Re: Why PICS is the wrong approach

["E. Allen Smith" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

From:	IN%"reagle@rpcp.mit.edu"  "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." 13-DEC-1996 00:19:47.19
To:	IN%"EALLENSMITH@mbcl.rutgers.edu"  "E. Allen Smith"
CC:	IN%"cypherpunks@toad.com"
Subj:	RE: Why PICS is the wrong approach

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Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 00:17:54 -0500
From: "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." <reagle@rpcp.mit.edu>
Subject: RE: Why PICS is the wrong approach
To: "E. Allen Smith" <EALLENSMITH@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
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At 11:51 PM 12/12/96 EDT, E. Allen Smith wrote:
  >	Umm... I pointed out a while back the considerable problems with
  >the RSAC attempt at objective ratings. See

>	I agree that it is not a purely descriptive system, however it is much
>moreso than others. I thought the following was a useful breakdown for my
>own purposes:

	The below (from your essay) is a reasonable way to look at it. I
would tend to compare a system to obviously possible systems as well as to
simply what else is out there, however.

>descriptive/judgmental - does the label describe the content, or provide an
>opinion about the "appropriateness" of the content.

	In this regard, I would call the system in question about midway
between a truly descriptive system and such obviously judgemental systems
as SafeSurf. This partially judgemental nature is probably unavoidable in
systems in which one uses a non-binary rating scheme; if the presence of
something inevietably means that the system gives a "high" rating, then
the system is judging that the something is more important than other
factors. In this case, the judgement is pretty obviously that they deem the
something in question (such as "hate speech" that calls for "harm" to some
class - although I doubt they'd include pro-Affirmative-Action speech in
that...) to be worse than the "lower" rated actions.

>deterministic/non-deterministic - is the previous process a deterministic
>process, or is it "gut" based, and 

	I would agree that RSAC's system is pretty deterministic; the
choices of what is labelled are rather arbitrary, but that falls under
the description vs judgement category above.

>voluntary, mandatory, or third party - does the author label his works
>voluntarily, is he required to label his works by some other agency, or can
>other services label his content.

	As currently set up, RSAC is either voluntary or mandatory - a
government could require that it be used as a mandatory system, directly
or indirectly (e.g., under threat of lawsuits for "corrupting minors").

>No rating system we discuss is purely descriptive or deterministic. Rather,
>each system varies with respect to where it falls between extremes.

	Agreed.
	-Allen