Re: misunderstandings of PICS

At 12:48 PM 5/6/96 -0700, you wrote:

>PICS *doesn't*involve*the*page*designer*. this is an absolutely 
>key component of its design. 

        This isn't exactly true (as you indicate later). PICS labels can be
incorporated into the html <meta> tag by the content creator, it can be sent
by way of the http server (using the 'get') or it can be collected from a
third party label bureau.

>I think is going to be far from the main use of ratings in the future)

        However, self rating will be a significant use in the future, and it
is the only way PICS is being used effectively today (at RSAC).

>may be made by different organizations. they may be contradictory.
>this is a basic part of the design of PICS.

        True.

>2. everything in cyberspace must be rated by government agency X,
>and no pages are allowed to be transferred that do not have
>acceptable ratings.
>
>the second is censorship. the first is free choice. the first
>is what PICS aims for. notice it accomplishes this through absolutely
>no action on the part of page designers. by the fact that they
>have a URL, the PICS standard uses that URL as a reference.

        Two may be quite successfully accomplished using PICS. Europe
(Germany and Nazis) and China/Singapore could make quite effective use of
PICS if they require that all browsers in their country be sold with their
rating (censorship) system included (and if they mandate that government
label bureaus _must_ be used.)

        The reason self-rating is mentioned is to forestall the fear of
mandated/arbitrary third party rating. Rather than some MPAA like system
being imposed by the govt., the self-rating was a better political/strategic
position. Also, self rating scales well until third party label bureaus are
sufficiently developed. 
_______________________
Regards,       Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues,
               and can moderate their desires more than their words. -Spinoza
Joseph  Reagle      http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html
reagle@mit.edu      E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65  BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

>        Two may be quite successfully accomplished using PICS. Europe
>(Germany and Nazis) and China/Singapore could make quite effective use of
>PICS if they require that all browsers in their country be sold with their
>rating (censorship) system included (and if they mandate that government
>label bureaus _must_ be used.)

well, in any case the idea that there should ever be any pressure
of page designers to include certain tags I find wholly inconsistent
with the original PICS proposal and rather abhorrent. unfortunately
it may be unavoidable.

> The reason self-rating is mentioned is to forestall the fear of
>mandated/arbitrary third party rating. Rather than some MPAA like system
>being imposed by the govt., the self-rating was a better political/strategic
>position. Also, self rating scales well until third party label bureaus are
>sufficiently developed. 

my fear is that the supposed "failure" of self-ratings could be twisted
by its opponents as evidence that it is inadequate to deal with the
real problem. in other words, they might say, "look, the self-rating
thing clearly doesn't work, people don't label their stuff right even
when they are pressured to, therefore we must now have a government
agency with mandatory controls. forget the 'rating server' idea, 
ratings by people within cyberspace just don't work".

I am not against self-ratings, I'm just saying that they seem to
be the area most ripe for being misunderstood by the public, or
lead to undesirable situations, and this is already happening.

its quite scary to me that the things that the designers were trying
to accomplish with the system might be totally reversed and
corrupted in practice to accomplish something they wouldn't have
wanted in their worst nightmares. I'd like to see an effort to
work against this to the greatest degree possible.