Paint Your Own Scarlet Letter (Was: Edited Edupage, 29 Feb 1996)

[E. ALLEN SMITH]

From: lmccarth at cs.umass.edu

>I couldn't resist the temptation. I rushed out and rated my home page
>as evil incarnate, at least according to the SafeSurf rating system. No
>innocent rugrats are gonna be learning anything about my work in crypto and
>symbolic computation on the web !

	I have noticed that they ask for one's URL on the page in question.
This information gathering brings to mind the question of if they plan on also
keeping some sort of database. While private rating efforst are not directly
wrongful, given the circumstances involved they may be attempting to mandate
some such (either directly or through lawsuits) via governmental pathways.

>It's, uh, interesting to note that "homosexual themes" gets a whole
>separate category from "heterosexual themes". :[

	Quite. (Incidentally, that the CyberAngels are associated with
SafeSurf, which has this distinction in their material also, gives the lie to
many of the CyberAngels' claims). I am currently in the process of writing a
response to this proposal, and will post the initial version to cypherpunks.


>Here's the reply I received after filling out the SafeSurf web form. It looks
>as though anyone can use the code below by sticking it in their HTML as
>directed:

	They supposedly have the code in question copyrighted. I suspect that
such an attempt will not be valid without changes to copyright laws, but I
am not a lawyer. (It does not appear to me, at least, to have any degree of
true and original creativity involved).
	-Allen