I do not believe that PICS is a form of censorship, except for those people - children and employees - whose computing environment is beyone their direct control and who have to live with a browser that filters based on PICS labels. For much, much more on the Internet content regulation debate, see my WWW site. PICS is basically an excellent idea in my view. It provides a means of child protection which is not censorship of the net or censorship of sources of information. It is also useful for other things. However I don't beleive it is practical or desirable to insist that all people use PICS and a particular value system to label their WWW material - there is likely to be no suitable value system which is adequate in all situations. - Robin
From: stewarts@ix.netcom.com Date: Wed, 04 Dec 1996 22:23:04 -0800 To: cypherpunks@toad.com Subject: W3C Picks PICS for Censorship
W3C ISSUES PICS AS A RECOMMENDATION; PICS READY FOR WIDESPREAD ADOPTION; ENABLING USERS TO FILTER INTERNET CONTENT WITHOUT CENSORSHIP - The World Wide Web Consortium today endorsed the Platform for Internet Content Selection specifications as a W3C Recommendation. This Recommendation represents the W3C's highest "Stamp of Approval." It signifies that PICS specifications are stable ... [Business Wire, 854 words]
# Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk # (If this is posted to cypherpunks, I'm currently lurking from fcpunx, # so please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)
. Robin Whittle . . http://www.ozemail.com.au/~firstpr firstpr@ozemail.com.au . . 11 Miller St. Heidelberg Heights 3081 Melbourne Australia . . Ph +61-3-9459-2889 Fax +61-3-9458-1736 . . Consumer advocacy in telecommunications, especially privacy . . . . First Principles - Research and expression - music, . . music industry, telecommunications . . human factors in technology adoption. . . . Real World Interfaces - Hardware and software, especially . . for music .