Slashdot Mirror
Internet Rating System Plans to Globalize
The New York Times ran a great article about the upcoming Global Rating System, coming to a country near you sometime next year. Stephen Balkam, the characteristically disingenuous defender of rating systems, is described as saying that so far no governments have mandated that content providers use online rating systems. Okay, that's true - because it hasn't been passed yet. Australia's states are in the process of implementing model legislation which would criminalize failing to rate or mis-rating a site - even accidentally. Similar legislation has also been proposed in Great Britain and the U.S. -- michael
Why can't we just use some new top level domain names like .xxx or .sex or .cum or something? Then all the sex sites can get lumped together. Anyone who wants to block them can block the whole lot of them without problem. Yeah, a few would stick with the .com, etc. but why? Most are businesses out to make money. What do they care? All the lawmakers have to do is pass a law saying that if you run a website with x% naked people you have to get a .xxx (or whatever) domain name.
This way, you leave the decision in the hands of the consumer WHERE IT SHOULD BE. Right now, I can choose to go to a store and buy this stuff or not. Why not make the web work that way too?
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
This will fail to satisfy, for example, a hard-core materialist that doesn't want his kids viewing content with supernatural overtones, or a vegetarian extremist who wants to filter out content which glorifies the eating of animal flesh.
Furthermore, whatever the "language" rating/component will be, I have no doubt that it will be ridiculous in some way. Recently I saw Star Trek IV on the SF channel, and while they let "hell" get through, they censored "dumbass" (i.e. "double dumbass on you!!!"). This serves as an example of how stupid language valuations always turn out to be. Another example of this is the fact that for every "evil" word one finds in a language valuation, there's another word (often with more syllables) which means the same thing but isn't regarded as "evil". Does anyone have specific information on how the "Language" rating will work?
I suppose what it comes down to is that these four areas (sex, nudity, violence, language) represent the neuroses of segments of the population that are large enough to form a voting block that must be pandered to.
-- $SIGNATURE
I have some problems with this and it all depends on your definition of certain things. Really when does art become porn. There is little doubt that some things are definately one or the other, but the middle ground is the problem area. I mean the Adam touching God picture shows Adam negid. Is that illegal? What about the Venus birth (her negid coming out of clam shell)? Ok not many people are gonna buy that those are porn, but what about more modern art. Just look at the stuff with the museum in Broklyn and the problems they're having right now.
And I'm only presenting the artwork problem with a rating system. What about medical sites? Try learning about breast cancer without encountering words that are normally filtered. Try learning sex ed without getting filtered.
I just fail to see where this rating system will actually work and succeed at what its trying to do without causing a lot of problems.
-cpd
"Balkam also hopes to get the rating system integrated into Web authoring tools...."
Nobody's integrating anything like that into my 'ed'.
Whenever there's a story in /. on Hi-Tech, somehow Australia always seems to pop-up as the exception.... but strangly enough, their policy regarding issues such as privacy, security, censorship and online-rights in general seem to conflict: They allow back-engineering, yet censorship internet-porn and plan on rating sites. They are considered quite a liberal country, yet tape people on their streets and identify them with Face-Recognition-Software. Anyone from "down-under" can clarify on this?
To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish. ---Euripides
sed -e 's/sex/xes/g' -e 's/fuck/fsck/g'
Filtering proxies (to filter content ratings, or replace them with erroneous data).
if(remote_is_a_bot()) show_safe_page() else show_sexy_page();
Relocate your servers to a censorsh*t-free zone.
Digital underground!!! e-mail me at hotsexybabes@somecorp.com and I'll send you jpegs of *insert name of hot sexy babe here*.
IRC. Need I say more?
You can filter, but you can't hide! This system is doomed to fail... as it should. There is no substitute, technical or other, for parental supervision. Until the world figures that out, these botched attempts to "save the children!" will continue indefinately.
--
What about services like search-engines and Deja that display other people's content? Will Deja have to rate all of USENET? Will Google have to rate all of their cached pages?
This just can't work. Not on the Net.
Just give every page the worst rating possible. After all, the internet is evil, no child should be exposed to it. They might learn something.
abrams's advice: when eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.
I notice that the noble censors (pardon, raters) are planning on getting together a bunch of advisors from around the world to help with such things as national and ethnic considerations.
Twelve people.
Do not take the following as an 'I hate Americans' statement
The problem is that as far as the US is concerned, everyone else is secondary. To a certain extent this is admirable; no government can succeed unless the needs of its people are paramount. But when that nation is as powerful as America, and that nation perceives international web sites as a threat to its moral purity ("for the children!!!") then by gosh the world better fall in line with the US.
This wouldn't be so much of a problem if the Americans could come up with a reasonable and fair system of rating. Unfortunately, there ain't no such animal. So we're likely to be stuck with a shitty rating system that pays lip service to the problem of American Children Seeing Breasts and proves to be (at least) an inconvenience to the majority of surfers around the world.
Yes, I know Bertelsmann's report hailed from Germany. I never said the Americans had a copyright on stupidity.
The web hasn't done a terribly good job of regulating itself, so big brutha is going to do it for us. Fighting the concept outright will get you nowhere...better to lobby for a system that leaves most of the rights you care about intact.
"All the lawmakers have to do is pass a law saying that if you run a website with x% naked people you have to get a .xxx (or whatever) domain name. "
.com site. But as soon as you use the "F" word three times or you start showing to much sexual content you get and Internet equivilent of an NC-17 or XXX rating roled into a .xxx suffix? Laddies and Gentleman of the jury I would like you to say it with me now... PLEASE!!!!
My god, please tell me he is not actually suggesting an MPAA type of rating system for the Internet. Oh yes, I can see it now. You can have all the violence you want in a
"Help me Obi-/.-Kenobi,your my only hope!" -$
I dont know if anyone else has thought of this, but I seem to remember the big deal about video game ratings, AFAIK nobody even notices that they are even present on the packages nowadays. I really hope this blows over as the joke I feel that it is
Sometime next year, the Internet Content Rating Association is scheduled to launch a re-vamped version of a major ratings and filtering system called RSACi in the hope that it can appeal to parents and Web publishers worldwide.
"RSACi was an American response to an American concern," said Stephen C. Balkam, executive director of the Internet Content Rating Association, a four-month old organization that has offices in the United States and Britain. "We need to internationalize the system and governing structure."
RSACi was launched in 1996 largely in response to federal government attempts in the United States to regulate indecent content online. The system was an offshoot of an earlier effort to rate the content of computer games by a group called the Recreational Software Advisory Council. (RSACi is an acronym for Recreational Software Advisory Council on the Internet.)
Currently, the RSACi system calls on Web publishers to rate their content on a scale of 0 to 4 in four categories: sex, nudity, violence and language. Parents then decide what level of content they will permit their children to see and can set their Web browsers to block rated material they deem objectionable. They have the option to decide whether to admit or block content that has not been rated.
To date, about 120,000 Web sites have rated themselves using RSACi, Balkam said. That is a small number compared to the millions of sites that are online. But Balkam says those who have rated include many of most heavily trafficked Web sites, as well as numerous pornographic sites that wish to keep children out and children's sites that wish to invite children in.
The idea behind a re-vamped RSACi is to develop a rating system that considers the sensibilities of parents around the world, not just American parents, as the Internet begins to attract a bigger global audience. For example, Balkam said that Europeans as a whole have less concern about online nudity and more concern about violence than their American counterparts. In addition, he said, Europeans harbor a stronger consumer resistance to the idea of personal information being bought or sold, and so might want ratings to reflect Web sites' privacy protections for children.
The possibility of an international rating system has been in the spotlight lately, because of an ambitious but controversial proposal released at a conference in Munich earlier this month.
The document, drawn up by the Bertelsmann Foundation, a German policy research group, recommends a number of ways in which the Internet industry could police itself to help parents prevent their children from accessing potentially harmful material online. Among them is the creation of a new international system whereby Web publishers would rate their own content and parents could then choose either to block or allow access to material based on how the ratings mesh with their values.
Supporters of the proposal say it could stave off the possibility of Internet censorship from governments around the world that are growing increasingly concerned about children's easy access to harmful material online. But the plan has drawn fire from free-speech advocates who say a global ratings system could invite action by governments that might be tempted to require publishers to rate themselves or punish those who misrated their content.
Balkam says the Internet Content Rating Association plans to look closely at the Bertelsmann proposal as well as a number of other ideas before it overhauls the current rating system and introduces a new one, probably next summer.
Although RSACi is perhaps the best known Internet rating system, it is not the only attempt to rate online content. Another effort called SafeSurf, which was founded in 1995 and is based in California, has rated about 175,000 sites through a combination of self-ratings and ratings by "third party" observers, according to Wendy G. Simpson, the group's former president. Efforts to reach the current president were unsuccessful.
A major difference between the two groups is that SafeSurf is a for-profit business that makes money from advertising and other sources. The Internet Content Rating Association is nonprofit.
Last May, the Recreational Software Advisory Council, also a nonprofit, transferred its assets, including the RSACi system, to the new Internet Content Rating Association, which is incorporated in Britain and maintains offices there and in the United States. The Council has financial backing from some major North American and European companies and associations, including the Microsoft Corp., Bell Canada, British Telecommunications PLC and the Bertelsmann Foundation, Balkam said.
In coming months, Balkam said, the Internet Content Rating Association plans to establish an advisory council made up of about a dozen scholars, child development experts and others from around the world to look at various rating system ideas, including comments being solicited now on the association's Web site. Among the ideas the group plans to examine are proposals expected from INCORE, a European group that has received money from the European Union to study the concerns Europeans have about Internet content.
No matter how the new system is fashioned, free-speech advocates remain deeply troubled by the prospect of any global rating system, said Barry S. Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
He said one big fear is that because relatively few sites have so far voluntarily rated themselves under existing systems, governments with a global system at their disposal will require publishers to rate or take other intrusive steps. "Without that element of coercion, RSACi, either in a domestic or international version, will fail," Steinhardt said.
Balkam responds that so far no governments have mandated that content providers use online rating systems. "It is possible, sure," he said. "But because something is possible does that mean we should dismantle the system and abandon the tool?"
Balkam also said he believed a new system could attract more interest from both parents and publishers with some fine-tuning -- beyond figuring out what parents outside the United States would like to see filtered.
He hopes, for example, to translate the system into languages other than English, most likely French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin to start.
He would also push to have the rating system appear more prominently in Web browsers, to make it easier for parents to find. Balkam also hopes to get the rating system integrated into Web authoring tools, so publishers can rate themselves more easily and to launch an intense public relations campaign to promote the system.
"We feel if more and more parents use the system, the market will obviously respond by making sure sites are rated," he said.
The whole (real or perceived) problem of filtering inappropriate content is really a special case.
The more general problem is, "how should we index the web?". It's the digital library problem, really.
What we really want is a way to look up exactly the information that we want, getting pointers to all relevant sources and to no irrelevant sources.
For the censorship people, what they want has to do with the keyword 'smut' (and friends). If I look up smut, I should get all and only smut. If I look up something else, I should get no smut.
If the larger problem gets solved, the "censorship" problem is much simpler, and also shouldn't bother those who don't consider it an issue.
Aside from the censorship issue itself, there are a number of ... silly ... concepts in the draft legislation. My favorite is the idea that a web page is consider to be analagous to showing a movie.
/., the correct analogy seems more to be a cafe where you go and sip coffee and talk about the issues of the day. But a movie? What web sites are the australian politicians looking at that this analogy makes sense to them?
Huh? I've always thought of a "web page" as being analagous to print publication --- a newspaper, or a flyer tacked on a light pole, or a magazine (depending on the content). Or, for something like
It is supposed to be fool-proof in that only LYCOS "internal" content is linked in. However any curious kid could go to the Teacher Resources section where they are given a link to search the The Hotfiles software download library which gives you access to Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, and adult-themed downloads.
But there is a fairer solution than forcing everyone else to rate all pages and posts. Why not have a setting in browsers that will require the presence of a certain meta tag (like meta name="rugrat-level" content="kidsafe" or whatever) before displaying the page?
Those who don't want to limit themselves to kiddie content wouldn't have to. Content providers who don't want to exclude kids wouldn't have to. Browser writers wouldn't be forced to modify their browsers, if there is a big enough market for one, someone will write it.
Unless a reasonable alternative is presented we are going to get stuck with an RSACi type system. This is one alternative, let's hear some others.
And, how, exactly, is forcing sites to register under certian domain names any different from forcing sites to carry meta-tags for filtering services?
The point here is not that people don't like meta-tags. Its that we don't like censorship. Period.
-
I think just about everyone who reads slashdot would radically dislike a rating system enforced by the government. Unfortunately, there is a very real and substantial problem with the Internet for many people right now: namely, there is no way for me to protect my children from the most disgustingly vile content imaginable short of cutting off the Internet entirely.
I can't keep them from accessing it, even by sitting over the shoulder the whole time, because pornographic sites deliberately misrepresent themselves as appropriate sites. And many (most?) of these sites deliberately include images on their front pages which are inappropriate for children (and me for that matter). Do you really want your seven year old daughter seeing pictures of a man peeing on a woman, even for a second as you make a dive for the monitor power switch? If you think this isn't a problem, you are either a fool or have never been a parent. For examples, take a look www.whitehouse.com sometime.
And the fact is that you can't watch your kids all the time. You have to sleep sometime. Don't even get me started on page jacking -- your kids don't even have to be doing something wrong to get sent to some of the worst smut on the Internet.
To make matters worse, anyone without Internet access is rapidly being marginalized by our society. So, my choice is to (a) have my children be marginalized or (b) have them grow up thinking that normal sexuality is whips, chains, and defecating on each other. Or milder, but just as bad, have them grow up thinking that pornography is harmless and a normal expression of sexuality (its not -- pornography treats people as objects. I though that was something geeks were against?).
As I see it, ratings systems are a good thing because if they aren't setup, the government will find a way to outlaw porn all together. At least outside the united states. In the US, they will come up with some way to worm around the 1st ammendment and water it down just as they have the second.
What is desperately needed (now) is an organization and appropriate technologies to construct a publically, freely available list of offensive sites. You want to resist censorship? Help construct this list. Believe me, it is far better to exercise responsibility voluntarily than with the government making you.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Ya know how we have those stupid little white boxes with black text labeling what kind of content a TV show has? Yeah, the ones that give it an arbitrary 'rating' and then say if it has "bad language" (denoted with an L) or "sexual content" (S). Well, they suck. So would Internet ratings. But they do have an "upside".
To quote a June press release from the Libertarian Party (if you are going to comment on this post, please leave the offtopic, probably easily supportable shots at the LP out of them.), "after the federal government mandated a prime-time TV ratings system in 1997, sexual content on the major networks jumped by 42% and offensive language shot up by 30%."
The same source offers the following reason for the jump:
Brent Bozell, chairman of the Parents Television Council, said that networks "would insert edgier content into their shows and justify
insertions by pointing out that attached ratings warned the audience it was coming."
Perhaps we'll see "freer" speech with the coming of inevitable Internet ratings. Probably not, but maybe.
Don't get hysterical about the fact that children see pornography. In my opinion it is just good that they learn early about the facts of human sexuality. That doesn't turn them perverts (which seems to be your reasoning for cencoring pornography) or anything like that, but it makes them grow more tolerant (unlike for example gay bashers) to those persons that aren't having 100 % puritan sex. In my opinion sex aducation should also be started with young age. That way children learn early enough about contraceptives and can avoid STDs and teen pregnancies. In my opinion the difference between Europe and USA might be explained at least partly with the fact that europeans inform they child about these kind of things early in life. That is why teen pregnancies, AIDS and gay bashing are much lower in Europe. If I would cencor something it would brobably be intolerant opinions -- which often includes christianity. But I am more like Noam Chomsky and hold the opinion that freedom of speach belongs also to those people I disagree with.
Luckily we "crazy Swedes" have not gotten THAT dumb idea yet... That's insane! I thought you guys 'over there' (the US) had freedom of speech...
Just as Hollywood is starting to push for the disassembly of the MPAA, who oversee the US movie rating system, because it's so completely useless, now we get a ratings system for websites. It seems the only way to get nations to work together is to solve problems that don't really exist. Wouldn't want to waste our time and money feeding the poor or improving solar collectors or exploring space or anything.
-jpowers
Last person who spent as much time villifying a religious groups as much as some people around here do was Hitler. One of these days I'm going to put together a piece where I take all of Hitler's speeches, substitute Christian for Jew, and see how many fools around here I get agreeing with it.
/use some restraint/ in exercising it. Oh yeah -- are you seriously asserting that seeing people piss in each other is going to reduce teen pregnancy? I guess it might turn the Kids off of sex altogether...
I'm not trying to take away anyone's freedom of speech. I'm asking that they
Jackass.
-- Slashdot sucks.
The real problem with rating the internet is that it is an international system and that what is perfectly acceptable in one country is not acceptable in others. For examply, in many European countries, sexuality is freer and European parents might not have a major problem with some sites that would shock American parents. I'm sure that on the flipside, there are somethings Americans don't care about that affect Europeans, or some other society, greatly. Does this conflict mean that each website will have a rating for American audiences, one for European audiences, one for Asian audiences and the like. This is impossible, because the makers of the site can't know the values of everyone in the world, and therefore, can't rate accurately.
There is a problem of smut on the internet, but ratings aren't the answer.
"To save the planet, I had to go to the worst spot on Earth, and that was Philadelphia." -- Sun Ra
I would just like to point out that here in Canada, the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is in charge of regulating communications industries. They've recently ruled that there will be *no* regulation of the Net in Canada, period. That makes this a good country to run web servers from in the near future.
An odd decision, considering the CRTC's past track record in these matters, but a welcome one. Personally I think the CRTC realized the futility of trying to sift through the entirety of the Net and the Web. Now if only the government of our southern neighbors would follow suit... I sympathise with Americans. They've got the First Amendment, yet their government is blatantly defying their own Constitution, what with the CDA and similiar schemes.
I think this deserves at least a 2, and a big bright "Insightful" tag...
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
As soon as a rating system is in place, and site publishers are forced to utilize it, the next logical step is to force ISP's to 'block' certain types of traffic, now that there is a standard, legally required identifier on the objectionable traffic. The ISP will then be held liable if they FAIL to provide this blocking service.. where will it end? It is not up to *ANY* government *ANYWHERE* to tell me what to read or write. It is not up to *ANY* government to tell me what is good for my children.
answer: nothing
Much great art is pornography. There isn't any reasonable way to distinguish the two.
support gun control: take guns from cops
I consider myself a sophisticated internet user, and I have chosen NOT to look at pornographic material. What's interesting is that AVOIDING it hasn't been a problem AT ALL. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort or intelligence - just adhering to a few simple rules, really. These are rules that any kid can follow, and if they don't, it's not an internet problem, it's a discipline problem.
Domain names have become de facto trademark property. How do you plan to financial compensate everyone if people are forced to change their site or their site's name based on the censors judgement? Besides, AFAIK, you don't need domain names to have a site. It's just a name attached to a number. Your scheme would work better by putting all government-deemed "objectionable" sites in the same numerical address neighborhood. Not that that is any better or much harder to route around anyways....
No thanks.
support gun control: take guns from cops
If your child's first ideas of human sexuality come from pornographic materials, you've already dropped the ball. You can't wait until your child is 12 or 13 and then suddenly start acting like a parent.
A young child, when presented with pornographic images, will probably be totally disinterested or "grossed out". At the age of sexual awakening, he or she may be intrigued by the imagery. You'd better make damn sure that you've given them a framework for interpreting that imagery.
I think that the root of this and related issues is that modern people are increasingly outsourcing more and more of their responsibilities. We outsource the production and preparation of food, we pay other people to be charitable in our place, we rely on the government to tend to the well-being of our communities, we rely on the school system to educate our children, we rely on television to babysit those kids when they're not in school... and of course, some want to go so far as to let the governments take responsibility for the moral education of our children as well.
Anybody see a pattern developing here?
(And yes, I do have a child of my own.)
Ruby on Rails resources and more at idolhands.com
What happens when I put up my sex education pages marked as kid-safe? (Hell, not just safe but recommended viewing for teens.)
What about my collection of photos and painting that happen to feature nude images? Surely those are ok, right? Can I mark those kid safe?
Who decides? You're still relying on either the page creator to decide what's best for your kids (bad idea), or on some outside government agency to create and enfore rules about what's best for your kids (worse idea). Either make your own damn decisions or hire a third party to do it for you. Leave me the hell out of it.
Why do people keep saying this? We killed off the CDA, we can kill this off too.First, protest like hell. Inform your congresscritters that this is unacceptable.
Second, if it comes about, engage in civil disobedience. I suggest a "This page has not been rated!" campain, in the footsteps of the Blue Ribbon campain.
Third, if all else fails, start shooting the censors.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
But seriously folks, what the heck is wrong with people that choose to install net nannies for their kiddies? Sure it's not fail safe, but if it makes the web a "safer" place for those under, i dunno, 11, then great. If the software can be defeated, so what? I'd hope if I had kids they'd be smart enough to defeat the nannies. Not that it needs to be easy for 'em. If the future, a customizable Jon Katz style AI program may be the best filter for young 'uns. But any government style or so-called "voluntary" solution is out of the question. The only moral and practical solution is for people to censor their own boxes. That way, Christians can buy FatherNanny, Jews can buy RabbiNanny, Muslims can buy MohomadNanny, and atheists can buy FuckthedirtyslutNanny.
I have been reading through the comments and agree very much with the sentiment that no rating system for the net can possibly work (be fair and cater for a wide range of moral standards). I have a bad feeling that these laws will be passed anyway. Anyone who cites religious/moral arguments for censorship is completely oblivious to the *massive* cultural and ethnic variation present in our world. If anyone wants to voluntarily rate their pages, thats fine - but here's my proposal should anyone try and force us to:
/.ers to hack their websites, spam their emails, flame their news groups, shutdown their ISPs, make them listen. I'm damned if I'm going to let people steamroller my principles. I'm prepared to fight for what I believe in. Lets show them who really owns the net - us, the global public.
I propose that we declare cyberwar on *ANY* government that tries to pass such legislation. I call on all hackers and
Amandla!
Simon.
/-\-/
On the other hand, I understand the need to protect the children. A very informative post has already been written and I won't repeat him, but I agree with much of what he says. For instance, we probably wouldn't want our children to accidently run accross a KKK page, or an explicit sex site.
I guess what all this rambleing comes down to is one simple fact: Smut, hate, and misinformation exist. Porn isn't going to go away just because we find a way to not allow childeren to view it. I don't understand this -- kids aren't supposed to know anything about sexuality or view porn until they're 18, when suddenly everything changes? Yeah...right. Like that's ever going to happen.
Disgusting things exist, but that's the world we live in. We can't shelter people from it, or the problem will only get worse. Remember, these same children we're claiming are losing their innosence at one time were subjected to viewing executions at all ages. These executions were considered to be festivities, and children learned to become excited over the death of another human. IMHO, this is much worse than the digital information they can view today.
Filtering does not eliminate the problem, it only makes it worse. You can cut information off from those who need it, and brainwash others into thinking this doesn't exist. Remember all the bans on racist books and movies? This didn't make racism go away, it only made people think racism no longer existed. Ignoring and filtering out the problem only makes things worse.
My advice to parents: Keep open communications with your kids!!! Make sure your children understand that they can talk to you for anything, and never make them afraid to come to you. If your child views sex pics which disturb him, make sure he can talk to you. Only then can you teach your child your ideas of right and wrong, and what is moral and what isn't. If your child, on the other hand, thinks you'd scold him for viewing such material, he will never tell you, and may believe such is the norm. This, I believe, is the only viable solution: Build Better Parents.
--DranoK.
Shh! Nobody knows I'm gay!
Please do me the favor of reading my draft proposal for Internet/Usenet profile-based collaborative rating. I believe it addresses most of the issues we're all concerned about.
It is on my Homepage in the INMP/NNMP section.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
To paraphrase and willfully blaspheme Scott "I know where the Sun don't shine" McNealy
"You can't be safe from Internet information systems anyway. Get owver it."
--Rares Marian
freenet.on.openprojects.net
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
As everyone knows, it will be unworkable and an administrative nightmare. Previously, when Telstra (our ex-monopoly telco) controlled the vast majority of bandwidth into Australia, this could have been 'enforced' by the use of transparent proxying and cache hierarchies.
Now, life is a bit more difficult - the large and small ISPs (Ozemail, Connect, Optus/C&W, et al) are and have been laying cable for several years. Distributed networks mean distributed administration and exponential problems.
This is also an issue in terms of who is an ISP or not - it is the ISP meant to respond to the request to block a site. Telstra's range of Internet Services are called Big Pond xxx (Home - self explanatory, Cable - high speed, horrendous price, and Direct - ISP intercommunication/reselling). I have Big Pond Direct (BPD) for a permanent connection which means I could probably argue that I should be classed as an ISP (I don't have anyone connecting through me, but I do host one or two websites ;) ) and therefore I should be responsible for administering any site blocking requests - given that these requests are meant to come from the Broadcasting Authority or my customers (*cough*), this'd make my life easy. So many holes for sneaking through - faked log files, filtersets which are inactive, etc etc. After all, who is going to notice and complain that my "ISP" isn't blocking sites?
This is just going to collapse in a heap, and rightly so. Last night, we had a TV show (Sex In The City) use the C word. But I can't look at R (your NC17) porn without breaking a law?
No coincidence that this is being pushed by those with a vested interest... the filter authors here in AU have been leaning quite heavily on "The New Source Of Evil That Is The Internet" and the "won't somebody *please* think of the children?" lines.
I should make a comment that this doesn't mean I spend my time surfing for pr0n *lol*
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I believe it should be obvious for almost everybody on Slashdot that maintaining such list would be absolutely impossible. New "offensive" sites would keep popping up in new places, sites would keep moving and changing their names and URLs, and nobody would be able to keep up with them
It may be possible to create and maintain a list of "good" and "appropriate for children" sites but of course the problem with such list would be that as soon as such list appears, some people would decide that it may be a good idea to force everybody (first schools and libraries, than may be universities, than ...) to filter their traffic against it. So if we do not like the idea that the government will find a way to outlaw porn all together we better do not give it such a way!
First: pornography != real sex for most people.
So to say its "educational" is misleading at best.
Second: all this content on the net is so easy to stumble across even by accident removes the choice from parents about when to discuss such things. As a parent, this junk on the net is not appropriate for a 4 year old no matter how much time I spent educating them. Do parents in Europe really make a point of showing all this crap to a 4 year old to educate them? At work we have several people from Europe, and they don't show this crap to their kids as part of their education.
Parents : Either gets your kids off the net entirely or get a reasonable proxy server. Forget the oafish, futile censorware. Its just not an answer. If they're on the net, they have access to loads of smut, dangerous chat,... You can't monitor your kids all the time. But (until they master proxy administration) you can look over their shoulders and monitor where they've been. You can use this to figure out if they've been actively surfing for smut or not, or if they've tripped over it (its hard not to). This will be helpful in figuring out how and when to broach the subject of porn and on-line sex. Even without a proxy log, the browser history list is useful for this. Check their bookmarks list too. Its an invasion of privacy at some level - but its responsible parenting when done conscientiously.
You must talk with your kids about sex anyway since they watch T.V., listen to radio, read magazines, see billboards around town,... they're exposed to the objectification of sex and sexuality all the time in our society. They have a clue real early these days, so deal with it. And if you feel the need, you can equip your home based net access with tools to help you track their net habits. Perhaps some PICS based scheme might theoretically reduce the risk of accidental exposure to smut someday. Don't hold your breath. Deal with the issue now using available sensible means - and common sense.
Freedom fighters : Fight to keep the web free. But please be more thoughtful about the nature of that threat. PICS and genuinely voluntary, pluralistic classification schemes are not the enemy. Commercialization and monopolistic control, as well as government interference are the real enemies.
There is a problem with the net that can and should be fixed. Its not porn. Its the complete absence of any means of cataloging and classifying site content. Any library has this and we all rely on this. Commerce and free marketplaces have this too. The net would be a far more valuable compendium of information if there were some means for content publishers to inform the net at large about the purpose, intent, and content of their site. Enter PICS.
PICS could, if adopted thoughtfully, help every single net user that has ever used a search engine. Absent of coersive forces, the classification is only as good as the content publishers make it. But it would make a huge difference. Let Muslim clerics publish a classification schema that can be voluntarily adopted and communicated via PICS. Let the Moral Majority, the PRC,... and ISO, ANSI, and the Library of Congress publish their schemas too. And let web publishers tag their sites with as many classifications as they see fit.
Its all good as long as its voluntary and the commercial forces and governmental agencies stay in their corners.
YRO's nattering nabobs assume that if a rating system exists, and if it is used to rate sites for adult content, that censorship is the inevitably outcome. Ergo PICS=censorship. Bull. I don't accept that web information cannot be better organized, that web publishers will never have an effective tools to help them reach their audience.
I love the chaos of the web. PICS preserves the full free chaos of the web ecology. It does not impose any specific structure, vision, or values on the web. It merely provides a modest feedback mechanism that could help build a more interesting web culture over time. Let idiot politicians and e-commerce fools try and coopt PICS for their hopeless folly. They will fail. But if it helps foster widespread use of a free and plural PICS, we all win in the end.
To paraphrase and willfully blaspheme Scott "I can see where the Sun don't shine" McNealy:
"You're surrounded by Internet information systems anyway. Get over it."
--Rares Marian
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I highly recommend that you find and read The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen Carter on the attempted exclusion of faith-based views from American politics and law, and then contemplate a "freedom of religion" that actually celebrated people freely and unapologetically following their religions, or a "multi-culturalism" that didn't mind people propagating their own cultures.
Oh, please. Amphigory is obviously a Christian, and is arguing as such. So clearly he believes that the Christian view of God is the correct one. Why should he pretend otherwise?
News flash: most Christians are aware that not everybody is a Christian, and that other views of God exist. But it would be incredibly tedious to have to mention that fact every time the word "God" is used, so most of us don't.
This is not about "imposing" religious views. No one is trying to forcibly convert you to Christianity.
Oh, but you mean that his viewpoint is religiously motivated, and you disagree with him, and therefore he's trying to "impose his religious view" on you? To that I have to say, "get over it." If you disagree, do so on the real grounds that you disagree. But, if Amphigory were advocating exactly the same position, not out of Christian theology but out of some secular existentialist "I-have-chosen-this-side-in-the-debate-to-actualiz e-myself" philosophy, what would you say then? I guess you have to meet the issue face on, since you couldn't dodge behind illusions of religious persecution.
Nice to see you not imposing your irreligion on anyone.
So, if I see you getting mugged someday, I should just walk on by? After all, robbery, assault, and murder are against my religion, but you wouldn't want me to go around imposing my religious views on anybody, would you?
I thought the debate was precisely about how to accomplish just that.
the constitution is made out of hemp (marijuana) which is illegal in the us (heh). freedom of speech my balls. its illegal to say that you want to kill the president. oops, now my name is on a big list at fbi headquarters :P
whats wrong with crack anyway?
Why the hell should the whole world change for just YOUR kids? The internet is what it is...what makes you think we should make it G rated just for you? Those porn sites have just as much right to be there as any other site does....the owners of whitehouse.com paid their $55 for that domain, they have a right to use it anyway they see fit. Just because other people have diffrent morals and veiws of the world it dosnt mean they are wrong
It really pisses me off how a small few think they can change the way we think just to "Save the Children". Why the hell does the govmt think they have the right to do this? This system will only hurt freedom of speach, and if it does get put in to place then i hope it fails and people find out ways to fuck it up.
I have to return some videotapes...
1st they rate movies
2nd TV
3rd Music
And now the internet? what is next? We need to make a stand right here. They are little by little taking away all are rights. We might as well call the year 2000 1984...its starting to look like it more and more each day.
"...they don't have to burn the books just remove them" -RATM
I have to return some videotapes...
What possible objection could you have to labelling your pages?
It is a big, bad world out there, but that shouldn't mean that you can't start making your corner a little cleaner - if we all did a bit, the whole would be slightly less big and bad. Simplistic, trite and as shallow a soundbite as our esteemed PM could hope for, but there's a point in there, too! Look at car design, there are still accidents, but you use seat-belts, air-bags and what-have-you.
I don't have a problem with porn, but if I'm using a search engine to look for some non-porn information, I don't want 7 of the top ten hits to contain page-jacked URLs which have bugger all (sic) to do with the search term I entered.
Some search engines are better than others and if the search engines tend toward the sites that are correctly rated and are monitored for their content then I will tend toward using them because I'll have confidence in the results they return. If that means that I'm less likely to find your page, then sure, it might be my problem - but who are you producing your web pages for? Your own gratification or because other people might find your output interesting end/or useful? If it's the latter, then reducing the chance that users will find your page isn't productive, is it?
--
"I do not speak for my employers, though they are controlled from my Teddy's huge pulsating brain."
Last time I looked, the internet was still an interconnected group of private networks. I pay to be connected to my provider's network and he pays to connect to a backbone.
This isn't broadcast. MPAA isn't a law, it's voluntary, industry self-regulation imposed to keep McCarthy off of their backs. Is McCarthyism back?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There are more websites out there than anyone can count and most of them are in spots so wierd that the government would never be able to find or regulate it. The thought of internet regulation in all wrong. If a site is inapropriate don't go to it. If you have kids watch were they go on the net. If you cant trust the internet to regulate itself than you cant trust the people on teh internet to regulate there site. If you want an annimated GIF of internet web ratings (www G, www PG, www 14, www MA, www XXX, and www 666) come to my site and get it or e-mail me and I will send it to you.
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.