Whoops! I mentioned the "linking to a page that links to a page..." problem without noticing that Joseph Sokol-Margolis had already brought it up. Maybe pornography is not in the page (or resource) but in the browser. For example, I have a "pornography enabled" browser, because I can use it to access pornopages. What if I set up a browser for my child that saw a smaller view of the net that did not include pornopages. That browser would not be "pornography enabled". The limited view could be created from some combination of lists of OK sites & pages, lists of off-limits sites & pages, and certification requirements for those in between (virtual OK lists). I have seen the off-limits lists in association with some blocking products. Frank Stuart wrote,

And then there's the problem of URLs not being static. What may be a perfectly innocuos link one day may turn into something not perceived as harmless the next.

The blocking (off-limits) lists are then always behind and flawed. Better OK lists might be created by the list publisher having contractual commitments from the site owner. A virtual OK list publisher would publish the key for verifying approved pages that have built-in certs. This would provide the better probability that the browser was not pornography enabled. A page would not show if it had been changed. A problem to be solved would be doing this with minimal psychological time costs to the user. Another is making sure that getting certs would not be such a pain that only a few sites would be on the virtual OK list. Of course, I would not want my kids under 10 to see certain ideological pages and there might not be a market to justify certs. I would have to make my own list or get a cheap blocking list or something from the major-group-with-same-ideological-bent-as-dar ftp site. Dar =========================================================== Dar Scott Home phone: +1 505 299 9497 Dar Scott Consulting Voice: +1 505 299 5790 8637 Horacio Place NE Email: darscott@aol.com Albuquerque, NM 87111 dsc@swcp.com Fax: +1 505 898 6525 http://www.swcp.com/~correspo/DSC/DarScott.html ===========================================================