Slashdot Mirror
Internet Firms Launch New Web Rating System
Jeremi writes: "Salon has a brief article about a new content self-rating system being proposed to Congress in lieu of government-imposed restrictions. I wonder if this is a good thing or bad, and whether or not it will succeed where previous attempts failed?"
This being a voluntary rating system, it will do about ZERO good. The only sites that will utilize them will be pr0n sites, but big WHOOP! The net nannys and other censorship organizations of the world will still base their censorship based on keywords and other flawed methods. So, what's the point?
It's going to work for about 5 minutes. Then little Billy is going to figure out that he can kill the software that blocks the website using any myriad of ways. (CTRL-ALT-DEL/taskmanager comes to mind, but also holding SHIFT at boot, going into MSCONFIG to remove the actual entry at startup, etc.)
The other thing is: it's a voluntary rating system. What's to say babylonX or whatever else you're visiting just says screw-it and posts the porn without rating it? You can't block every website that doesn't have a rating, since that'd block waay too much of the web out.
And even if they can get around those hurdles, there'll be web-based proxy services set up to strip the pages of their ratings, or mask the ratings.
Nope. Not gonna happen. Never work. Nice thought, though.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
What rating will /. have?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Coming from a future teacher I am divided on the issue of self assessment. On the one hand, students can be harder on themeselves when assessing because they know themselves better than a teacher does. They know their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the task at hand. However in every bunch you will have those few students who always give themselves an A.
The point here?
I don't think you can rely solely on the industry to do it themselves. Especially where money is involved. Like a classroom there are mostly the good students who take it seriously, but I can tell you from experience that it only takes a few bad ones and an opportunity to corrupt the rest.
(Please excuse US centered nature of post. I have no experience with foreign ratings systems)
Self-imposed rating systems have generally worked fairly well, with the bonus that they keep Congress off of the entertanment industry's backs.
Think about the Motion Picture Ratings Board. They're completely self-created. They rate the movies according to their standards. The movie theaters voluntarily choose whether they want to carry an NC-17 or Unrated film, and all goes well. As far as I know, the under 17 w/o parent at an 'R'-rated movie isn't a law, it's just something the theaters choose to follow.
Ditto for the ESRB (the guys that handle videogames). Completely voluntary, but it helps parents make a decision. I'd rather have 'M' slapped on the front of some Zombie game than Congress telling me there will be no zombie game.
I could see this working very well for Website rating. A simple HTML extension ([rating="13"]) could be picked up by the browser, and displayed/not displayed accordingly. Simple enough. And the pr0n sites can go on to advertise "Super XXX pr0n... there isn't a rating on the books bad enough for this stuff!!"
Oh, this is pretty clear, but not necessarily good.
Optional ratings. But the free filters will likely default to automatically blocking unrated sites. After all, the goal is clearly stated that they want to convince parents to install the software, ergo, they need the ratings to have value in order to convince them, ergo unrated sites have to be put down.
So site owners have to rate. But, aha, rating incorrectly will have to be made a crime, else those illegal pornographers will rate themselves as 'kid-friendly', dontchaknowit.
After all, if there isn't a _law_ forcing honest ratings, who can trust the ratings? They'll fail otherwise.
Then, with this law, hmm... we'll need a way to handle complaints and dispute ratings. Hey, they do a good job with those domain disputes and such, use a closed board like that. Heck, use the same WIFO!
Small sites then get "Your site was reported as illegally abusing the rating scheme with inaccurate ratings. Please reply to each complaint in this 20-page form within 10 days or your domain will be revoked."
Suddenly, small sites are either a) bogged down in paperwork or b) unrated and thus blocked by most browsers.
*sigh* And don't even get me started if they decide they don't need a top ratings board, that ratings can be enforced through 'local standard', i.e. any state can file in their state court to contest your site's ratings. Suddenly, small sites get suits in any state that disagrees with the site owner's interpretation of the ratings.
Then there's the world level...
A.
Kind of like quality MPAA movie ratings. My friend's Mormon church uses the MPAA rating system as the deciding factor about whether they should see movies or not (don't see R rated movies or worse). The MPAA quality obviously is fair and legit because small-budget movies such as Run Lola Run get an R rating for NO nudity and little violence, while big budget movies are rated PG-13 for tons of violence and/or sexual innuendos.
Allowing companies to maintain their own opt-out privacy standards (in lieu of government regulation) is obviously a good choice. We all opt for opt-out rather than opt-in (I don't remember opting for that decision at all). And when their databases of customer information get hacked it is better for the consumer.
Let's not forget the RIAAs music ratings system. It's so effective in liue of goverment regulation that I often get CDs with no sticker on them that contain tons of swearing (for less known bands) and I see little stickers on albums such as Liz Phair who only swear in 1 or 2 songs. This is better for me because I can peel off the stickers and stick them on my l337 computer speakers.
By the way, this post if very sarcastic and it makes damn little sense.
Keeping
IMHO this won't go very far unless browsers integrate the codes and let the user set levels of access similar to the security levels - i.e. no porn, but online casinos are OK.
As long as you need to download a list, too many people will be too lazy to do it, or just not computer literate enough to realize that they *can* download a list.
Then again, I wonder what percentage of users 1) know that their browser has security settings and 2) how to set them.
null sig
The only mention that could possibly be of PICS is the following:
Which is so vague as to be useless. And the exclusion of any mention of the existing voluntary granular filtering system makes me wonder why they're scared of comparing themselves to it. Also I'd like to find out how this new "standard" is more specific.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, if you can't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it.
[
The one useful thing I'd like to see is a bit of information overload instead of this (or in conjunction with) simple summary ratings. Some of the subscription channels such as HBO go part of the way in describing what kind of content actually exists, but I want something more in-depth.
I mean, I don't want to start looking at a site rated NC-17 just to find out it's because of language and not porn.
Now, compiling the low down on a site including number of nipples, instances of the word 'shit', rape scenes, suicides, etc will really help me sort out the more entertaining sites from the average plain janes of the web with a glance. I can imagine a feature in my web browser to warn me if a site doesn't have enough profanity, violence or sex... my goodness that would help me avoid all the boring content out there.
Oh wait, they probably want this for child filters or something of that nature.
Still, my definition of "profane" is probably different from everyone elses, so I can imagine allowing a child to view all the violence they want without any of the sex (or vice-versa for those across the pond).
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Why? Because other country's people get a say in how it will be rating websites. I've found that the USA's rating system is MUCH more prudent than those of other countries. Case in point: 14A ratings in Canada vs R in the USA for the same movie.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
This is yet more of the same. They seem to believe that if there are little labels on everything, then those things that they do not like can be blocked.
h atever, and anything else that twigs them at a given moment.)
Previous attempts at this have failed. This one will too. They will try again with yet another plan. Loop until universe ends.
TV ratings and the V-Chip were a way to "save our children", Now the groups that pushed for them are upset that noone but them are using them to block what kids see.
What these people really want is for all content *they* find objectionable to be driven off the net. (Be it porn, descriptions of anti-social behaviour, criticism of their religious beliefs, people who are not good liberals/conservitives/communists/Americans(tm)/w
They use children as an excuse. It is not the children they wish to protect, but their own fragile sensibilities.
What they do not believe in is the right to freedom of speech, freedom of thought or freedom of action for anyone other than themselves.
Childhood is supposed to be a time to train children to be adults. What happens to these kids when they get out into the unfiltered world on their own? The answers seem to be overindulgence in the things that they were forbidden to do by their parents. This leads to a bunch of self-destructive adults.
Seems to me that filters are a panecia for parents who are afraid or unable to teach their children about the real world.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Door swings both ways. I look forward to the day when I can filter out all than non offensive material and surf an internet composed purely of lude degrading pr0n.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
I hate to say it, but government regulation is the best way to go. At the very least, porn sites in the U.S. should be compelled by law to disclose that they have potentially objectionable content on them. Perhaps some DMCA-like law should be used: force the upstream ISP or web hosting service to take the page or site offline if it is in violation of the labelling law.
Ratings systems don't hurt freedom of speech - they just help classify the speech for the end-user. Imagine if every spam message were required to have a special identifying header - wouldn't that be great? That's how Ralph Reed and friends feel about porn sites right now. Well, since every telemarketing caller needs to identify itself as such (for example), this change in the law wouldn't be a big leap but it would stop the censors dead in their tracks.
-CT
--Robert
The article says it's just a re-hashed version of something that's been around for a while, and by that I assume they are referring to RSAC.
I don't see anything wrong with this. It's NOT censorship. TV programs have to label their content. Sure it's cryptic (quick, what's TV MPVD got in it?), but it doesn't stop people who don't care from watching the program. If something like RSAC became the standard for rating, it wouldn't stop people from viewing porn either. It would be the internet equivalent of labeling.
We already expect labeling for TV programs and food, why not on-line content? The only real problem I have with it is that it's a hassle for small web-sites, which is why I expect these systems haven't caught on too well. I mean, as a general rule I don't have "trash" on my site, but if I feel the need to post frontal nudity to make a point about something, or say "fuck" somwhere, I don't want to have to worry about losing my content rating.
So for me, the choice is "be on gaurd all the time" or "not care about content rating". So far, the former has been the more appealing choice and I expect it's like that for most people.
What they need is a category for sites where the content is "not for children" but on the other hand is "not catering strictly to the prurient interest". In other words, simple categories like G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17, X, XX, XXX and XP (the P stands for Puke). RSAC is just too complicated; it tries to do "fine grained" content filtering.
Of course another big problem with all this is that there is simply too much content on the net. It's one thing for volunteers to rate movies and TV; there are only so many hours of it per year. Rating the net would just take way too long. So, we are left either with people rating their own stuff, or companies trying to rate it. Everybody has their own opinion about where the cut-off for a particular rating is, so there is no way to trust the rating. Even if there were, you can't put any legal teeth to it because content providers would have to open themselves up for a law suit. So, the content provider is still going to choose "not rated" as their rating.
The bottom line? Teach your children well; and let them live in fear of the librarian seeing something over their shoulder, just like we lived in fear of the teacher finding our stash.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
how about kill two birds with one stone and migrate TLD's to synchronize with content ratings? Just add a .kid .xxx etc for the appropriate content, and move those two areas away from .com?
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
My concern is when I have to rate my website or be effectively censored. The prospect of a portal operator, a school, or anyone telling me that I should have to rate my site is chilling.
The more people that go along and adopt this, the more of a "standard" it will become. I'm afraid other non compliant sights, will be forced to either rate themselves, or loss exposure.
It also concerns me as to what the cumulative effect on more risqué sites is, as they may try to tone down potentially objectionable content to pass through the filters
At least as well as self-policing has historically in the oil/timber/mining industries!
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
We all didn't see our first dirty picture at 18, we saw it when we became so interested in it, that we hunted it. Want to prevent people from not sharing sound and video, or have control of who accesses it: never have it to begin with.
A secret best kept is known by only one.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Stick that in your pipe and grep it!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Porn sites would utilize this? Huh? the purpose of a porn site is to get as many visitors as humanly possible to earn money. Why in the hell would any sane porn site owner voluntarily do something that will REDUCE the number of visitors coming to his/her site? No. Porn sites will NOT use this system.
A Non profit group, preferably some kids group, becomes the registrar for a new top level domain: .clean. If you want to register slashdot.clean you must follow the rules and you can only link to other .clean sites. Everyone builds the ability into the their browsers/OS the ability to limit visiting domains that are .clean only. Ftp downloads are not allowed. Anyone impersonating a .clean domain get's in trouble.
.clean domains and the kids group could run the dns for the entire domain. Disney and all the biggies would put forth the effort to make their sites .clean compliant, others would create .clean versions of their existing sites and others could care less.
.clean domain and create a .clean ver of my site and no one says you have to limit your PC to .clean only domains. ISP's could opt to only allow .clean stuff through their systems as added security.
.clean site and free for non profits. This kids group has .clean cops who investigate .clean infractions and remove any violators from the .clean domain using the proceeds from the business/commercial entities that pay for the .clean privlege.
.clean dns, point it to a gay bondage site I get in big big trouble.
.g .pg .pg13 .r
Uncertified ISP's could be banned from serving dns for
No one says I have to opt in to the
Make it expensive for business to get a
It's not censorship, no one has to do it. If I illegaly serve
you could even make it based one
And best of all..... I still get to look at porn.
G
Besides, the worse rating they have, the better they can say their content is. Look we have a XXX rating, the nastiest stuff on the net!
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of! If you are going to rate your own pages, you should rate them on the pages themselves. What's wrong with using Meta tags in the content itself? huH? Or even better yet, configure your server to add a special header. All that would need to be done then is agree upon the Meta tag info that filters would look for, etc.
It never ceases to amaze me the ridiculously complex sytems people come up with to solve simple problems. Sheesh.
Just my 2-1/2 cents.
Well, I really don't know what to say here. For one thing, they mention it at the bottom of the article that this has been tried before but is not widely used. The reason it has not been widely used is because most people don't know about it. For example, people call in to MSN tech support wondering how to block sites and they are told to use Content Advisor which can be found in internet options under the tools menu or in the control panel. However AOL has put its content-blocking up-front in its interface because they felt it was an important option for their customers.
Now, if you think about this sytem, yes, people could lie about the content ratings. People could also rate themselves incorrectly because they don't think they are being objectionable. It's a very subjective thing. So I think for the most part this part of the system will fail because e.g. the author of a website advocating gay-rights may not find their content to be objectionable. And in reality, it really isn't unless they are describing a specific sexual act which I think the person rating the page would realize and rate it appropriately (one would hope). Note that the same would be true for a website describing any sexual act (homo/hetero/whatever you please).
The problem is that some parents want their kids to live in ignorance and like to cry that it should be legislated-- especially after watching the latest NBC/ABC/CNN/etc. report about the dangers of the internet.
So what intrigued me most was that the software would allow you to specify to receive blacklists from organizations that you trust. This is actually a really damn cool idea and I am surprised no-one thought of it before. That is, rather than by some prepackaged software with a prepackaged blacklist that may or may not follow what you want to allow your kids to see you can setup your software to point to several organizations that independently come up with blacklists.
On the software side of things it should be possible (and I would say desirable) to write free software which can utilize these lists (and I am speaking in the GNU sense of free software). This way you are absolutely certain that your program is not doing things it shouldn't be.
On the business side of things you can make money very easily simply by charging a very modest subscribtion fee for your blacklists. You can even create your blacklists by using other orgs blacklists. For example you could collect several blacklists from either non-profit or profit organizations (which presumably you may need to pay a license fee for) and then sell the easy collection of them as one master blacklist. You could even then allow parents to select which ones they would like to have combined into their personal blacklist.
Notice that this actually sounds like a real business model... i.e. charge people a recurring fee for a recurring service. Assuming the cost of creating the blacklists or licensing them from other orgs (i.e. your costs) are less than the total revenues you make from your subscribtions then using the basic profit=revenue-cost you make a profit. Go figure, an internet company making a profit.
This also has benefits as it creates a lot of competition. I.e. if your customers find out your blacklists are crappy and are blocking things they didn't ask for they will just go to one of your competitors. Creates incentive to actually run your business properly. This competition in turn is good for the economy. Damn, funny how when you think about it if everyone follows the basic rules of capitalism then everyone wins. Obviously this is a simplistic view of things but it does at least make sense (at least in my mind).
Feel free to beat me with a clue-stick (well, don't be that harsh, just post a reply) if you feel I or others would benefit from your opinion. That is to say if all you want to say is "censorship sucks" please go away. I hate censorship as much as the next guy, but the bottom line is that we need to make things as easy as possible for parents to control what their children view so the government doesn't step in and do it for us. And one can hope that the clued-in parents will say the hell with it, do what you want, if you don't know better it's your damn problem (that was my parents attitude). However note that very few parents would like their kids to see the goatse.cx pages and that is really what most parents want to prevent and why people are crying for filtering on the internet. If a self-rating system combined with blacklists from trusted organizations who provide open blacklists can do this without requiring government intervention then I am all for it.
>How about getting all the CRAP off of TV... it used to be
>only 1/2 shit, now it's 80% shit IMO. Commercials and content
>included.
And that's exactly why they're going after the internet (although it too is arguably 80% shit). Television in this country has become so filtered that it's difficult to find anything truly "objectionable" unless you subscribe to the Spice channel. Think fast, when was the last time you saw a radical political opinion - OK, OK, a non-Christian radical political opinion - on any TV channel?
You can flip back and forth between the major networks and the talking heads are saying the same thing. CNN slants it left, Fox slants it right, but neither side makes any real commentary. The only radical opinions on TV are the ones showing up on 700 Club, but I digress. It's okay for some nut to go on TV and blame September 11th on gays and abortion, but it's not okay for someone to go on TV and criticize the government. It's okay for the religious right to proseltyze on the public airwaves, but God forbid Howard Stern says "penis."
It's quite clear that government regulation of any media ends up favoring the government and stifling anything they see as prude. The stuff they've worked so hard to keep off of television and radio now flows freely on the internet, and you better believe it scares the hell out of them. If you can't control the medium, you can't control the speech. It seems to me like they're starting to realize that the internet cannot be FCC'd, and they're moving toward scare tactics instead ("we'll be watching you, and we won't need a warrant!").
I don't like the idea of a ratings system, but if we have to have web ratings, I'd rather they come from the industry than from the government. TV would be a much more interesting phenomenon if the FCC bailed out and left the networks to regulate themselves! Of course, if we speak loudly enough and refuse to participate, we don't have to have web ratings. A product no one uses fails to be significant.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
"Kids, you need to help your parents. Show them how this software is installed. Show them how to set it up and how to select the preferred rating categories. Make your technophobe parents feel comfortable with this software. Then when they go to bed you can boot back into Linux."
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Jeremi - Don't wonder too much. The Internet is not TV or the movies. Sure, MSNBC, AOLTIMEWARNERCNN, DISNEYABC, and the ilk may rate themselves. But don't expect f---edcompany.com [f---edcompany.com] or stileproject.com [stileproject.com] to sign up. So, what good is a rating system?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I can see your point, but as we all know, the web is very different.
I, for one, have seen plenty of Unrated films at theaters. It's just not at AMC-type super mega-plexes (think Yahoo, Go.com, etc.). It's always been at the local "arthouse" cinema (think the small-time website that earns maybe 1,000 to 5,000 hits in a month). Sure, those small-time film makers rarely earn Lucas or Michael Bay make, but their stuff DOES get shown.
And really, haven't all the major websites pretty much dumped "adult" material altogether (with the exception of maybe pulling them up in a search)?
Australia's rating system, for example, is less prudent than that of the US (e.g. South Park is MA rather than R). The drawback is that other countried tend to have non-voluntary ratings with government-mandated restrictions.
In Australia, for example, R material must not be sold to minors no matter who accompanies them. This is the law, not the policy of theatres. In addition, sale of material which is unrated or "refused classification" is illegal in all states. Not in territories like the ACT (our equivalent of DC), though, so you can still get it via mail order thanks to the interstate commerce clause.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The examples where self-ratings have previously worked are basically the fairly centralized entertainment media of movies, music, comic books and to an extent, TV (suddenly I can't remember seeing those ratings for TV shows in a while).
I can see very large differences which distinguish these projects from something like an internet website, namely, (1) they're all done by a limited set of corporations, (2) they're all done expressly for profit, (3) they're basically all done in some class of retail outlets that can apply pressure on the manufacturers to comply or be ostracized.
Publishing on the web doesn't resemble these kinds of things, I think, even in the majority of cases to date. Anyone can publish a web site nowadays, and desire for as huge a customer base as possible is not a compelling motivation in a lot of cases.
I may be reaching, but I tend to think that the act of publishing on the web is more akin to sending a piece of postal mail, or using a photocopier to make some cheap posters or pamphlets. It's just too widespread, accessible, and low-impact for a lot of the practicioners to be concerned about being compliant with some categorization system for their website. There's no "website industry" as such to reach an agreement and take universal action in this regard, as there has been for the other self-rating programs which have to date succeeded.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I'm tempted to mark one of my math-filled theory papers as "adult content" and see if the hit count goes up.
Most sites have material that falls into multiple ICRA classifications, and labelling it all just isn't going to be feasible. And when I looked a few years back at Australian sites that tried to rate themselves, most had either failed technically or clearly mislabelled themselves.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Why is it that porn is considered dangerous while violence, killing and destruction of any kind it considered normal...
Were you created by violence or human sexual behavior?
-- From Denmark
Depends on whether "adult" rated sites (pr0n etc) will continue to use AVS'es or will simply move to using the ratings system.
I doubt much will change. I doubt most AVS sites use AVSes to avoid liability. Technically, you can still do that with a splash screen, an "I am not a kiddie" agreement, and OK and LEAVE buttons. The AVS system makes them money. And they probably wouldn't be as well listed if they weren't on the AVS bandwagon. Just talk to people who run pr0n sites about how much pressure they are under to run "AdultCheck" or one of its clones.
No, AVS and filterware are an industry racket that has little to do with avoiding legal liability, and everything to do with making money. I suppose a few sites might switch, but I doubt many will.
-Kasreyn
P.S. If you're wondering what my beef is with AVSes, it has to do with sites falsely advertising themselves as "free" (Piratemedia is a great example), AVSes charging 25 bucks and providing no service except extortion, and having to have a credit card (???) to prove I'm an adult.
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Rating systems can be very good, as they provide a short, distilled summary of the information contained in the thing rated. And face it, given the massive amounts of information available out there, everyone (not just kids) needs help sorting out what's valuable, and what's crap. We can't read it all - you have to depend on someone else's opinions. This is the way life works, you depend greatly on others opinions and summaries of material to make a judgement about it.
The problem isn't with a rating system per se, but rather with who controls the ratings (ie, who are the raters), and what criteria they use for rating content.
In a pluralistic society, the ideal way to form an opinion is to take input from several different sources. You trust (or weigh) the opinion from each source based on how closely that source has matched previous decisions of yours, plus knowledge of how closely that source's ideals, morals, et al fit yours. You can then make a good informed judgement.
What the web needs is multiple independent rating organizations. The ALCU should be able to rate things. So should the New York Times, the Christian Coalition, the Aryan Nation, the Nation of Islam, the American Medical Association, and anyone else. There should even be an organization that allows for the Web site owner to self-rate based on that organization's posted guidelines. The only two criteria for being a Rater should be that the rating criteria be published, and that the ratings of various sites be publicly displayed. I can thus chose to accept ratings data from any parties I consider trustworthy.
The PICS system was a great proposal, and honestly, one that I think needs to have a much greater push with it. It allowed for this independent ratings network to be set up, didn't require a single centralized ratings system, and was easily parsable by any "filtering" software. It even allowed for multiple ratings from different raters for the same site.
I want PICS. If we could get the system set up, and get everything rated, it would be a whole lot easier to find stuff out there. And it would leave the choice of making informed opinions where it belonged: in the user's hands, not in the government's, not some semi-legal ratings board, and not some random corporation.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
http://www.koehntopp.de/kris/artikel/rating_does_n ot_work/ has the detailed reasoning and background.
Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but here is the esteemed Declan McCullagh's report on the subject. Deconstructing this 'filtering' is becoming so easy it's almost boring.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
If they are not paying, all they are doing is eating up bandwidth which, for pr0n sites, is really expensive since they pay a premium for pr0n bandwidth.
Actually, bandwidth is usually much cheaper for us, since we buy it in bulk, and we're a lot more competitive than the non-adult ISP's.
And, there actually IS a benefit from having non-credit card holding people come in. There is plenty of money to be made on a per-impression and per-click basis. And, higher traffic often boosts a site's listing at another page, garnering it even more traffic. So really, no. Any traffic is good traffic. Porn webmasters are not going to purposely turn away ANY traffic, thus, this ratings system will fall just as flat as other previous ones. The only thing that DOES work are those NetNanny-type programs.
It is fairly easy to design a script to change your rating based on who is looking. joe user (who might be a kid) gets a general content rating, but everyone from a search engine, .gov, or other investigating domain gets a pron rating.
I think most /. readers can figgure out how to do this. Of course like most filtering systems it won't work perfectly, you will always give someone the wrong rating, but it will be done, you can count on it.
The problem with PICS is that it was politically naive. Jim Miller, the guy driving the scheme at W3C just did not understnd what he was up to. Several others at W3C did and did not like it.
The idiotic part of PICS was the idea of inserting W3C into the pitched battle between the pro and anti CDA forces. Its a bit like trying to mediate a compromise for the abortion debate. The pro-CDA people did not give a hoot about protecting children. They wanted from start to finish to control what adults could read.
The idea of the 'anyone can be a censor' scheme was to be a wrecking ammendment, I know, I invented it. The religious right lost all interest in promoting PICS the minute they realised it could not give them what they wanted - the ability to ram their morality down the throat of the rest of society.
PICS could have gained wide support in the 'adult entertainment' industry. In Germany there is a body (GUPTA?) that rates hard core porn so that punters buying it know they are getting the real hard core explicit stuff they want.
Whst killed PICS was the coertion by Congress. As soon as they passed the CDA the debate was polarized and passed to the courts where the congress was bound to lose. Adult sites were not going to rate their sites because to do so would be seen as supporting the enemy.
Absent the threat that X-Rated sites would be cut off completely most providers would rate since the ratings would give the search engines the ability to drive customers to their sites.
In the recent W3C architecture slides 'PICS' appears as an 'obsolete' technology that W3C is moving away from. The intention appears to be to move to RDF.
The article just does not give enough info to guess what the technical base would be. It would be stupid to try and roll out a labelling scheme that required the deployment of a whole new generation of browsers. I can't see the need.
What is likely however that this attempt is based on the idea of building a partition of the Web that is designed for and targetted at children rather than trying to reduce the entire Web to a child's level.
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Hey Johnnie, if you crack the PICS system on the PC you can get to see all this P0rn.
The security on the system should be calibrated so that by the time the kid can bypass the controls they are ready for it.
It would be kinda self defeating though since the geeky kids who break the controls probably don't have girlfriends.
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I want to give people the choice over what they want to see. It's all very well saying that we should not allow the government to censor free expression, but its another thing altogether to ram content down people's throats.
A self-regulated system, if people use it properly, is an excellent idea. I don't even mind being required to put ICRA tags in by law, if it goes that way. This way, I can deliver the content I want without restriction, and viewers get to choose if they want to see it or not, and parent get to choose if their kids should see it or not. No losers.
However, there's one danger. If sites use, or forced to use ICRA tags, then it makes it more attractive for governments to force users and/or ISPs to forcably block sites that display certain tags. Have a look at Australia: I'm sure they'd love for all these off-shore (eg, USA) sites to put in ICRA tags... it'll make the Censor's job that much easier.
Bob Corn-Revere was one of the speakers at the ICRA press event. He is the noted First Amendment lawyer who represented Playboy before the Supreme Court and helped establish the legal idea that tools -- like filters or like cable boxes that limit signal bleed -- available for voluntary use are a "less restrictive means" of protecting children from "harmful to minors" material than making the material illegal.
Bob particularly reminded the press and attendees that there is a tendency in Washington to think that if something is a good idea under some circumstances, it should be made mandatory -- like CIPA made filtering mandatory for schools & libraries taking certain types of federal funding.
ICRA and the people who support it as one tool parents may want to use -- are not asking Congress to make it mandatory. They ARE however, working with the Congressional "bully pulpit" available to them since Jennifer Dunn & others are supporting their efforts, labelling their own sites, and asking others to do the same. But that's a far cry from compelling speech via use of these labels -- which would, IMO, be unconstitutional.
On PICS -- ICRA *is* a labeling system that uses PICS. It isn't trying to be the only labeling system, and the icra.org site is rated using the old RSACi and SafeSurf labels as well as the new ICRA labels. (They demonstrated this at the launch event.) Of course IRCA wants everyone to use their sites, and if they aren't reasonably successful, they aren't going to be relevent. But getting a commitment from AOLTW, MSN & Yahoo seems like a strong start.
As always always always, these are only my opinions. I don't speak for ICRA or anyone else.
Liza
These opinions are my own. My employer is not aware of them, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for them.
However, I can envision a technical system that could work. In order to be effective, the system would have to use a "white list" approach as opposed to a blacklist. This would mean that all content not explicitly approved would be blocked. Under such a system, a web publisher would submit pages to a reviewing authority. If the reviewing authority decides that the page in question meets their criteria, they sign it with their public key and send it back to the publisher. Parents could then download the public keys of reviewers that they trust and place them on their keyring. The browser would only display pages that have a valid signature from one of the keys in their keyring.
A similar approach could be done site-wide via SSL. In order to get a "kid-friendly" SSL certificate from the certifying authority, the publisher would have to sign a legally-binding contract to conform to the CA's content restrictions. The site would also need to be periodically audited to ensure compliance. Again, the browser would have to refuse to connect to a SSL site that does not have a kid-friendly certificate from a CA they trust. Some arrangement would have to be made to allow for multiple CA's to sign a given site's certificate, so that the webmaster isn't locked in to using only one CA
Both of these approaches allow for parents to chose a CA that matches their views: rabid fundamentalists could use only Pat Robertson / Jerry Fallwell approved CA's, while more openminded folks could use ones that subscribe to more tolerant ideologies.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Iodized Salt may sting when placed in eyes!
If we don't put warning labels on these dangerous, horrible devices, some child, or even adult, might find out the hard way. Can we really afford to let people learn on their own?? We must educate them about the dangers of salt, or abandon this salt-shaker technology altogether! Think of the children!
Congress should make a LAW! We must protect the public from itself at all costs! They must never have to deal with the intense pain of throwing a dash of salt in their eyes because nobody told them not to!
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Read the article before posting. This is -not- censorship. And why switch to Linux because of it? (now I'm sure I can come up with some other reasons to switch, but this is not one of them) It's not built in to IE or Nutscrape, it's just an add-on parents can get so that when litle Suzie is looking up information on Breast Cancer for a school report she doesn't accidentally get a pr0n site that reproduces windows like cancer.
Basically, this is not manditory - nobody is going to force you to use their filter (except perhaps your Mom) and it doesn't make anybody take any content off the Internet. As for the blocking all content that hasn't been rated - it's the only way to
a) make people rate their sites (assuming they want the largest audience possible)
b) protect themselves against unknown sites, after all, if it's not rated, who knows if it's Betty's Cooking Secrets or Live-XXX!!!
Anyway, IMNSHO, this is a good idea.
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
I'm not criticizing the church's recommendation to its people that they avoid movies that contain these "poisonous" elements. I called the chuch wrong because of their faith in MPAA: that R-rated movies really must have the "poisons" that you mentioned and that the G-rated movies do not. The Mormons are being far too trusting. (And IMHO, blatantly misplaced trust is a form of irresponsibility.) Instead of making recommendations to their people based on MPAA ratings, they should be making them based on LDS ratings, where someone who understands LDS values actually watches the movies and makes a judgement call. This isn't the same thing, unless the MPAA ratings board happens to be filled with Mormons.
For example.. well, I don't know if LDA is anti-biology or just anti-degradation, but for the sake of the argument, I'll hypothesize they're just anti-degradation. Let's say a movie happens to show a booby, but there's no hint degradation involved. Heck, let's hypothesize a movie that has completely naked people with full frontal nudity, but in a plot that is otherwise completely free of anything degrading, desensitizing, or hateful. (A movie that tells a story from "The Book of Genesis" might very conceivably be like that, do you agree?) The movie would probably get an R. Likewise, Disney could easily, if they wish, inject some hidden racist hatred (or, according to certain urban legends, phallus symbols, etc) that isn't immediately apparent to MPAA ratings board (or that the board would choose to ignore in exchange for some sort of compensation), and get a G.
That's why the LDS church is wrong. I can't make good arguments against their faith in God, but anyone can trivially blow away their faith in Man.
And their mistake is the same mistake everyone's making: that it's even possible to have a centralized rating authority that makes sense for everyone. It only works if the population is homogenious. And yet, any government regulation will necessarily result in centralization of some kind. It always does.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.