Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!
Web ratings relaunched! (November 11, '00 issue)
Several of you have written in recently about Web ratings - about how there really should be a system on the Web like that of the US film industry, with G, PG, PG-13, R, and X ratings. Well, there is - in a way - but clearly it hasn't been on every parent's radar screen.
Subscriber and librarian Mindy in Michigan emailed us a thoughtful dissenting view of Web ratings: "The magnitude of the Internet is such that it would be impossible for any human or computer program to keep up with its ever-changing content…. Until there is a massive improvement in technology, rating the Web seems, to me, to be impossible."
We ran Mindy's comment by Stephen Balkam, executive director of the UK-based Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), in an interview this week. His response was, "I totally agree! What we're trying to do is not rate the Web but have a system whereby sites can self-label. We can't do what the film rating system does [actually rate all the Web sites out there]. Instead, we're putting the onus on content providers themselves to self-label, focusing on the top 1,000 sites, which constitute 80% of all Web traffic - also top children's sites and adult sites…. What we're looking for is critical mass."
This month ICRA, first launched in 1996 as RSACi (Recreational Software Advisory Council on the Internet), takes another big step toward "critical mass": "We're about to launch a totally revised and updated system toward the end of this month," Mr. Balkam told us.
He's not just talking about tweaking software. The success of a ratings system for this largely ungoverned and uncontrollable, grassroots, global medium rides on a lot of factors, players, and activities - in a bunch of countries. Certainly it requires software updates, but some of the software is owned by other organizations. Getting the companies that make the most popular Web browsers - Netscape's (AOL's) Communicator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer - to write and update their software so that it recognizes the Web ratings requires negotiation.
Negotiation is a huge part of what an international Web ratings association does - especially if it's done in the multi-community consensus-building spirit of the Internet. ICRA's process is a fascinating case study for that approach. In addition to software compatibility, ICRA also has to work on getting the browser companies, as well as its members (e.g., IBM, Bertelsmann, British Telecom), to "market" the system - raise public awareness of this online-safety tool. The system can't work if people don't know it's there to use.
And of course Web sites need to be persuaded to rate themselves; as Mindy aptly pointed out, nobody can do it for all of them (or, for that matter, for all of us parents!). One key group of Web sites that needs to be on board (in order for children to be protected) is adult Web sites. "We've been talking to a number of key people in the adult industry to get them to adoption [of Web ratings]," Balkam told us, adding that they're getting more organized now, establishing trade associations, which means someone to negotiate with.
But ICRA's smart. It's not just relying on negotiation. It's added an incentive for Web sites to rate themselves: reduced traffic if they don't. Parents using either Netscape or Explorer can easily configure the browser so that it blocks sites that aren't rated. So, as Balkam points out, increasingly, "it's in Web sites' best interests to self-label."
Then there's one more very important piece to this momentum-building puzzle: the redesign of the rating system itself. Balkam told us we'll see a number of new features in this month's relaunch, as well as some great additions a bit further down the line. Here are the lists….
At relaunch:
- New labels: The system will now alert parents to content promoting the use of alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, weapons, and hate or intolerance (in addition to sex, profanity, and violence, which were in the previous version).
- "Context modifiers": This means that, in educational, medical, and artistic subject areas, the system's getting more sophisticated, or "granular." For example, the distinction will be made between frontal nudity in art (e.g., Michelangelo's David) vs. frontal nudity at Playboy.com.
- From numbers to words: "We've moved away from the 0-4 scale," Stephen said, referring to a system that requires Web publishers to apply a numerical value indicating the amount of profanity or sex-related content (see the chart on ICRA.org's "About ICRA" page). Instead, ICRA is "moving into a labeling vocabulary" whereby a Web publisher just states whether or not the site has violence, profanity, promotion of drug use, etc., without putting any value on it. This way, Stephen said, "parents will be able to decide exactly what they want for their children - they'll have full granularity of being able to allow or not allow access to any or all material."
- Chat: With this important kids' safety feature, rated sites will be able to tell parents if they contain chat rooms and - this is key, too - whether or not they're monitored.
In the works (for next year):
All these are big improvements from a parent's perspective. They actually give browsers - software that's free to anyone - many of the same safety features of and a similar level of parental control as commercial products like filtering software and kids' browsers.
- Web site black lists and white lists: ICRA is getting the browser companies to include technology that allows parents to block sites on a black or "no" list, as well as add sites to it. Same for a "yes" or white list of, for example, great sites for kids.
- Other languages: With the help of European Union funding, the ICRA system (its questionnaire for Web sites to self-rate) will be accessible to Web sites in French, German, and Spanish.
- Film-type ratings: ICRA's talking with the US film industry about "mapping their system to our system," so Web site ratings will look familiar at least to US moviegoers.
You can see right now how to configure your browser to "read" Web ratings. Just go to ICRA.org and click on "Parents - How to Use RASCi," right in the middle of the home page (the Web site's designed in frames, so we can't give you the page's direct URL). There are instructions for Netscape Communicator 4.5x and for Internet Explorer 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0. But you might want to wait till the end of the month to see if any instructions change with the relaunch.
GetNetWise.org has a page on Web ratings that briefly describes rating technology and links to other, smaller-scale rating systems.
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