From: "Phillip M. Hallam-Baker" <hallam@w3.org>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 00:16:50 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Vexatious Litigants  (was: SurfWatch)
Message-ID: <199603111547.KAA14991@bb.hks.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
> 
> From:   IN%"stewarts@ix.netcom.com"  "Bill Stewart" 10-MAR-1996 04:29:37.67
> 
> >Presumably, almost nobody in Europe is going to add these silly Yankee
> >rating labels to their web pages, except a few commercial content providers
> >who want to sell advertising or services into markets that block
> >un-rated web pages.  So schoolkids behind rating-mandatory sites
> >will have to ask their teachers why the "World-Wide-Web" is just American ---
> >"It's got All 50 States, Johnny!"   <Exonive deleted>!
> 
>         The WWW consortium is approaching European governments about their
> rating system - the one found at SafeSurf.
>         -Allen

Disclaimer: I don't work on PICS and I don't speak for the consortium.

Actually the European govts are far more likely to see labels being
used. In the US a piece of crackpot legislaion has been passed which
has some clearly unconstitutional parts. The ban on abortion related 
speach for example which the justice dept isn't going to defend in
any way. I expect that the Exon amendment will eventually be ruled
unconstitutional through being overbroad. The problem is that it is
difficult to get people to do something voluntarily after ordering them
to do so and being overuled by the courts.

This is the kind of small minded, foot stomping politics that the
US congress is famous for worldwide. 


In Europe the governments tend to be more aware of their impotence. There
is also much less hysteria about kids seing pornography, the main concern
is violence and in particular amoral US TV shows for kids, the sort where
people beat each other up but nobody ever gets hurt. In France one can
buy hard core porn in the supermarket. The govt. is far more concerned 
about foreign language material.


The whole point about PICs is that it is not bound to a single rating
scheme. I had a go at producing a spec for a rating scheme back in '94 
but gave up since life is too short to waste. The Web is decentralised
and anyone can set up shop in it. Now we have a scheme in which anyone 
can set up a rating scheme.

So we will have the kook brigade filtering out material on evolution
and the concerned parents preventing their five year olds from viewing
the alt.tv.very.scary gifs. Actually this is the main point of the 
exercise. I can't think of any system which is going to defeat determined
14+ kids from finding porn but its a bit easier to stop the 7 and unders
from accidentially seeing stuff that will give them nightmares.


		Phill
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