IMO, it's simpler than that: suppose your favorite rater (SafeForChildren, SafeForCongressCritters, SafeFor<our>Church, ...) has a PGP-style key. If they rate a page as OK for their subscribers to read, the rater signs the page with it's private key and requests the page owner to include that signature on the page. If you want to limit what you read to what they approve, you read only those pages whose signatures can be verified with the trusted rater's public key. BTW, you could put the signature verification into the WEB browser rather than the proxy and keep the overhead out in the user's PC. Would need extensions to HTML standards; e. g. <rated_by xxxyyyzzz = 0123456789abcdef_hash>. This would be the hash over the entire page _excluding_ the "rated_by portion(s) so that multiple raters could exist and interoperate. Martin G. Diehl Just my own opinion. ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: Free speech debate on MSN Encarta Author: jpb@miamisci.org (Joe Block) at Internet-USA Date: 3/24/96 4:06 PM At 8:57 PM 3/23/96, Mark M. wrote: On Sat, 23 Mar 1996, I wrote:
However, I don't think it likely that many ISPs will go this route from a liability point of view - if some parent is paying them to filter out smut, and little Zippy finds a brand new x-rated site, chances are some irate
[snip] I agree, if you're going to bother with rating pages, digitally signing the signature so that terrorist X can't just copy the "Good Clean Fun" rating code into his Phosgene formula page is the only rational solution. Gotta love that overhead, though. Joseph Block <jpb@miamisci.org> "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..." -- Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A) PGP 2048bit-Fingerprint: F8 A2 A5 15 56 42 9B 16 3F BD 57 0F 8A ED E3 21 No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.