There are several swirling proposals for "rating" of Internet packets, Usenet articles, Web pages, and perhaps other computer-communicated items. There are also things like the "V-Chip," included as part of the Telecommunications Act. (The V-Chip is ostensibly a "voluntary self-rating" scheme, with an included mandate that government will give industry a year or so to come up with a plan.) I foresee major legal challenges to mandatory ratings of content. Issues involving prior restrain, censorship, and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I'm interested in hearing about any _actual_ examples where a government body in the United States has mandated that intellectual property (roughly, written words, magazines, motion pictures, CDs, etc.) be "rated" or "age-labelled." Before anyone out there fires up his "Reply" and tells us about movie ratings, magazine warning labels, and the like, read on. To forestall a couple of likely examples some will cite, let me discuss a few oft-cited cases: 1. Movie ratings. The familiar "G," "PG," "R," and "NC-17." (Used to have "M" for "Mature," and "X" for, well, X-rated stuff.) In actuality, these ratings are _not_ mandated by law, and are done by the MPAA, the Motion Picture [something] Association. There may be serious legal charges brought if, say, a 10-year-old child was let into a showing of "Debbie Does Fort Meade," but this would be after the fact and would presumably involve negligence charges of some sort (contributing to the delinquency of a minor, child abuse, etc.). (A parallel to this is ordinary speech to a child. While speech is not required to be rated, there might well be various sanctions applied to an adult who spoke to a child in various indecent or obscene or "patently offensive" ways. I'm not saying whether I endorse this, and it would depend on just what was said, but the point is that there is no "rating" system for speech imposed, nor would the Constitution admit one.) We may speculate that had the movie industry not adopted "voluntary ratings" in the 1960s, government may have tried to impose ratings, but the fact is that government did NOT impose content ratings. (The important point being that we cannot look to how the movie situation evolved for hints about how Internet packets or articles might be rated.) Note also that the MPAA ratings are not "self-ratings," but are done by a panel of MPAA representative. Many film directors have been very angry over the MPAA ratings they received, and would not have rated their films as the MPAA panel did. There are then local ordinances about allowing children in to see "R" or "NC-17"-rated movies, but this is a case where the government piggybacks on the "private" ratings service (which could raise some important constitutional issues if it was ever seriously challenged, which seems unlikely). This MPAA situation is an important example because it is neither "self-rating" nor "government" rating, but is, instead, something else. This model would be extremely hard to apply to the Internet, as there is no similar body to the MPAA, nor is there the same economic incentive for any such body to form and then to try to cope with tens of thousands (at least) of articles and pages per day.... 1A. A special case of this system is _television and radio broadcast_ of indecent material, a la the FCC's regulations about content broadcast over the airwaves at various times of the day. Cable is not regulated in the same way, though most cable systems I have seen have "adult" material in the evening hours (though definitely not confined to late evening). Lots of wrinkles here, and the FCC is attempting some regulation of some cable..."The Playboy Channel" is involved in a dispute where they are being told they can only send their channel out after certain hours...details should be accessible on the Web. I think this special case of FCC involvement covers a different set of issues than the "content" issue per se. Though this may help to explain some of the rumors about the FCC seeking a broader mandate to regulate "cyberspace," as this gives them a foot in the door to regulate content on the same basis they regulate content of broadcasts. Moving on.... 2. Magazines, as in "For Adults Only!" emblazoned on the covers. In doing my "research" for this article, I consulted my "reference materials," and discovered that such warnings are less common than I remembered them as being. Neither "Penthouse" nor "Playboy" issues that I have at hand contain any such warnings, though some other mags do. So far as I know, there is no government requirement for labelling. Again, there may be sanctions imposed for, say, selling such a magazine to a minor. I can't say as I've ever heard of a court case along these lines. Importantly, there appears to be no "ratings board" run by the government that rates such materials a priori. ("Obscenity" is not the same as pornography or nudity, as we all must know by now.) I conclude that magazines need not be labelled, voluntarily or otherwise, though there may be sanctions if children are exposed to certain materials (though this is unlikely). More to the point, it seems likely that the laws which exclude children from entering bars and strip joints are the one which would apply to keeping children out of "adult bookstores." An important point was made recently by someone on the Cypherpunks list, that some libraries make a point of providing access to _all_ materials, by _all_ patrons, including back issues of "Penthouse." So far as I know, no librarians have gone to jail for this. Moving on... 3. "Explicit Lyrics" labels on CDs and music. This one is more iffy. I recall the _proposals_ to require such labels, and Tipper Gore (wife of VP) was a leader in this campaign some years back, but I don't believe any laws were formally passed. I could be wrong. And some local jurisdictions may have such laws; I recall some part of Florida mandated a labelling law, or banned sales of explicit lyrics CDs in some way. (The "2 Live Crew" issue, with "Me So Horny" and other gems.) And none of the CDs I have seen here in California with "Explicit Lyrics" or "Parental Advisory" notices mention who did the rating, whether the lyrics are "Government Censor Approved," etc. This tongue in cheek mention of "Government Censor Approved" is an important point: any hint that a government censor is to apply ratings to written or spoken or similar materials runs smack dab into the First Amendment. This is not just an academic matter. There is no provision for a "ratings board" to review content, and such a "prior restraint" (can't publish something until it's been rated or approved) is a textbook case of prior restraint, forbidden by the First Amendment. (The H-Bomb case involving "The Progressive" was ultimately decided in favor of no prior restraint, even for such a potentially serious situation.) So, if anybody's still reading this, I am interested in _any_ examples where intellectual content (as opposed to food or drug packaging, for example) is required to be labelled. Such examples might shed some light on how these various proposals for "labelling" of Net traffic might work. And absent such examples, might show just what a tough road lies ahead for those advocating such labelling. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."