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Gretchen Menzies' oldest son has a fascination with poop. That's not unusual, considering he is 6.

So when the youngster typed "poops" into a Web browser on the computer one day recently, his mom didn't think twice about it.

"I was right there when he typed it in, and up came a site where you can access naked ladies," Menzies said. "I freaked out."

Even though she swiftly closed the page, and her son was exposed to the link for "about four seconds," Menzies said the experience taught her how easy it is for children to accidentally encounter pornography online.

Menzies, a former social worker who runs a Web site for parents called EssentialMom.com from her Bedford home, thought she had a handle on Internet safety before the "poops" incident.

She keeps her family's two computers in the kitchen and home office so she can easily watch over her son when he is online. She's instructed him to visit sites she approves, such as Disney.com and the reading site Starfall.com. And she's talked to him about not giving out private information.

But Menzies, who also has a 3-year-old son, said she's now considering installing software to filter out pornography on her family's two computers.

More parents are turning to software with names such as "Safe Eyes," "CYBERsitter" and "Net Nanny" to protect their children.

A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project released in March 2005 found that 54 percent of parents with Internet-connected children between the ages of 12 and 17 use software that filters out adult Internet sites or monitors their kids' online activities. That's a 65 percent rise from 2000.

Regulatory efforts
The increasing reliance on technology comes in the absence of enforceable laws that regulate pornography on the Web.

"The filtering companies have stepped into the breech," said Pew's Amanda Lenhart. "Technology is an appealing fix."

The lack of laws is not for lack of trying. Since the failed Communications Decency Act of 1995, lawmakers have attempted repeatedly to craft regulations that will stand up in court before judges who must also consider the First Amendment's protection of free speech.

The latest salvo is the Cyber Safety for Kids Act of 2006, a proposed law from two Democratic senators, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana, that would create a new domain for adult Web sites. Instead of .com, the porn industry would be corralled into a new .xxx domain.

The idea is that filtering software could then easily identify which sites to weed out.

Apart from whether this move will infringe on free speech, there's another problem: Creating new domains isn't the business of the U.S. Congress, but an independent international body called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

So far, the leaders of ICANN, as it's known, have been cool to the idea of creating a special domain to rope off pornography.

Whether this latest legislative effort will persuade ICANN or not, it's a sign of a hot debate that's been waging for more than 10 years over the best way to protect kids — public policy or technology.

That's the crux of the fight between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Justice Department over the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, which has never been enforced because of a court injunction.

The law requires sites with material "harmful" to children to ensure that visitors are 18 or older by verifying their age with a credit card or similar document.

The ACLU argues the law violates free speech because adults would be forced to reveal who they are to access legal content.

The case is expected to go to trial in the Philadelphia Circuit Court this year. A key argument in the trial will be whether filtering technology does the job well enough to obviate the need for the law.

Children in charge
While old-fashioned parenting isn't discounted amid the debate over technology and policy, some parents worry about their ability to police kids who run circles around them when it comes to Web surfing, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, blogging, music swapping and other new technologies.

Cathy Parlitsis of Somers said her 16-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter are more technologically advanced than she is.

"I use a computer every day, but I couldn't hope to know 1/100th what my children know about the computer," she said.

To keep her kids safe online, Parlitsis keeps the PC in a public area of the home and maintains a log-on password that only she knows.

"We also regulate computer time. They are not allowed to use the computer during the week except for school," she said. "They think I am overprotective, which I am, but I think you have to be on top of it."

The idea of creating a .xxx domain appeals to Parlitsis, who recently had her own experience accidentally visiting a porn site while she was doing an online search.

"I don't think anyone should ever come up on a site like that by mistake," she said. "For the millisecond I came across that, it was pretty graphic. It could have been my kids, and once they see it, they can't unsee it."

Parlitsis, who doesn't use filtering software, said the parents she talks with aren't even aware of their options.

"I am pretty computer savvy, but I can tell you I don't have a clue," she said. "It assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the parent if you are going to rely on technology."

Even parents who aren't inclined to look to the government for answers question what's the best way to protect their children in a world where the Internet can bring hard-core sexual images to the youngest eyes in just a few clicks.

"I'm really torn about it because I'm not for legislation. I'm for parents monitoring their kids, but it's dangerous. Kids can access anything they want in two seconds," Menzies said.

Pryor, in announcing the proposed .xxx law, said the number of adult-oriented Web pages has climbed from 14 million in 1998 to 400 million in 2005. Adult entertainment is a $12 billion industry, he said.

"By corralling pornography in its own domain, our bill provides parents with the ability to create a 'do not enter zone' for their kids," Pryor said.

The proposed law is opposed by the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association that represents the adult entertainment industry.

Kat Sunlove, the group's legislative affairs director, said that though she understands the "superficial appeal" of clearly identifying adult content, the .xxx domain would discriminate against constitutionally protected speech.

"Our First Amendment is not designed to protect popular speech. It's the speech at risk from the majority," she said. "I would argue that the speech we provide is not unpopular, but nonetheless from a political point of view we are a target."

Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the .xxx domain would almost certainly tread on free speech rights.

"We all want to protect our children. I'm not attributing bad motives to anybody who wants to do this. But in many cases legislators ask the wrong question. If you ask the question, 'How do I stop this information,' almost inevitably that will lead to an unconstitutional answer. Once you segregate information, you run afoul of the First Amendment," Johnson said.

Filtering software is the solution favored by both the ACLU and the porn industry. The technology works, Sunlove said, because adult sites tag their pages with key words that make it easy for search engines to find them. Filters use the same tags to exclude the sites.

Consumer Reports, in its June 2005 issue, reported that software can filter out most pornography, even though some useful information, on health topics for instance, was also inadvertently blocked.

The magazine rated 11 products, including filters built into online services AOL and MSN. Even the worst performer blocked 88 percent of the porn.

The top-rated software was Safe Eyes from SafeBrowse.com, which Yonkers-based Consumer Reports said offered the best combination of protection and minimum interference with searches for non-pornographic content.

Aaron Kenny, chief technology officer at SafeBrowse, said his company maintains a database of Web sites in 35 categories, from porn to sports and everything in between.

Parents can choose which categories their kids can visit.

The strategy ensures that parents who want their children to be able to access health sites that mention the word "breast," for instance, aren't blocked.

The software can also set up multiple profiles for different uses, so parents can give more access to an older teen and less to a grade-schooler.

"We put control of what is going to be blocked and not blocked into the user's hand," Kenny said. "We're really about providing the tools and allowing the parent to decide. We don't want to be anyone's conscience."

Parents can also opt for monitoring software, which doesn't block sites, but instead records what their children do on the computer.

Doug Fowler, president of SpectorSoft, which makes the eBlaster monitoring software, said the problem with filtering software is each family has its own values.

One family might want to block sites about gay rights, another might want to avoid pro-gun sites.

"Our approach is no censoring, no filtering, but we record like a surveillance camera so the parents can later review what their children are doing and then take action based on that," Fowler said.

His customers are less worried about porn and more concerned about predators who pose as teens in chat rooms or who stalk social Web sites such as Myspace.com to find victims.

"The bigger concern parents have isn't the Web sites that children are visiting, but who their children are talking to on the Web," he said.

Protecting children online, whether it's from porn or predators, starts with education, said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's Washington, D.C., office.

Sheketoff takes a dim view of both public policy solutions and filtering software.

"We know that all filters over and under filter, which means they let through objectionable information and block out acceptable information," she said.

The ALA is still smarting from the passage of the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000, a law that requires schools and libraries that receive certain types of federal funding to certify that they have installed filtering software.

"The only way to protect children is with education. You cannot depend on filtering. You can't depend on creating a .xxx. That's not going to work. You have to make sure that parents and their children really understand the Internet," Sheketoff said.

Educating parents takes money for programs, which is harder work than drafting a new law, Sheketoff said.

"Parents are very concerned about their children. They see the news stories and see that danger lurks online. They look to the government to help. The legislators, many of whom don't understand technology at all, say, 'I must respond to my constituents. Let me vote on something so I can say I've taken care of it,' " Sheketoff said.

The challenge of effectively legislating in this area is amply illustrated by the effort to create a special domain for kids.

Unlike .xxx, which would segregate porn, the idea behind .kids was to create a safe haven for children on the Web, like a virtual playground where they could freely roam without fear.

When John Shimkus, a Republican congressman from Illinois, first approached the idea of creating a .kids home on the Web, he hoped to create what's known as a top-level domain.

The top-level domains, such as .com for commercial sites, .org for nonprofits and .edu for educational institutions, are used around the world.

ICANN, the international body that oversees top-level domains, viewed .kids as problematic because it would be hard to regulate something so subjective as a "kid-safe" domain across cultural boundaries.

Shimkus settled for the idea of creating a second-level domain under the broader .us domain. The law establishing a ".kids.us" domain was passed in 2002.

The rule for the domain specifies no chat rooms or instant messages. There's also no hyperlinks, which means no shopping.

The result: Less than 50 sites are registered. The TV network Nickelodeon, the Smithsonian Institution and PBS are among the sites listed at www.kids.us.

As a parent of a 6-year-old, Shimkus said he hoped his son would be able to visit major sports leagues and other sites of interest to children through .kids.us.

"I'm really disappointed at Corporate America, and not just Corporate America, but nonprofit America. They're not taking advantage of the .kids.us site," Shimkus said. "I'm very frustrated."

If the new effort to create a .xxx domain falls into the same trap, experts say a .xxx.us domain will be largely useless.

Tim Lordan, executive director of the Internet Education Foundation, said about 75 percent of porn comes to the United States from overseas.

This fact also means the 1998 Child Online Protection Act is faulty because it would only apply to U.S.-based porn sites.

"Parents are naturally concerned, as they should be, but it's misleading to think that there is going to be some silver bullet coming from Washington that will solve the problem," Lordan said.

While filtering is a good option for parents because it's remarkably efficient at blocking porn, Lordan said it's important to remember that children need guidance more than anything else.

"Technology without parenting is useless. You need to be able to use technology as part of a holistic approach to dealing with children online."