Since the Supreme Court said the online world should be as free as print, and no self-labeling system exists for magazines or newspapers, why should the Net be any different? Why isn't the Net community opposing "mandatory voluntary" self-labeling systems as staunchly as newspapers and magazines would fight a similar requirement? It's best to ask these questions of Christopher Barr (chris_barr@cnet.com), editor in chief of CNET, who endorsed such a proposal in his column below. Barr says that he wants to ensure "that only real news organizations claim [the] privilege" of rating as news sites with RSACnews. But who decides what's a news site? Is CNET? pathfinder.com? epic.org, which the government treats as a news site when responding to FOIA requests? The Drudge Report? How about the NAMBLA News Journal? My report on the possible perils of such systems is at: http://pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1173,00.html -Declan **************** http://www.cnet.com/Content/Voices/Barr/072197/index.html rating online content can work (7/21/97) With the Communications Decency Act vanquished once and for all, it's time to explore alternatives for protecting our youth from inappropriate online content. As an independent content provider, CNET's position has always been to give the power to the reader (or the reader's parents) and not the government, to decide which sites have acceptable content. And now, President Clinton has been forced to come around to our way of thinking. After initially supporting the CDA, Clinton is recommending that sites rate themselves and that parents use filtering software to set limits for their children. Self rating systems allow sites to attach labels to themselves to indicate what kind of content the sites contain. The labels are interpreted via the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) technology endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium standards body. The PICS technology allows any group, such as the PTA or a church, to set content standards that can then be adopted by individual Web sites. There are already several rating services such as the Recreational Software Advisory Council on the Internet (RSACi), Safe For Kids, and SafeSurf. Early on, CNET supported the RSACi rating system and chose to rate both CNET.COM and NEWS.COM. Controlling content takes two things: content-ratings and filtering-software. A number of software programs, including Cyber Patrol, Cyber Sentry, Internet Explorer, and SurfWatch, already support PICS and can read the rating labels. Such software blocks out any sites that don't correspond to the ratings you've selected. For instance, if your rating system says that images with partial nudity are inappropriate, the software won't load those pages. To be sure, filtering- or blocking-software is not without limitations. A number of groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, support the use of such software on principle, but they also point out that filtering software can be used to block any kind of content, not just sexually explicit material, and so it can end up restricting free speech. These groups are also fearful that a foreign government could use filtering software to control what content its citizens can access. These are just a few of the thorny issues that the technology introduces. Nevertheless, we at CNET feel that content ratings are the best alternative, and we'll continue to rate ourselves using the RSACi guidelines. But we also feel that different rating systems are necessary to cover different types of sites. For example, sites that carry news stories cannot be accurately rated under the RSACi standards. These were created to allow parents to block sites with nudity, sex, violence, and offensive language. But what happens when you visit a news site that publishes pictures from a war zone depicting death and destruction? Or a legitimate news story about an online scam involving pornography sites? Microsoft faces this dilemma: its Internet Explorer supports PICS but several of the rating systems unintentionally block access to its news site, MSNBC. Because of situations like these, we feel that bona fide news sites should be subject to different criteria. To that end, CNET is also a founding member of the Internet Content Coalition, which seeks to establish ratings for news sites and to make sure that only real news organizations claim this privilege. Users can then choose to allow access to news while selecting another rating system like RSACi that prohibits access to other kinds of sites. We intend to use the Internet Content Coalition's guidelines to rate NEWS.COM, while other of our sites, such as GAMECENTER.COM, will be rated using more restrictive systems. The success of any self-rating and filtering system depends on how well it works and how it's accepted and used. What's your opinion? Do you use filtering software? Should news sites have a separate rating? Email me and I'll put the responses in my next column. Christopher Barr is editor in chief of CNET. ###