1996-12-13 - Re: Why PICS is the wrong approach

Header Data

From: “Joseph M. Reagle Jr.” <reagle@rpcp.mit.edu>
To: “E. Allen Smith” <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Message Hash: ad0d2cc312dd2a9309291e49021aa3e963f63d1b78573ac1939424087941db56
Message ID: <3.0.32.19961213001747.00937d30@rpcp.mit.edu>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1996-12-13 05:19:46 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 21:19:46 -0800 (PST)

Raw message

From: "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." <reagle@rpcp.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 21:19:46 -0800 (PST)
To: "E. Allen Smith" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Subject: Re: Why PICS is the wrong approach
Message-ID: <3.0.32.19961213001747.00937d30@rpcp.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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.

_______________________
Regards,          Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities 
                  of progress. -Thomas A. Edison
Joseph Reagle     http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html
reagle@mit.edu    E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65  BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E





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