Surfwatch and other Internet ratings systems

[Marc Salomon]

Prentiss writes:
|   -- They may prove easy to circumvent for bright youngsters who
|      figure out how to download their own software, access unfiltered
|      public clients, etc.

Indeed, back in the seventies when the sum total of computer porno consisted
ASCII line-printer art, my friends and I figured out how to get at the stuff.

Filtering can take at least two forms:  that of increasing the signal-to-noise
ratio in networked information discovery and retrieval, and that of blocking
retrieval of objects that meet certain criteria.

The easy case is the former, because the filtering is advisory and must be
overridable by the user.  This mode of content rating is applicable to serious
applications such as medical content, where quality ratings like peer-review is 
essential to ensure data correctness.

But when you try, using software implemented on a low-security transport such 
as TCP/IP, to absolutely block people from accessing certain classes of 
networked information, the task gets more difficult and easier to circumvent.

Using a richer server architecture such as HTTP, content providers can take
some common-sense actions to proactively limit inappropriate content to kids
in the US.  In the absence of authentication access control (user IDS, etc),
content providers can have their HTTP servers deny access to *k12*, *aol*,
*compuserve*, and the like.

On the client side, it would be helpful for clients to implement a trust-based
logging system.  I can envision a pact between librarian and young patron as to
which classes of sites were acceptable use for this terminal as a public 
service.  Perhaps the browser could maintain an encrypted a log of sites 
visited by each young user that a librarian could decrypt and inspect after the 
fact.  If the kid broke the agreement, their future access could be limited.

But the net is not television, no matter how much publishers like Time Warner
would wish.  Nor is it a library with a coherent collection development
policy.  Its more like a big garage sale or flea market, you might find 
everything, but you never know exactly what you will find unless you take care 
to give each thing a close inspection.

-marc