Oxford University Press. Address:Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology, BrunelUniversity, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, UK [email:[email protected]] ●


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The place of 'childhood' in Internet content regulation

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