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PICS and the Global Rating System
Hundreds of people from around the world are coming together in Munich for a three-day conference, September 9-11. They represent the largest internet corporations and first-world countries. They've been working on this for years. They have millions of dollars. They're very, very serious. And someone forgot to tell them that information wants to be free.
What's going on?
Labels are the big thing. Labels are everywhere. Television has labels, after Congress threatened to not renew station broadcast licenses if the networks didn't comply. Video games have labels, after Congress threatened the gaming industry. Music has labels, after Congress and Tipper Gore (Al's wife) threatened the recording industry. Anyone remember the 80s, when musicians and fans both seethed at the very idea of labels slapped on our music by some politician? Now even MP3.com has a parental advisory icon.
And of course, movies have labels, the motion picture industry being the most dangerous threat to America's youth next to the internet. Hollywood labors under hundreds of censorship laws.
Now Senator Lieberman wants to rate every audio-visual product produced in the U.S. with a violence labeling system. (Lieberman was primarily responsible for the video game ratings and television ratings as well.)
Proponents of these censorship systems sometimes like to call them "voluntary". They're as voluntary as death and taxes. Or as voluntary as not being able to sell your product at all - that's what Lieberman's bill would dictate, if you don't comply. Salon said it well:
"The point has always been to change what actually gets broadcast through the flexing of government muscle. In simpler times, this was known as censorship."
Labels and censorship go hand in hand. The American Library Association speaks plainly: "Labeling is an attempt to prejudice attitudes and as such, it is a censor's tool." Some groups do stand up for what's right. You'll notice you don't see parental advisories on library books. Yet.
Think of how it works in practice: items with labels are stigmatized, attacked by Congress and pressure groups, and eventually - through law or simple bullying - they aren't available anymore. Think of the NC-17 label. All it's supposed to indicate is fare fit for adults - and since adults are 80% of the population, there ought to be plenty of movies made for them. But since most theaters (over 90%) won't run NC-17 movies, and most newspapers won't carry ads for them, any NC-17 movie is doomed to be a failure. And thus the only movies that make it to the theater are those deemed fit for children. Movies bearing that label were easy to attack - just take the most horrible movie you've ever seen (Debbie Does Dallas? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Stargate?) and whip up a public frenzy, then say, "We can get rid of this filth if only you'll stop showing NC-17 movies, Mr. Theater Owner." The pressure was applied at different steps in the distribution process - at the movie theater chains and newspapers, rather than at the consumer's end - but the result is the same: you can't see it.
Or you can't see it the way it was intended. Stanley Kubrick was known first for his work, and second for the exacting craft with which he set up every single shot. If even Kubrick's famous final-cut contract couldn't keep the MPAA vultures from digitally painting over his sex scenes, how is any director safe?
But we digress. We were talking about labels, and Internet censorship. These things intersect in a technology called PICS.
PICS stands for Platform for an Internet Censorship System - well, close enough. It's a specification for attaching labels to internet content - Web pages, Usenet posts, chatroom messages, emails... anything. In theory, you could rate anything on any scale you chose - journalist Simson Garfinkel made a tongue-in-cheek PICS rating system to rate pages based on the amount of Simson they contain.
But that is theory. In the real world, you could rate music or video games on the basis of Simson too, but nobody does - because life is short. Just like all the other labeling systems, it turns out that the only Internet labeling systems that anyone cares about are pejorative labels - rating pages for sex, or foul language, or heresy, or violence. Why? Because these are what the censors want to get rid of.
The people getting together in Munich are doing so for the purpose of developing a single, uniform, international rating system to be applied to all Internet content worldwide. It's not a voluntary system - several countries have already declared their intent to make it mandatory, and Jim Miller of W3C (and co-creator of PICS) put it nicely when he said -
"It's going to happen and the publishers are going to resist it as long as they can, but they'll have to realise that they must rate their content or face prosecution."
Who's a publisher? We are. You are, if you post a reply to this thread. If the system gets set up as scheduled, you'll be forced to add a rating to every post you make, every email you send, every webpage you publish - or face prosecution. After all, you're protecting the children.
Or more precisely, the adults. Australia wants to ban the sex categories from its entire population - Germany wants to ban the hate speech categories. Just like at the movies, it's easier if you attack higher up in the distribution chain.
Rather than making it illegal to download Mein Kampf or purchase it from Amazon.com, it's much easier if you make a law that applies to the telecommunications providers. They're big companies. The bigger they are, the less likely they are to buck the laws - and since there aren't many of them, they're easy to monitor for compliance. Civil disobedience isn't in their vocabulary: give them a law, and they'll just implement it. Such as censoring out all material with a certain rating at the backbone.
Oh, it's true that it won't be 100% effective. Banned documents will still be smuggled across the electronic borders. But for most people, in most circumstances, it will be plenty effective. If you like your internet unlabeled, it's just about too late.
by Michael Sims and Jamie McCarthy
(More tomorrow on the Munich conference and recent events in the development of the Global Rating System.)
"They're big companies. The bigger they are, the less likely they are to buck the laws - and since there aren't many of them, they're easy to monitor for compliance. Civil disobedience isn't in their vocabulary: give them a law, and they'll just implement it. "
I disagree. Big companies break laws all over the place if they don't like them. They are able to apply a whole load of pressure to government, too. See how they behave with trade agreements, environmental controls, price fixing, and anything else.
Big companies care about money. Labelling will impose some cost on them, but unless they see it as dramatically affecting their market or sales, it's easier to play along.
To break this, we can try to convince big companies that this _will_ affect their bottom line significantly, but that won't be easy to do.
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Think of the NC-17 label. All it's supposed to indicate is fare fit for adults - and since adults are 80% of the population, there ought to be plenty of movies made for them. But since most theaters (over 90%) won't run NC-17 movies, and most newspapers won't carry ads for them, any NC-17 movie is doomed to be a failure.
What, theatres don't have the right to determine which movies they want to show? News papers don't have the right to determine what kind of ads they want to print? This is just typical scare talk from the typical paranoia crowd. I saw Showgirls in the theatre (not that I'm proud of it or anything). If there is a buck to be made, you can bet someone will be there to collect it.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The example of Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" is a good one. It shows how "voluntary," "industry-driven" rating systems are every bit as dangerous -- and in some cases, even worse in practice than plain old government censorship.
In America, where there is no government censorship, just a "voluntary" industry rating scheme, several minutes of this movie were "voluntarily" digitally altered after Kubrick's death to obtain an R rating.
In England, where there is a government censorship board which can potentially cut any movie, Eyes Wide Shut is opening tonight completely unaltered.
What's the difference? In the case of government censorship, at least the people doing the censorship have some accountability -- they can be voted out of office, and indeed this can be a real danger if they tamper with popular entertainment. By comparison, America's MPAA is a completely shadowy organization which answers to no one and has no accountability whatever. The results are obvious.
Of course, I am infavor of no censorship, private or public. I just want to point out that private ratings boards can be every bit as bad as government censorship.
By the way this sounds, it says that I must apply a rating to verything I post. But who will check that my rating is fair? I smell a bureacracy in the making, and the smell is fairly nauseous.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Here's a few ideas to submit to your clueon-lacking congressmen:
Pass federal legislation requiring ISPs to make certain you're an adult before giving you an account. Now the responsiblity falls squarely where it should - on the parent's shoulders. Obvious restrictions would need to be made for public-access terminals, however.
public-key infrastructure. Have several offices around the country (Maybe the DMV could provide this?) that can certify you as an adult and issue you a cryptographic key. This could be used for a variety of purposes - signing legal documents online, filing your taxes online, etc. But without all the privacy-invading extras in our current "national ID" proposal in congress.
Do nothing. A perfectly valid solution - although the most politically incorrect of the three. If your child is determined to get into drugs, porno, or criminal activity - they're going to find a way. As a parent, it's your responsibility to instill the proper values into your children to ensure that they don't. Schools shouldn't be doing it, churches shouldn't be doing it, and the government sure as hell shouldn't be. It's your responsiblity as a responsible parent - Stop slacking and have a talk with your child NOW about this.
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Who could rate all of this?
There would have to be hundreds of thousands of people scouring the net to make sure that every web page met the standards. Or, alternately, you couldn't post a page without it going before a "review board".
This would require constant resources and manpower(from each government / isp / company, etc, ISP, etc) that I don't think people would stand for.
In the end I think the plans, no matter how widely held the beliefs, would fail, because there are too many loopholes(writing a plugin to a browser to parse/strip the "rating banner" or whatnot,using a non-complying foreign host,etc).
The government has finally figured out the way to circumvent the constitution. The constitution strictly regulates what the government is allowed to do, but it says nothing about what corporations are allowed to do. It has long been established that corporations are allowed to regulate speech, or anything else. It is their right and freedom to do so.
So, the government doesn't pass any sort of regulation. Instead, beacuse each of the corporations is dependent on a favorable attitude within the government, the government uses its position to pressure the corporations. The corporations have too much to lose in standing up to the government and so much to gain by giving in that invariably they do.
So, the government asks the telecom carriers to implement a "voluntary" policy of requiring their users to rate publicly viewable content. The telecom carriers comply, and this isn't illegal because the government hasn't made any laws or policies. They just made a suggestion (read threat), and the corporations caved. If an individual doesn't comply they've breached terms of service with the provider and are removed.
If you try to find another provider that doesn't have these draconian regulations, you can't. Since ATT, MCI, Sprint, etc, will give in, then they will extend their regulations to the piering agreements with smaller independent carriers. Before you know it, there's no place that will allow you to interface with the Internet and not rate your content.
The country's founders didn't see this coming. How could they? The constitution isn't meant for such things, which roughly means...
WE ARE SCREWED!
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Have there been any earnest attempts at positive labels? Other than a few magazines that use this kind of system, ratings would be provided on how much of a good thing something has. Rather than the ESRBs Violence rating scale you'd rate on a degree of niceness or non-violence or somesuch nonsense.
Of course, this system could always be perverted (Look, it's got a 1 on the Niceness scale, it must involve random and senseless acts of violence towards children!) But at least the spirit of it has a more positive goal: promoting the "good" stuff.
-Andrew
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- BEGIN (hopefully intelligent) RANT MODE -
When people start talking about "protecting the children," two questions come to my mind. One: Do the people with these concerns have children themselves? And two: If they do have children, what are they doing AT HOME to "protect the children?"
If people want to monitor what their children read, see, and listen to, they should monitor it themselves, not expect there to be labels on everything! Come on, folks! You wanted the child, or at least the fun of making one. Now it's time to act like a parent, and start minding what your child does at home. Don't expect the teachers, government, movie and music industries to do something you are not willing to do in your own home.
Grow up, parents. Start doing your job as PARENTS, not just as people concerned about "protecting the children." And, for those that care, though she is not mine, I do these things for the child in my family. I can turn the mirror on myself. Can you? Please. Try it sometime. You will probably be happily surprised, both at how your child responds and how it makes you feel that you are actually parenting.
- END RANT MODE -
Heart, Hands, Honour
Mandatory "voluntary" government-enforced ratings are censorship, pure and simple. The reason they get away with this crap is because idiots like you always jump in and say 'oh, but it's not censorship because it's voluntary'... when, of course, very shortly after it's accepted it will become mandatory.
If I decide to go out and set up a page rating Web pages by my own personal standards, that's not censorship. When the government says you will rate your pages by some particular brain-dead government standard, that's censorship or as close to it as makes no difference.
some of you, specifically the "this will blow over" types should really think about a few things.. being neither a philosopher nor a high-grade programmer, let me put it like this..
Ever heard of the expression "the straw that broke the camel's back"? it doesn't necessarily always mean the last possible thing before someone snaps.. it means also, the slow, steady stream of "little things" that keep being added to the mix, i.e., the labels on music.. on tv.. on movies.. on videogames.. on this, that, and the other thing.. a steady stream of "small" changes that will eventually become so overwhelming that you'll hear yourselves screaming "geee, i never saw that one coming" when in fact, and *because* you chose to never see it coming, since "they're only small changes after all" it is your lack of action that made these things possible...and the final straw, the one that breaks the camel's back, is the one that you add, when you say, "well it isnt *my* fault, what can one person do?"
c'mon people.. let's get out of our shells for once and do *something* to stop this
------ Poo-tee-weet?
A good example is Eyes Wide Shut. Sure, it would be nice to know that it contains sex and what not, but because it got the NC-17 in an uncut version, it could not be shown. I didn't get to choose to see the uncut version if I wanted too. They censored it and then released only the tampered version to theatres.
I think that labeling things is wonderful, assuming that my choices are not eliminated because of that labelling.
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Sure, if a rating is ignored, there's no censorship. In the real world though, the rating is the tag to indicate how the content should be censored.
Most movie chains and many video chains refuse to show NC-17 movies. An NC-17 movie is essentially removed from distribution, just on the basis of a rating. That is censorship.
Likewise, when an R rated movie is shown, theaters will turn away ticket buyers if they don't meet certain criteria. A lesser censorship, but censorship nonetheless. Many music dealers won't sell an album with a "Parental Advisory" label on it.
Ratings in and of themselves are not censorship, but it is a critical element to most censorship schemes. Its no secret that this rating system is intended for similar purposes.
Just imagine what it's going to be like 5 years
//LOCAL//IE6.7/PICS//RATING
from now...
All right, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Hacker's
Elite -- we'll now see how to turn off PICS
ratings in micros~1 Internet Exploder:
[PaperClip: Hi! I am your personal Internet
Assistant! Are you sure you want to turn
off PICS ratings? This may cause you to
view disturbing material such as Slashdot!]
Of course *NOT*, you little dweeb!
[John Q. Hacker kicks the PaperClip in the
head, making it retreat quickly to the toolbar]
Now remove the key
in the Registry with RegEdit32 and you are all
set!
[At the bottom of the screen: TOTAL ELAPSED
TIME: 00:02:26.3]
You can now download "Mein Kampf" from your
friendly militia site, see "Naked College Asian
Girls With Big Boobs Live!", flame CmdrTaco for
hours on Slashdot, and... the ultimate in sadism
and perversion... (drum roll) Download Red Hat
Linux 9.0 and install it on your unsuspecting
computer!!
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!! Have fun, PICS kiddie!!
Welcome to the *real* Internet!
[PICS Rating: -0x0FFFFF: Hacking, Open Source,
Windows2005. DANGEROUS!]
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Many of the recent attacks by censors, such as the CDA, showed basic cluelessness about the internet -- laughable attempts to control it from within the legal framework of a single country.
:).
These folks aren't kidding. They've realized that only a international ratings code can be practically implemented on a global system. They've also gotten a *lot* smarter at selling it. They claim this empowers users to make their own choices and politicians everywhere are likely happily buying this line.
Ok, whats wrong with this picture? Isn't it true that ratings don't harm anyone, they just let us filter our choices effectively? Yes, but there are several problems.
First, as the article pointed out so well, there is a stigma attached to the ratings that will encourage self-censorship, and inhibit people from seeking out contrary or disturbing views.
Second, think what an enabling technology this is for organizations to track down all the web sites in their area that displease them and start a campaign of legal threats to their ISPs. You think AOL is going to take a case to the supreme court so you can express an unpopular opinion? Don't count on it. Count on it even less if your site shows sexual imagery or violence. Also don't forget it makes it *easier* for tech savvy kids to find the interesing sites
Third, you've got to consider the possible abuses of the system. In how many countries will it be necessary to bribe someone for a good rating? How many web providers will be legally attacked for misrating controversial content? How many countries will use this to supress political opposition? Or sexual minorities?
Maybe you wouldn't mind being forced to wear a badge at all times that stated your religion. After all, this just empowers people to know something of your biases and culture. I know I'd fight such a measure with all at my disposal, and I don't think this plan is far different.
What's fascinating about this proposal is that if it follows the model used for Television, then the producer of the material will be asked to rate the material they produce. That's how it works on TV: it's South Park's producers who decided the material was TV-M, not Comedy Central or any centralized rating board.
So when this thing lands on the Internet, who's going to rate my material? Me.
Unlike movie ratings, television ratings don't work. Why? Because when you go see a movie, the guy who sells you a ticket screens if you are allowed to buy a ticket to an R-rated movie. The folks in front of me at a recent movie were carded by the ticket seller who then declined to sell them a ticket. Yet...no-one guards your television. And the V-chip is a laughable solution: if it's as easy to program as the clock on your VCR, millions of parents are going to be totally unable to flip the switch and prevent their kids from watching South Park.
What's especially funny about the Internet is that the rules which define polite civilization (such as shame of being outed by neighbors or being caught in an XXX theater) don't seem to apply. In fact, the rules seem inverted: people who are "hyperconcerned" with appearing normal in public seem to go out of their way to find XXX rated material on the 'net.
So the upshot of a rating system like this is that unless a higher authority (such as the Australian government) imposes restrictions on the packets that get transmitted across the wire, the rating system is only going to give people a new mechanism to find the smut they want.
When the producers of material are the ones rating their material, and when the consumers of that material seem to be looking for the most extreme forms of perversion, the whole thing will just collapse on itself into another orgy of ineffective government self-congradulations.
Me, I'm going to rate all of my material XXX: Ultra violent pornography. Because it appears to me that ideas are the most destructive things to the governments who are trying to impose this mess on us.
Right now, I'm looking at getting dish TV. Not because cable isn't availiable in this area, but that this is a very small town and the man who owns the rights to provide cable service is religious. The most hard-core channel I can get is MTV. No, I'm not an evil person, but I do like to watch all sorts of content above the dammned sitcom fare of the major networks. Having this poor fool "protect the town" from content is, in my judgement, outrageous. And, I'm sorry, but parents who do not monitor their child's viewing, or even in my opinion, lets their child watch any more than 2 hours a day of TV.... they've got something comming to them whenever little billy takes a gun to school. Children are far too young and impressionable to interpret the messages ANY type of media gives them without proper adult supervision and guidance (I didn't say censorship. Ignorance may be bliss, but the ostrich who sticks his head in the ground will get eaten by the lion.). Sadly, most of the current generation of parents are so fscking clueless (they think Stanley Kubric is the founder of Wendy's), I feel bad for our future. Only strong, smart leadership will save us :)....
The reason so many atrocities like this occur is because most of the public out there have been dumbed down not to care, and the people that do care just can't get control away from the standards-imposing, blindly self-righteous, extreeme religious right.
Ah, but you forget something. The companies we are talking about are also in the content production business. It is to their advantage to be able to maintain some control over the market and limit the information out there. If there is a government "encouraged" ratings system, enforced by the network providers, they will be more than happy to use it to keep the more alternative information from competing with them.
Besides, if it was really going to cost them, I'm sure the government would legislate tax breaks for them to offset the cost for complying with this request.
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Smut halls don't show NC-17 movies either. They're generally too artsy, and not hardcore enough.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
you will no longer be able to post objectionable material in public view and expect that anybody will actually see it.
/. and all the other cool new media outlets that are springing up. The status quo will be supported by legislation. There's lots of money to be made by the poeple who are already in control.
Thus the end of
+&x
The New York Times web site has a decent article on this subject. anyone who is really interested in this topic might want to check out the following link
r ing_report.html
http://webserver.law.yale.edu/infosociety/filte
This is one of four different documents being presented on internet rating systems at the conference. The paper addresses a number of the subjects that posters have begun to question. In particular, I like the ratings model in which multiple different ideologically biased groups are able to release competing ratings criteria.
Regardless, it might make sense to try to seperate this discussion into a couple broad areas. The first might be whether or not any type of rating system is desirable. The second topic being "Assuming that it is necessary to have some form of ratings system imposed, what is the best way to implement such a beast".
richard
All of this stuff regarding net censorship has me fairly annoyed as well - but I think I see at least one solution. It would require a large amount of work and participation from many people, but it could be done...
The way I figure it, we _have_ the network infrastructure in place already. People can get information from one place to another without difficulty. So why not make our own virtual community that has no restrictions on it? A bit of a precedent has already been set with so called 'private clubs' which bypass local laws by being a private instead of public place. How about private networks?
The idea is that if the regular network traffic is monitored, construct a private network on it with encryption, and send the data through it anyway. Hell, you don't even need to have internic - set up your own DNS and do it correctly this time. Have it be community regulated, or whatever turns out to be most workable.
At the most extreme end, the virtual community could even go so far as to declare independence from any other nation.
I dunno, just some random ramblings... but it cant be done without strong encryption. As a side note, why don't all network packages ship with encryption facilities in them by default? Why doesnt my telnet connect to my telnetd with RC-5 straight out of the box?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Good idea, but no. That's how some blocking software works. Pages/sites won't be edited and labelled according to a text search algorithm or anything..apparently they would either be self-rated and approved or rated by an agency. If someone writes an informative page on breast cancer, its pretty safe to assume that it won't get labelled as pornography. Anyway...it is a horrible, horrible idea nonetheless. Our rights to free speech and expression are slowly being taken away and made illegal...the WWW does not create killers and terrorists.... *gets off his soapbox while he can
But, if you read this more closely, these ratings will be used for more than just helping YOU make choices. It will let the government tell ISP's that they must filter content with certain ratings. A good example could be if you lived in Australia. Even if you wanted to look at an adult site you wouldn't be able to because the government told all ISP's that they must filter sites with the adult rating. Ratings used like this are not just there to help you make veiwing choices, it's there to let other people make the choices for you. This is bad, very bad. I'm an adult and would like to be able to make my own decisions on what I want to see and hear; I don't want some stuffy conservative government doing it for me.
Well, I guess I can claim to be doing my job, at least by your definition.
I have three children, ages 9, 11 and 12. Our home computer has absolutely no censorware loaded (to the extent that I know of), but it is located in a central location in the house. Our kids are allowed to go online only when one of us parents is at home. We don't closely monitor where they surf to, but we keep in touch about their general habits, just like we keep in touch about what is going on in their lives in general. We ask our kids to let us see and approve forms where they have to give away personal information. There is also a time limit to their online time in order to encourage pursuing a broad variety of activities.
So far, this sort of mutual trust has worked very well. I can highly recommend thorough parental involvement. It pays back handsomely, not just in the realm of online behavior.
Rating schemes, filtering and other similar measures are nonsense. It is a rare day that I agree with what other people have decided is suitable or unsuitable for me, my kids or anyone else. I only really trust my own judgement and so should you!
That said, if (non)voluntary rating comes to pass, all web sites where I have influence over such matters will be rated as suitable for all ages, no matter what, and a notice to that effect will be up front.
If you look at people like Janet Reno, for example, you have all these law-enforcement people talking about how having good crypto in the hands of the ordinary folk is such a dangerous thing. They can't monitor it and see if it's big bad terrorists or drug dealers that are trying to kill your kids and rape your wife. Can crypto be banned effectively? No, probably not. However, there are a lot of things that are 'banned', even though their complete removal would be impossible. As examples, I offer: Underage drinking; Pot; Cocaine; Nuclear Proliferation. What I think could very well happen is that crypto would be 'banned', causing a hassle for those of us that would like to stay within the bounds of the law*, while the very people from whom the government is trying to keep crypto away are using it without any real hinderances.
But I stray from my point & the point of this news item. What I'm getting at here is that one of the reasons to be so concerned about mandatory voluntary self-rating is that methods that could be used to circumvent it will be prosecuted and also put into forbidden territory right along with unpopular speech.
* - You can rest assured that should crypto become illegal in any fashion, I would sooner disappear in a Stalinistic fashion than be considered 'law abiding', even though I normally consider myself to be a lawful citizen.
And I just have a hard time seeing how guns will help the Internet being censored - are you proposing that every packet be armed.
...
Arm every packet
Slirp every song
If we give them weapons
They'll be all alone
;-)
Will in Seattle
What are labels? Labels describe content. They tell a consumer whether a piece of music contains violent lyrics, whether a movie contains sex. The American Library Association may claim that "labeling...is a censor's tool" but I fail to see the logic in that. Cars are labelled -- whether they are two or four door. Every piece of food we purchase is labelled with its ingredients, so that we can make an informed decision. Clothes are labelled with the kinds and amounts of fabrics from which they are constituted. Most computer games and books have a category label (science fiction, strategy, etc) affixed to them.
How do these labels aid and abet censors? How do they prejudice attitudes? Or do they simply convey information? How is a label on Quake saying "First Person Shooter" censorship?
Proponents of labels call them "voluntary". Salon says they are mandatory. Maybe if Salon and the proponents were talking about the same thing a useful discussion might ensue, but Salon is undoubtedly more interested in fanning the flames. Applying the label is not voluntary. What is voluntary is your choice. In a non-voluntary system I have no choice about purchasing NC-17. In a voluntary system that choice remains, there is simply a label which categorizes them. In a voluntary system no government agency prevents the movie companies from producing NC-17 movies. No government agency prevents movie theaters from filming them. The choice to show or not show an NC-17 film is VOLUNTARY.
Claiming that what movie theaters perform is censorship is as misguided as claiming that when Slashdot refuses to run an article about sports it is censorship.
Would anyone have much sympathy if food producers said (or content labelling): "It's going to happen and the food producers are going to resist it as long as they can, but they'll have to realise that they must label their content or face prosecution." Does anyone here actually relish the idea of living in a world where you have no idea what is in your food, your clothing, that unopened shrinkwrapped box?
I'm sure if you are already against labels everything this article said resonates with you and everything I've said is utter crap. But when I read this article I just don't see a single good argument against labels. Maybe there are, but I don't see them here.
Most of you are missing the point. It's not **AMERICAN** censorship, but it extends much, MUCH further then that. This group is for all civilized countries -- This is a US/EU type censorship.
And why are only businesses & governments represented?? Isn't the bulk of web sites NON COMERCIAL?? Who's representing the average Joe at this event??
The best way to impliment censorship is at the search engines. Say goodbye to the quality searches at google. Next would be all the usenet news servers. Mandatory filters on what goes in and out. There are big movements in churches for members to act politically and stop anything that might be distasteful. You can bet this is going to squelch free speech. Just say no to censorship!
"Ratings don't censor anything."
Yes and no. No they don't directly censor anything. However, in the future they can make censorship so much easier.
Governments censor, non-government entities can only recommend or dissuade. If a voluntary rating system emerges on the internet then it won't be censorship. There is a real need for a rating system of some kind. If you don't believe this is needed, you will after an explicit porn page or banner pops up on your screen while you're showing your dear mother how to look up websites on about rose bushes.
If governments institute a ratings system, we are stuck with it and all it's implications. But if the private sector sets up rating systems, even if they're big hitters like MS or IBM, then we are all free to ignore them. We've ignored official non-government standards before.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I agree.
Think about it: why won't newspapers run ads for these movies? Why won't theatres show them? Because of public stigma. A newspaper would suffer huge backlash if it started running NC-17 ads. Theatres would likely be boycotted to a certain extent. This stigma against NC-17 ratings is not, and never was, the government's problem. It happened because many people in this country have some morality left. Most people not only don't want these kinds of products, but they also react against them, the same way Nike has been ostracized for its unfair labor practices, the same way a McDonald's would be shunned for selling Joe Camel toys. Is a movie theatre any less a family place than McDonald's? How about the Internet, then?
Many object to government trying to "legislate morality." Well, let's face it, laws are supposed to legislate morality! That's why we have laws! Things like don't steal, don't rape, don't kill; all of our laws legislate morality, the only question is whose.
There is nothing threatening about a rating system. Let's face it, all you're trying to protect if you're against it is your right to get pornography and gut-spattering violence off the Internet. A lot of guys are enslaved to their related addictions and get panicky when the rest of the world gets near their so-called constitutional rights.
Let ratings go on ahead. It won't hurt anyone except perverts and violence lovers.
We're living in a world with a lot of different beliefs, many of them conflict. Sex is a beautiful thing, sex will corrupt the youth. Abortion is sometimes necessary, nobody should ever be aborted. Et cetera.
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This kind of thing has always been going on.
However, technology brings people closer together, and in these cases this exaggerates the existing friction.
The cheapest / easiest way to reduce friction from conflicting beliefs is to limit interaction between people. However, I believe that this to be suboptimal. Another way is to limit or eliminate beleifs conflicting with the majority. I also feel that to be a poor solution. But there are people who feel that these solutions are acceptable or even desirable.
Any solution is going to have the same problem as the original conflict - meta-beliefs (ideals on how to mediate interactions between possibly conflicting beliefs) are a lot like beliefs, in the sense that there are lot of them and they don't all agree.
Any institutionalized resonpse to these issues must embrace one set of meta-beliefs, even if it is able to maintain neutrality on the beliefs which come into conflict.
The United States' official traditional meta-belief of choice is a live-and-let-live freedom-of-speech stance. However, once a law is passed it's a big deal to un-pass it, and with hundreds of legislators passing laws day in and day out, for two hundred years...
In theory the body of laws should sort of flutter around near the consititution, and the noise of the random legislation should cancel iself out, but if you're doing a random walk in which its easier to go one way than another, you're a lot less likely to stay put.
Whenever I hear of one of these acts (the CDA, PICS, whatever) I think "That's it, I'm outta here." but
Does anyone know of any country that deals with this kind of thing well?
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
What people fail to notice in this argument is the inherent contradiction between 'labeling' and 'censorship'. Labeling involves actually providing more (albeit biased) information to the consumer so the consumer can make a decision. Censorship involves actually preventing such information from being disseminated altogether. What labeling is, rather than censorship, is an application of moral judgment to the product. People then apply those morals to their own morals to make a decisions. As powerful as the paranoia group makes the government out to be, it is explicitly denied the right to censor material, except in cases where the local community has allowed it the right to do so (eg. pornography). The 'censorship decision' rests cleanly upon the heads of the market.
So far, the market has responded to the labeling phenomena positively. Otherwise, you wouldn't see Congresspeople pushing for it. Everyone makes the assumption that the MPAA censors because the government tells it to, and as an example, gives forth Eyes Wide Shut. No one bothers to ask why the MPAA gave its rating. The MPAA is influenced by the very same industry it regulates. Releasing an uncut version of Eyes Wide Shut could potentially have harmful effects for the movie industry, especially in America which is predominantly a morally conservative country (despite what MTV would have you believe). Morally conservative people tend to boycott things that threaten their morals, of which Eyes Wide Shut might possibly have done. Boycotting things means business is lost. Boycotting things also means public outcry. Public outcry means Congress gets a stick up their panties. Sticks up panties lead to a strongly-led backlash. The movie company is ruled by the almighty dollar. Offending the moral conservatism of the country, despite your personal liberal views, does not bode well for the industry (nor the country, I might add).
Labeling, though, does offer consumers more information and more information means "better" decisions about what products to buy. Again, we live in a morally conservative country where the majority of parents don't want their children visiting potentially sociologically harmful material. PICS gives these parents more information and the ability to actually parent. So what if maybe the child can't get access to the local Gay & Lesbian organization or the Bible because certain words are spoken. Let parents parent their children. Parenting is about making certain mistakes and learning from them.
Take a look at history and how labels have truly affected sales, and how labels have adjusted to the marketplace. It used to be that any album with a swear word had a Parental Advisory sticker on it. Now, you'll be lucky if the worst rap album has that sticker. NWA threw this nation's retailers into a tizzy, but now, there's CDs with ten times more 'offensive' lyrics sitting in the same store with Neil Diamond. Why? The labels are still around. The stores are the same. What's changed is the market. The market loves the stuff. The almighty dollar rules again. But still, labeling is still used as a form of information dispersal.
The point is, government isn't driving these movements, the populace is, and the market will determine the outcome. Right now, a lot of you seem to be disagreeing with the majority of America, and the only way you're going change things are by changing popular sentiment. You shouldn't be chiding the government in this case. Chide the people. Stir up popular sentiment, not government support. Don't just write your congressperson. Write your newspaper. Speak with your local television news. If it's really that important, change the people's minds. The legislation will follow.
Sorry, but as a rule I wouldn't trust any political party to reflect my beliefs or act on my behalf.
Witness the Liberatarians, who have depicted Bill Gates as (ha!) an American hero. It's the "boy individualist becomes liberator of millions and captain of industry" angle that Microsoft would love for us to believe. I assume that most /.'ers would vomit at this idea, & rightfully so. But the Libs have swallowed it whole, practically canonizing the schmuck.
It's kind of consistent with their way of thinking: stick to a few absolute principles (e.g. "people who make money in a free market are inherently good"), and extend them in a facile way to ridiculous conclusions, real world contradictions be damned.
On the other hand, if the Libertarians actually campaigned to remove this type of censorship (be it .net, TV, flicks, whatever), I'd throw a few votes their way. But the Teeming Millions(tm), who prefer to be led like cattle, won't be doing so, so what's the point..
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".sig,
If the end result is that a product is being taken off the market, or substantially altered, because someone was upset about its content, that's censorship. The "quacks like a duck" rule applies here.
If an NC-17 movie flops because the general public doesn't want to see NC-17 movies, that's not censorship. If said hypothetical movie is either cut before the fact to make it R-rated and thus "marketable," or if all of the major chains refuse to show the movie because it is NC-17, that *is* censorship. Just because it is being done on a corporate rather than a government level does not somehow make it magically "not-censorship."
I can, to a limited (*very* limited) point, understand restricting access to minors. I also believe that films that can't be made without breaking laws (ie against statutory rape) shouldn't be made, because an actual law is being broken there. But wasn't NC-17 created to avoid this problem? That's what bugs me about the whole mess.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Why sould the government get its hands dirty, when it can get the MegaCorps it subsidizes to do the dirty work for it. Many big businesses in this country get what amounts to corporate welfare. And all that has to happen is for the Congresscritter nearest the company's headquarters to say "hey, do me a favor and I'll make sure you get more funding," the corporations will be more than happy to comply.
:(
Free speech is unfortunately not the only issue this applies to, either. Two words: toxic waste.
The problem is that in this country, one dollar equals one vote rather than one person equalling one vote. Those who can afford to make massive campaign contributions get laws passed for them, funding given to them, and in turn they help out the government by enforcing these silly little "policies."
Those who don't have this money (teenagers, college students, most young and idealistic folks) are screwed. It sucks.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Electronic format material is different. There is no human interaction. The software cannot be coaxed into bending the rules. Once it is implemented, you are censored
... and ... information wants to be free? sorry
Dilbert: "Johnny here is testing my new software filter. It will prevent kids from getting access to smut on the Net"
Dogbert: "Do you know, if you put a little hat on a snowball, it can last a long time in Hell?"
Dilbert: "Nonsense. His youthful curiosity is no match for my engineering skills!"
[boing!]
Dilbert: "I hope that wasn't the sound of eyeballs getting really big".
jsm
typed from memory and copyright Scott Adams, it wasn't my fault your honour, I didn't know it was stealing
How do you think I feel? I live in Essex, I work in Middlesex and my parents live in Scunthorpe.
jsm
I know, God forbid that the community pressure people into not doing things that community at large disapproves of.....
Well, that depends. The balance of power between an individual and the community is one of those bid socio-politico-philosophical questions that tend to get people all excited. Anarchists occupy the "pro-individual" end of the spectrum, while communists and nazis stand together on the "pro-community/government" end.
Obviously, the community needs to enforce some of its beliefs on individuals (e.g. laws against murder). However things are not so clear with regard to so-called "victimless crimes", that is, actions which the community disapproves of, but which (at least directly) harm no one (e.g. smoking pot, polygamy, etc.).
I personally feel quite strongly that the community has NO right to pressure people to conform to community standards. If 80% of my town are fundamentalist Christians, should they be able to force me to go to church on Sunday? Or if the same 80% are orthodox Jews, should they be able to prevent me from driving on Saturday?
To get back to the original discussion, ratings by themselves are not censorship. However, they invite censorship and enable it.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.