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This is so sensible. No wonder Congress didn't think of it. It is worth making a phone call about, anyway. But there are already non-government labels akin to MPAA movie ratings, like http://www.icra.org/ or http://www.safesurf.com/ . I guess the problem is too many choices.

Why are laws always passed by people who keep on re-inventing the wheel (and a square one, too)?

Why not simply make it a requirement for adult websites and search engines to use these:
http://www.safesurf.com/ssplan.htm
http://www.w3.org/PICS/

Furthermore, Safesurf's web site violates Safesurf's proposed law creating (and mixing up) civil and criminal penalties and tort liability for mislabeling or failing to label web sites. Their original proposal was more aggressive than their current one, but it still doesn't require any actual harm to any actual child, as long as there are graphic images on the site (logos and decorations may not be harmful, but they're graphics, so we're covered there.) Plaintiffs can sue if the site doesn't provide appropriate ratings labels on material severe enough to be potentially harmful to children. Certainly, any proposal to throw people in jail for what they write on the net is pretty severe, and could cause harm to children who write things without labeling them if such a law were passed, and telling kids that people want to do that kind of harm to them just for what they write, even if there's no law passed, can also be pretty scary. www.safesurf.com's label says

"CONTENT='(PICS-1.1 "http://www.classify.org/safesurf/" l r (SS~~000 1))'"

which if you look it up on the explanatory web site doesn't have any indication of what the rating means. It does point to a site that tells you how to download a ".rat" file into your browser, and if you open up that file with a text editor instead of installing it, the file indicates something about "all ages", but doesn't indicate whether it's appropriate or inappropriate for all ages, so that a web browser could be set to do the appropriate thing with it, though it clearly implies that the really scary material complained about above should be appropriate for all ages....

"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-PICS-services" has more PICS explanations.

Update - their web page indicates that MAPS has now unblocked them.

Well hey, their content is *of course* not harmful to children, so it should by default be available nationwide. Now Slashdot on the otherhand posts links to objectionable content and morally deserves to be culled from the Web.

Their new logo, however, still looks pretty creepy.

Creepy? It looks like a whale tail to me.

.. SafeSurf has changed their old SS-style logo, which was quite reminiscent of the nazi SS logo. Their new logo, however, still looks pretty creepy.

Makes perfect sense. Sounds alot like PICS actually. I actually rate with SafeSurf.

The problem I see with doing rating this way in meatspace is this: how does the movie theater (or whoever) know what rating level the kid may see? With a web browser surfing cyberspace, the parent sets the levels that may be viewed, and it's automatically regulated. How do you do that IRL? Tattoo the kid's forehead "cannot view sexual content more explicit than innuendo"?

In the ideal world, the parent would accompany the kid to the movies. In the real world, the kid is going to have lots of time not under the direct supervision of the parents. That's the whole reason for ratings in the first place. You can't always monitor what your kids surf. You can't always take off from work when the kids go to the movies after school.

This, I'm pretty sure, is the rationale for the current age-based rating scheme. Parents feelings for what a kid of a certain age may see follows a standard distribution. Stuff that most parents feel a sub-13-yo should not view gets rated PG-13. Etc. It's easy to check someone's age. And if I feel my 10-yo is as mature as a typical 13-yo, I'll OK him to see a PG-13 flick.

Personally, I think we should come up with a GeekCode-like PICS rating system for the web. How nerdy is your site? Do you provide Unix man pages or sendmail docs online? Are you Rob Malda or Illiad? High score for you! I actually have seen a PICS scheme for something other than "nastiness" - VWP rated "Canadianness" I think.

Uh, no. I'm not of the opinion that 'protecting the children' is a good idea, enforceable, or even desirable. I can understand the POV of the people who do want to do this. I can accept that people don't believe the way I do.

But, what's 'inappropriate'? What's 'dangerous'? It's not so much the information that's dangerous (for example, I have the information on how to make methamphetamine, which is interesting from a purely scientific viewpoint), but what you do with it (if I pulled out the household equipment and picked up the raw materials and started to dabble in it, I'd likely blow my apartment to bits). 'dangerous' information often leads to less-dangerous (and extremely useful) results.

Another question I have is, "Who decides when someone's mature enough to have access to this information?" I know many, many 18 year olds (and 20 year olds, and 26 year olds) who I wouldn't trust with the methamphetamine recipe, but I know plenty of 12 through 15 year olds who I -would- (mainly because they're interested in chemistry, or applied sciences, and I think they'd look at it to see what could be done, and heed the warnings that it could blow up in their faces).

And sex. (pet peeve coming up) This neo-Western culture we live in in the US has determined that sex is something that shouldn't even be discussed with a kid, much less let them find any information out about. You can find this in some of the self-rating PICS systems in existence -- http://www.safesurf.com/ssplan.htm (SafeSurf) for example. (I like SafeSurf better than the default one that comes with MSIE, btw, but not much.) It rates a 'technical reference' of any sexual theme at level 3 -- above 'subtle innuendo' and 'explicit innuendo'.

I personally think this is pious poppycock.

Sex is openly discussed in other cultures, and their kids are as healthy (if not more so) than the kids in the US.

-Mat Butler