PICS

[Timothy G. Kambitsch]

Karen Schneider writes:

>Here's one:
>
><META http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS-1.1
>"http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html" l gen
>false comment "RSACi North America Server" by
>"kgs at bluehighways.com" for
>"http://www.bluehighways.com/tifap/" on "1997.06.03T22:21-0500"
>r (n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0))'>
>
>
>I have a question for anyone who is PICS-smart (since the PICS
>page is very obtuse).  Did I get that "false" message because I
>gave PICS a directory instead of a file (e.g., should I have
>entered "http://www.bluehighways.com/index.html" when the
>query form asked for what I was blocking)?
>

The false in a PICS label is referring to the previous "gen" statement,
where "gen" is an abbreviation for "generic". So "l gen false"  means
"label generic false" or that this is not a generic label.


To help you read the label, I'll give you my human-readable interpretation
of the label you created:

"This page has a standard html meta tag of the variety called a
PICS-label.  The content of this PICS label is compliant with
version 1.1 of the PICS standard.  For this label, I am using
a rating system that you can find out more information about the
rating system by pointing you web browser to
http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html.

This label is not a generic label.  As an aside, this label is
from the RSACi North America Server.  This label was created by some
who can be reached by email at kgs at bluehighways.com.   The
label that I have already said is not a generic label only
applied to the URL http://www.bluehighways.com/tifap/  and
was created on June 3, 1997 at 6:03 at 10:21pm in a time zone
five hours earlier than in Grenwich England.  Finally, the Rating
I have assigned for this page is: Nudity level 0; Sex level;
violence level 0; language level 0.


>I have another question. Is there a quicky cheat-sheet so I can
>parse the ratings from the meta header?  In other words, at a
>glance, how do I know what this means?

Not really. I knew the RSACi ratings categories from having read
their description recently. What each value statands for is.
PICS is a standard for creating ratings -- It is not a rating
system.  So to get the definitions you really have to follow the
link to the rating system.

>
>And yet another question!  Let's say I have IE enabled for PICS,
>I'm usin a rating list--maybe Tim's--and I can't get to a resource
>because it is more "adult" than what I've directed.  Let's say that I
>now have a question about this resource.  Can I examine the meta
>tag associated with it?  I guess I'm envisioning a way to check
>WHY something is blocked without going to the thing itself or
>examining the rat list.

MSIE will tell you in a dialog box which rating system stops you. It
will tell you which category it encountered, and it will even
translate the value for you.  So if you enable the RSAC ratings with
the filtering set to minimal values and then go to
http://www.persiankitty.com, MSIE will stop you.  But it will
tell you the following:


"Sorry! Content Advisor will not allow you to seet his site. The page
may contain some or all of the the following:

RSACi:Nudity - Level 4: Provocative frontal nudity
RSACi:Language - Level 4: Explicit or crude language"


If you want, you can configure MSIE to allow you to see the site anyway,
but that a password is required.  This password option can be
disabled.

Tim


Tim Kambitsch <mailto:kambitsch at dayton.lib.oh.us>
Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library                   937-227-9560
215 East Third Street Dayton OH 45402                   fax:  937-227-9524