From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 08:27:34 +0800
To: "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." <reagle@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: misunderstandings of PICS
In-Reply-To: <9605072131.AA20062@rpcp.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <199605081817.LAA02530@netcom7.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>
>>well, in any case the idea that there should ever be any pressure
>>of page designers to include certain tags I find wholly inconsistent
>>with the original PICS proposal and rather abhorrent. unfortunately
>>it may be unavoidable.
>
>        I understand at one level, but not the visceral response.
>

I see I should have been even more specific. what I mean is that
I think it is great to encourage page writers to include tags. what
I find somewhat abhorrent is pressure on them to include particular
tags that imply certain kinds of judgements. in other words, yes,
please use the tags. but don't pressure individuals by sending them
nasty email, "you should have included a sex: 10 tag in your page
and you didn't!! your page clearly has a sex: 10 value!! how can
you not do this!! I am going to email your administrator!! I hope
you get kicked out of cyberspace!!"

>>I am not against self-ratings, I'm just saying that they seem to
>>be the area most ripe for being misunderstood by the public, or
>>lead to undesirable situations, and this is already happening.
>
>        Then we should help educate the public. I dislike dumbing the net
>down for the masses.

me too. but as the cyberangels demonstrate, the public can easily
misunderstand virtually anything, esp. well written technical
proposals, and it takes a lot of effort to create a presentation
that is free of ambiguity.
>
>        The real question here -- as far as the public having a fit -- is
>the use of digital signatures in the labels. I expect we will not see
>signatures used in the first generation of label services or ?compliant?
>browsers. Just like ecommerce, it takes a break or catastrophe to get people
>to move in a constructful manner on the security front. 

yes, it is a bit disappointing how slowly digital signatures are catching
on in some ways and the herculean effort it will take to implement it
nicely.

this problem was particularly difficult with the rating system, because
you have multiple signatures: a signature by the creator and by the rater.
the rater signs not only his rating but links that signature to a
document signed by the author. (a sort of recursive signing.)

furthermore in electronic documents you often have pieces that are
altered and theoretically have to be signed by the transit mechanisms,
such as headers in email messages or newsgroup posts.

to fully implement digital signatures well in cyberspace
will be far from trivial. in some ways we don't have a very
robust ground to build on. for example, even though mail headers
are supposedly standardized there is still a lot of variation in the
way some clients treat the different fields (trivial example: not
correctly interpreting the reply-to, errors-to, etc.)