Re: Yet another self-labeling system (do you remember -L18?)

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

William H. Geiger III wrote:
> What is your proposal for those who would "mislable" their sites? 

    People who "mislabel"?   I am only proposing a tag for rating=adult.
I guess someone could put a rating=adult tag on a page that didn't need
it, but who would care?  Not me.  

   Suppose on the other hand that someone had a page that people thought
should have a rating=adult tag.  Well, the person who didn't use the tag
would just have to deal with whatever crap you would get for not
labeling.  If you thought your site had some constitutional right not to
label the content adult, then just don't label it.  I really don't think
this will be that big an issue, but I don't know (no one knows).  I
think that a significant percent of porn sites would use the
rating=adult label in a second if they thought it would get people off
their back.  Those that didn't use the label could just put up with the
consequences, whatever they are.  I would expect (and hope) that the
rating=adult label would be used infrequently, mostly for sites
involving explicit sexual images.  I don't think a rating=adult label
would be much of a barrier to teenagers who wanted access to this type
of material, since one could download a browsers in a few minutes that
wouldn't block the data.  But like a childproof top on aspirin, it would
work pretty well with pre-teens, I imagine.


>I am
> sure that you are not under the assumption that everyone will have the
> same ideals of what is appropriate for children and what is not.
> 
> How do you handle the web site for alt.sex.sheep.bah.bah.bah if the owner
> decides to self rate it Y-7?

    Well, I for one don't like a Y=7 type system.  It involves too much
information from the person rating the wage page.  The more precision
you put in a rating system, the more trouble you get in.  Keep it
simple, very simple.  What if someone was a sex with sheep web site,
unlabeled?  I don't care much.  I wouldn't be surprised, however, if
Yahoo didn't give them the prominent listing they wanted, in the absence
of the rating=adult label.  


> 
> Self-rating and/or browsers that can read these self-ratings will be of
> little good except as a stepping stone to maditory rating system because
> they are unable to solve the precieved problem of children accessing
> website that their parents do not want them to see.
> 
> Even if you could convince "Enough-is-Enough" and the rest of Donna "2 bit
> hore" Rice's cronnies that voluntary ratings was worth a try they would be
> shortly back to DC pushing for manditory legislation because they wouldn't
> like the way people were self rating their web pages.



    Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe it would "solve" the problem, without
legislation.   I think it would be nice if the problem was solved
without legislation. But if the problem (and I think there is a problem)
isn't solved voluntarily, don't be shocked when Congress acts.  


 
> You have two major groups pushing for rating systems:
> 
> 1) Lazy parents that do not wish to be bothered with the obligations of
> raising their children.


      Are you calling me a lazy parent?  What is the obligation of a
parent?  To supervise a kids web browsing?  Please, I think kids are
better off with more privacy, and less parental (and teacher)
supervision when they browse the web.  

> 
> 2) "Born again" censors like Rice want the power to control what people
> can and can not say.

     
     This simply isn't true.  A lot of support for content labeling,
including systems which I find appalling, is from fairly typical
parents.  This isn't a right wing or born again issue.  


> The problem is that no rating system can satisfy these groups. Just as
> voluntary rating will be used as a stepping stone to manditory rating,
> manditory rating will be used by these same two groups for the outright
> baning of certian forms of speech (their true agenda).


    Nothing will satisfy everyone.  But reasonable people will support
reasonable solutions, and it might be the case that there are enough
reasonble people around to come up with a resonable system.

               Jamie



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-- 
_________________________________________
James Love
Center for Study of Responsive Law 
P.O. Box 19367 | Washington, DC 20036 
202.387.8030  | fax 202.234.5176
http://www.cptech.org  |  love@cptech.org