From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 16:15:54 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: re: "Please get more info on PICS"
Message-ID: <199708060712.JAA23357@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



"Vladimir Z. Nuri" wrote:

> DM, JW, *please* get more info on PICS. in the early stages of its
> development, many people were interested in using the rating
> system to rate *cool* pages. that is, the same system could be
> used to point to neat content and help people navigate. therefore,
> your examples always involving censorious groups like the
> "christian coalitian" is highly misleading. have you heard
> of the "point communications" awards, surely? such a system
> would benefit immensely from the standardization of ratings that
> PICS is trying to achieve..
> 
> I urge all rabid libertarians to get a clue about what the
> rating systems are actually trying to accomplish.

There's a similar debate about whether "guns kill people" or "people
kill people"[*].  Although it's the repressive regime that actually
causes the supression, the widespread availability of rating systems
makes it easier for them to do so.

Although the PICS rating system permits diverse rating systems, in
practice the oligopoly in the browser market confines this to the
value system of the ruling elite (unquote).  Notably, the current
RSACi rating system makes no distinction between consenting sex in
marriage and paedophilia: both earn a Sex-4 rating.  Probably many
people feel the first is more acceptable than the second, but they
have no way to express this in current PICS implementations.
(http://www.rsac.org/rating_description.html)

::Boots

[*] The correct answer, by the way, is "politicians kill people"