From: geeman@best.com
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 14:12:46 +0800
To: Declan McCullagh <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Censorware Summit Take II, from The Netly News
Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970716224205.006e5034@best.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



I can't wait until the tags include information on *political* content, or
*credibility factor* (i.e. sanctioned by medai conglomerate or not) etc...

At 02:06 PM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>***********
>
>http://pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1173,00.html
>
>The Netly News (http://netlynews.com)
>July 16, 1997
>
>At The Censorware Summit
>by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
>
>     If you host a web page or publish online, be
>warned: soon your site might become invisible. Search
>engines won't index it and web browsers won't show it.
>Unless, that is, you agree to attach special labels to
>your web pages identifying how violent, sexually
>explicit, or inappropriate for kids your site is.
>
>     This was the thrust of today's White House
>censorware summit, where President Clinton sat down
>with high tech firms and non-profit groups in a
>private meeting to talk about pressuring the Net
>community to make cyberspace childsafe through labels.
>"We need to encourage every Internet site, whether or
>not it has material harmful to minors, to rate its
>contents," Clinton said after the meeting. Vice
>President Gore was there, too, giving a quick
>demonstration of how labeling works.
>
>     Spooked by the threat of a revised Communications
>Decency Act, high tech firms are seriously backing
>labels for the first time. Joining Clinton in coercing
>Internet users and businesses to label all their web
>pages were Yahoo, Excite, and Lycos. "I threw a
>gauntlet to other search engines in today's meeting
>saying that collectively we should require a rating
>before we index pages," Robert Davis, the president of
>Lycos, told me. Translation: if you don't play ball,
>and label your site, search engines will ignore you.
>
>     As will future users of Microsoft's Internet
>Explorer browser. The next version of IE will default
>to displaying only properly labeled web pages,
>according to Ken Wasch, the president of the Software
>Publishers Association. Since many users won't turn
>off that feature to reach unrated sites, many large
>web sites now are facing hefty pressure to self-label.
>
>     Other high tech firms rushed to join the
>presidential limelight. Netscape promised to join
>Microsoft and include label-reading software in the
>next version of its browser. America Online's Steve
>Case thanked Clinton for "backing industry's efforts
>to make cyberspace a safer place." IBM announced a
>$100,000 grant to RSACi, a PICS-based rating standard
>originally designed for video games but adapted for
>the Web. The industry giant also pledges to
>incorporate RSACi into future products.
>
>[...]
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