From: Blanc Weber <blancw@MICROSOFT.com>
Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 08:50:38 +0800
To: "'vznuri@netcom.com>
Subject: RE: self-ratings vs. market ratings
Message-ID: <c=US%a=_%p=msft%l=RED-81-MSG-960510012559Z-23475@abash1.microsoft.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Not an extremely important point, but I just re-read my earlier message
and realized that my sentence below didn't exactly state what I meant:

	"I myself don't pay much attention to ratings, 
	as my own measures of things & people tend to be
	quite different from most, and therefore not very useful for my
purposes."

I meant that the the *ratings* would not be very useful for my purposes
(at least, not the ratings as I've heard proposed so far.)   I probably
wouldn't have the same values or concerns of those who feel the need to
apply them; I wouldn't judge the material by the same standards (raters
are looking principally to create a means to censor material, and I
myself am not concerned about passive text&graphics.  When Java applets
begin to coerce cybersurfers into complicity, I'll start worrying about
it.)

One more word about automating ratings:

The more automated that filtering becomes, so that the viewer (be it an
adult or a child) requires less and less personal involvement in
evaluating what is appropriate (or even interesting) for themselves, the
more weak & piddly (ignorant & psychologically dependent) those people
could become, falling into the habit of having others - or an automatic
robocop - do their content-filtering for them.   Not a good system to
introduce into a dynamic world-order.  Like all automatic things, it can
encourage intellectual lassitude.  Like all tools, this one can also be
misemployed.

But, of course, surfers can make a cultural decision:  sex&violence?  or
namby-pamby? :>)

    ..
Blanc
One voice among many.