650 rating services dropped me because of one reference to Huck Finn

Wed May 22 01:20:37 EDT 1996

Forwarded for the interesting comments...

Elisbeth Roche ace at opus1.com
serendipity RULES!

----fwd-----------------
>Return-path: <owner-tpr-ne at MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
>Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 22:19:46 -0400
>From: Andy Oram <andyo at ORA.COM>
>Subject: 650 rating services dropped me because of one reference to Huck Finn
>Sender: Telecomm Policy Roundtable - Northeast <TPR-NE at MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
>X-Sender: andyo at ora.com
>To: Multiple recipients of list TPR-NE <TPR-NE at MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
>Reply-to: Telecomm Policy Roundtable - Northeast <TPR-NE at MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
>
>You'll understand the subject line in a couple minutes.  We've been hearing
>so much about third-party rating systems like PICS that it's high time we
>looked at what life would be like with such a system.  We hear that PICS is
>technically solid (flexible, foolproof, and so forth) but no one has fleshed
>out the social side of the technology--the things people and organizations
>would have to do to make PICS work.  When I rev up my imagination and try to
>do this, I come up with a system that inevitably goes back to the old
>broadcast model--a few organizations offering a very limited number of
>hand-chosen sites.
>
>Of course, all this affects just the people who choose to install filters.
>Certainly such a system is less onerous than government censorship or
>software that searches for naughty words.  I can still put political
>analyses on my Web site, and it doesn't bother me too much if some
>17-year-old is denied access.   I just don't believe we should be pretending
>to offer children Internet access when actually we're just offering them a
>fancy new low-bandwidth medium for seeing a few popular sites.
>
>Part I--the parent's point of view
>
>To see what I mean, suppose you are squeamish about the ideas your kid is
>exposed to and are living in a world with a lively third-party rating
>system.  Your church offers a rating service, but they believe in screening
>out everything to do with homosexuality, which you think is going too far.
>Some friends like another site that features children's material, but it
>acts blase about passing through stories that put women in a subordinate
>position, and you don't like that.  I forgot to say that your spouse comes
>from another country and has very different ideas about what is proper for
>young minds.
>
>What's going to happen is that hundreds, perhaps thousands of rating
>services will spring up to appeal to different tastes.  There may be more
>rating sites than Web sites.  Every religious denomination will have one.
>Large library and school systems will have them.
>
>And then we can watch the battles erupt!  People will fight over which
>rating system to use for the local school and library, just as they fight
>over books now.  Mark my words: some clerical fundamentalist is going to sue
>their public school to pay the cost of private school, because, "I'm not
>going to let my child see the filth they allow on their Web sites."  And on
>the other side, some teenager with a sexually transmitted disease will sue
>because, "I would not have contracted the disease had they not shut out
>information on how to protect myself."  These are the consequences of
>spreading the notion that you can control children's behavior by controlling
>the ideas you expose them to.
>
>Few people will do their own rating for personal use, because who can go
>through thousands of sites and pick out the ones appropriate for kids?
>Those who do are essentially sitting beside the child choosing what he or
>she should see--which is not a filtering system, it's parental guidance.
>
>Part II--the information provider's point of view
>
>Let's switch gears now.  How will you get your own material rated by all
>these thousands of independent entities?  If you're Disney Studios or the
>Smithsonian Institution, they'll check you out spontaneously and give you
>their blessing.  But if you're some small publisher with a few games or
>stories you think children will like, they'll never find you--you've got to
>go to them.  And perhaps even pay them for the privilege of being listed.
>The sites will probably charge parents for using the links too--why not skim
>a bit off of both ends?  This could turn into quite a racket; I think I'll
>go out and buy my server right now.
>
>Meanwhile we'll have more appeals and battles, as authors and health
>services and others all try to persuade popular rating services that they're
>kosher.
>
>But it's not enough to be rated once.  What if a questionable story goes up
>on your site a month after you're rated?  You've either got to sign some
>promise to the rating service that you'll obey their rules (but this isn't
>censorship, no!) or have them rate you at regular intervals.  More overhead,
>more cost.  And as I said in my subject line, there's the risk that sites
>will turn you down because of one possibly offensive link.  (They can
>theoretically rate on a link-by-link basis, but I bet they won't take the
>trouble.)
>
>Given all this overhead, I think each service will rate just a limited set
>of sites that they consider a nice, balanced offering.  The way the big
>services like American On Line offer kid areas now.  More popular services
>(who get a higher income) can afford to offer a larger variety of sites, but
>in either case we're getting closer and closer to the broadcast model.
>
>Surf away, Jimmy!
>
>References:
>
>The World Wide Web Consortium offers their own scenarios for using PICS at:
>        http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/Scenarios.htm
>
>Rating services in general are discussed at:
>        http://www.vtw.org/pubs/ipcfaq
>        http://www.cais.net/cannon/memos/parents.htm
>
>(Feel free to respond to this list, but please also post to the main list
>where the discussion is occurring right now: cyber-rights at cpsr.org)
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Andy Oram  O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.                   andyo at ora.com
>           90 Sherman Street              http://jasper.ora.com/andyo/
>           Cambridge, MA 02140-3244              phone: (617) 641-1261
>           USA                                      fax:(617) 661-1116
>                  Not owned by a media conglomerate.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>