From: IN%"jsw@netscape.com" "Jeff Weinstein" 9-MAR-1996 04:41:47.02
I predict that 6 months after the first internet rating system is widely deployed, the largest use of search engines such as altavista will be to look for pages with the most "naughty" ratings. Perhaps such services will allow text searches for free, but charge for searches based on the rating tag...
Unfortunately, AltaVista doesn't index based on comments field (in which category the SafeSurf ratings fall). Opentext, given that one supposedly can search for links to a page, may be able to do it on the other hand. Putting together a web spider that would search for such could be a profitable undertaking. I did some checking on AltaVista and found one service by the name of "Naughty Lynx" which automatically checks all of its links every hour or so - one problem with "adult-oriented" sites is that they disappear a lot. Some such feature would probably be necessary. Seems to be a good potential use of the DigiCash system, since one doesn't need merchant anonymnity that much until someone comes up with anonymous-location web pages; the Naughty Lynx system appears to support itself via advertising). Combining this with a web proxy would also be good. -Allen