Washington D.C. -- A proposal detailing how government and the Internet can work together to protect children without censorship was presented by SafeSurf, the parent's organization that pioneered online rating, to President Clinton at a special meeting held today at the White House. Called the "Online Cooperative Publishing Act", the proposal maintains that rights exist for both the publisher as well as the receiver of online material. The publisher has freedom of speech and the receiver has the right to be secure in their homes from unwanted online material. It calls on government to focus on the balancing of these rights by preventing negligent publishing. Negligence is defined as not labeling adult oriented material in such a way that it is picked up by filtering software. "Under our plan, the Web page code is defined as a package," said SafeSurf's President, Wendy Simpson. "We want government to take an active role in encouraging the labeling of this package, but a hands off approach to the actual content." "In simple terms, its all about cooperation. Publishers cooperate by rating themselves correctly for filtering software; parents cooperate by using the software, and government cooperates by limiting its focus to ensuring that the first two are effective," pointed out Ray Soular, SafeSurf Co-founder and author of the proposal. Soular based much of today's proposal on the "White Paper" he prepared for Senator Patty Murray who is preparing to introduce legislation requiring publishers to rate adult material. Sending bulk pornographic email solicitations is also considered a negligent act under SafeSurf's proposal. "When it comes to an innocent child, it doesn't matter if the pornographic email came from a corporate bulk email service or a pervert, the effect is the same," asserted Ray Soular. "All we're saying to spammers, is don't force smut down our throats," declared Soular. The full text of the "Online Cooperative Publishing Act" can be found at SafeSurf's Web Site located at http://www.safesurf.com. SafeSurf, creators of the Internet's original rating system, has thousands of members in every country in the world, and is known as the "rating system for the people." As the result of their leadership role in Internet Content Ratings, the founders, Simpson and Soular, were recognized as being among the "100 Most Influential People on the Internet." ###