misunderstandings of PICS

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

EAS
>	The instructions in question, at
>http://www.safesurf.com/cyberangels/#look, are for their "volunteers" to report
>- including to both the page's ISP and to government - any page with sexual
>content that doesn't have a PICS such that it can be censored. In other words,
>they want to try to kick off systems - including potentially via legal action
>such as nonsense like "corrupting a minor" or whatever - any pages that don't
>set themselves up to be censored. That would include by government such as
>China, as well as by fundamentalist parents.

but you still don't understand what I stated. the above does not make
any sense relative to the PICS system. it would be like saying, "we 
are going to report anyone who doesn't have a SMTP that bans dirty
email". SMTP does not ban dirty email by definition. PICS does not
censor material by definition. please read the PICS proposal (sorry the
URL is not handy, could someone post it?)

the CyberAngels and you clearly do not understand how PICS works, even
after I tried to explain what point you do not grasp that is inherent
to its design. notice that you are propagating the lack of knowledge
through your own message, demonstrating nicely how
a little knowledge is a dangerous thing (it seems that ignorance 
spreads as easily or more easily than knowledge does).

PICS *doesn't*involve*the*page*designer*. this is an absolutely 
key component of its design. it exists indepedent of page creators.
if page creators are suddenly being pressured to format their 
pages in some way, then PICS has failed in some of its key design
goals. there are some *optional* ways that page designers can invoke
PICS principles as I understand, but they make no sense to me. (it
would be equivalent to someone rating their own material, something
I think is going to be far from the main use of ratings in the future)

the basic design of early versions of PICS is the following: 
rating servers rate *URLS*. whenever someone wants to grab a URL,
if they have installed software such as SurfWatch, that software
can query the rating server for any ratings on that URL and decide
to display or reject display of the page accordingly. these ratings
may be made by different organizations. they may be contradictory.
this is a basic part of the design of PICS.

notice again this basic distinction between *mandatory rating
capability* and *mandatory rating compliance*.  (sorry can't
think of a better term). PICS does not require the page designer
to do anything, yet it still allows the rating of their information
by third parties. in a sense, the concept of mandatory
rating capability (such that the cyberangels seem to be talking
about makes no sense relative to PICS. it already allows anything
to be rated through no action or inaction of anyone.  the concept
of "mandatory" does not apply to anything within PICS relative
to *content* of pages. the only thing that is mandatory with PICS
is that rating servers follow the standards for formatting the
ratings. but anything can be contained in those ratings. the
market will decide.

please try to understand the difference between the two 
things below:

1. everything in cyberspace must have the capability of being
rated.

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.

perhaps you could do a public service to the CyberAngels to help them
understand what PICS is and why they don't seem to understand its
basic concepts.

please, I hope that people can begin to see why PICS is *not* a 
censorship standard, and that it could actually be a powerful weapon
in forestalling *real* censorship attempts, which always involve
restrictions in actual communication not at the choice of (i.e. outside 
the control of) the *recipient* of that information.