From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 17:37:02 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Vexatious Litigants  (was: SurfWatch)
Message-ID: <199603100912.BAA18270@ix4.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>From:	IN%"janzen@idacom.hp.com"  "Martin Janzen"  9-MAR-1996 09:48:42.59
>>ObCrypto, sort of:  What if the page were retrieved through an HTTP
>>proxy which, unbeknownst to the author (and the filtering service/SW),
>>deliberately removes or alters the PICS-Label or other rating
>>information?  

Sure, you could probably write http://www.g-rated.com/.
At least with movie ratings, the MPAA has trademarked the G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17
ratings so that producers can't self-rate their own movies (though they
can self-rate them as X.)  But you could delete the ratings.

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>!

>> Must Web authors now add a digital signature to each page (including its
rating
>> info), to prevent tampering? 

Tamper-proofing is a far more general issue than just ratings.
Most of the tampering today is either political protest (the see-your-
favorite-web-pages-after-censorship site), quasi-silliness 
(the Great Web Canadianizer, eh?), or advertising addition from commercial sites
or deletion from de-commercialization software.
Imagine if your movie rating web page gets linked up by some studio-owned
web site (www.disney.not/reviews/siskel+ebert/Rocky23 says "Two Thumbs Up!"
"Rave!")
Or your stock picking service gets arbitraged a bit on fast.make.money.com.
Or the ExonOnLine webserver starts deleting all links to unrated pages
from pages it serves.

If you don't need it now, you'll need it soon enough.

#--
#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281
# "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened
# to halt the growth of Internet use.  [...] Government control of news media 
# generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and
# social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who
# exceed the permissable."  - US government statement on China...