[WEB4LIB] Question from School Library Journal: PICS & dot-kids

[Minkel, Walter (Cahners-NYC)]

Folks-- Hi from SLJ. I'm working on a story about the renewed initiatives to
establish "safe zones" for children on the Net. Last month, the Internet
Content Rating Association, an industry-sponsored nonprofit, kicked off a
big campaign to convince Web managers to label the content of their sites
with ICRA, which generates a label based on the PICS system, which was
briefly trumpeted as a system for the Net similar to movie ratings, in 1997
& '98. If you remember PICS at all, you probably know that the system has
been all but ignored since '98. 

Also, there's a bill in the House of Representatives right now (H.R. 2417)
that will try to force ICANN to establish a "dot-kids" top-level domain. (If
you remember, last year ICANN refused to establish .kids, saying that the
definition of a "child" varied from country to country, among other
reasons). The National Telecommunications & Information Administration of
the Commerce Department has supported an amendment to establish instead a
"kids.us" domain, which would be easier to manage.

My question to anyone interested in this issue: What are your feelings on
the appropriateness of both the rating system and the dot-kids domain to
establish a "safe zone"? How would passage of the dot-kids bill potentially
affect libraries, particularly public libraries? What should companies,
committees, & others worried about the "dangers of the Net" be doing
instead, if anything?

Please reply directly to me, with your permission to use your comments in my
news story. Thanks very much, W
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Walter Minkel, Technology Editor, School Library Journal
www.slj.com * wminkel at cahners.com * 212-463-6721 * fax 212-463-6689