EAS

The instructions in question, at http://www.safesurf.com/cyberangels/#look, are for their "volunteers" to report - including to both the page's ISP and to government - any page with sexual content that doesn't have a PICS such that it can be censored. In other words, they want to try to kick off systems - including potentially via legal action such as nonsense like "corrupting a minor" or whatever - any pages that don't set themselves up to be censored. That would include by government such as China, as well as by fundamentalist parents.

but you still don't understand what I stated. the above does not make any sense relative to the PICS system. it would be like saying, "we are going to report anyone who doesn't have a SMTP that bans dirty email". SMTP does not ban dirty email by definition. PICS does not censor material by definition. please read the PICS proposal (sorry the URL is not handy, could someone post it?) the CyberAngels and you clearly do not understand how PICS works, even after I tried to explain what point you do not grasp that is inherent to its design. notice that you are propagating the lack of knowledge through your own message, demonstrating nicely how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing (it seems that ignorance spreads as easily or more easily than knowledge does). PICS *doesn't*involve*the*page*designer*. this is an absolutely key component of its design. it exists indepedent of page creators. if page creators are suddenly being pressured to format their pages in some way, then PICS has failed in some of its key design goals. there are some *optional* ways that page designers can invoke PICS principles as I understand, but they make no sense to me. (it would be equivalent to someone rating their own material, something I think is going to be far from the main use of ratings in the future) the basic design of early versions of PICS is the following: rating servers rate *URLS*. whenever someone wants to grab a URL, if they have installed software such as SurfWatch, that software can query the rating server for any ratings on that URL and decide to display or reject display of the page accordingly. these ratings may be made by different organizations. they may be contradictory. this is a basic part of the design of PICS. notice again this basic distinction between *mandatory rating capability* and *mandatory rating compliance*. (sorry can't think of a better term). PICS does not require the page designer to do anything, yet it still allows the rating of their information by third parties. in a sense, the concept of mandatory rating capability (such that the cyberangels seem to be talking about makes no sense relative to PICS. it already allows anything to be rated through no action or inaction of anyone. the concept of "mandatory" does not apply to anything within PICS relative to *content* of pages. the only thing that is mandatory with PICS is that rating servers follow the standards for formatting the ratings. but anything can be contained in those ratings. the market will decide. please try to understand the difference between the two things below: 1. everything in cyberspace must have the capability of being rated. 2. everything in cyberspace must be rated by government agency X, and no pages are allowed to be transferred that do not have acceptable ratings. the second is censorship. the first is free choice. the first is what PICS aims for. notice it accomplishes this through absolutely no action on the part of page designers. by the fact that they have a URL, the PICS standard uses that URL as a reference. perhaps you could do a public service to the CyberAngels to help them understand what PICS is and why they don't seem to understand its basic concepts. please, I hope that people can begin to see why PICS is *not* a censorship standard, and that it could actually be a powerful weapon in forestalling *real* censorship attempts, which always involve restrictions in actual communication not at the choice of (i.e. outside the control of) the *recipient* of that information.