Why PICS is the wrong approach

[Joseph M. Reagle Jr.]

At 11:51 PM 12/12/96 EDT, E. Allen Smith wrote:
  >	Umm... I pointed out a while back the considerable problems with
  >the RSAC attempt at objective ratings. See

	I agree that it is not a purely descriptive system, however it is much
moreso than others. I thought the following was a useful breakdown for my
own purposes:

Caveat on Vocabulary
Before proceeding with the analysis we must first discuss some of the terms
used in the analysis. The usage of terms "objective" and "judgmental" can
be rather contentious. To address this, we disassociate any of these terms
with any pejorative meanings ( opinionated gut feelings about Web content
can be very useful ) and posit  that there are three variables with which
content labeling systems can be considered: 

descriptive/judgmental - does the label describe the content, or provide an
opinion about the "appropriateness" of the content.

deterministic/non-deterministic - is the previous process a deterministic
process, or is it "gut" based, and 

voluntary, mandatory, or third party - does the author label his works
voluntarily, is he required to label his works by some other agency, or can
other services label his content.

No rating system we discuss is purely descriptive or deterministic. Rather,
each system varies with respect to where it falls between extremes.

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