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

Comments

How to prevent this.

[Amphigory]

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.