From: IN%"janzen@idacom.hp.com" "Martin Janzen" 9-MAR-1996 09:48:42.59
ObCrypto, sort of: What if the page were retrieved through an HTTP proxy which, unbeknownst to the author (and the filtering service/SW), deliberately removes or alters the PICS-Label or other rating information?
Sure, you could probably write http://www.g-rated.com/. At least with movie ratings, the MPAA has trademarked the G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 ratings so that producers can't self-rate their own movies (though they can self-rate them as X.) But you could delete the ratings. Presumably, almost nobody in Europe is going to add these silly Yankee rating labels to their web pages, except a few commercial content providers who want to sell advertising or services into markets that block un-rated web pages. So schoolkids behind rating-mandatory sites will have to ask their teachers why the "World-Wide-Web" is just American --- "It's got All 50 States, Johnny!" <Exonive deleted>!
Must Web authors now add a digital signature to each page (including its rating info), to prevent tampering?
Tamper-proofing is a far more general issue than just ratings. Most of the tampering today is either political protest (the see-your- favorite-web-pages-after-censorship site), quasi-silliness (the Great Web Canadianizer, eh?), or advertising addition from commercial sites or deletion from de-commercialization software. Imagine if your movie rating web page gets linked up by some studio-owned web site (www.disney.not/reviews/siskel+ebert/Rocky23 says "Two Thumbs Up!" "Rave!") Or your stock picking service gets arbitraged a bit on fast.make.money.com. Or the ExonOnLine webserver starts deleting all links to unrated pages from pages it serves. If you don't need it now, you'll need it soon enough. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissable." - US government statement on China...