SirMoby, the idea isn't for a tag that applies to porn only. Think bigger, but in a small way:

The tag is a requirement of ALL websites. ALL types. They have to rank them like TV - from G to X (or whatever it is). Make it a legal requirement for websites, and more importantly,make it a legal requirement of a browser to handle those tags (and to not display any page that isn't coded).

It wouldn't be an adult only solution at all... and it would put the net on a more even footing with cable TV / pay per view.

Alex

Well Bill - we're not quite that bright :D

And just to nail my colours to the mast - .kid and a small levy on all other domain buyers (to finance the administration and promotion thereof) - is my silver bullet solution to all of this rubbish.

I was once told by the Governor of Alabama (Fob James, who the fuck has a name like "Fob"???) that the Constitution of the United States does NOT apply to the state of Alabama on the subject of prayer in school. I guess he was implying that it was written for NYC liberals. LMAO.

That's the mentality we need to think like.

I understand this perfectly. Most adult webmasters will understand this and in the perfect world it could work. Are you thinking past the proposal stage and how the opponents are going to react?

The issue is not a matter of whether you and I understand it but a matter of how congress, the media and voters understand it. They will see the word "adult" and forget all about violence, hate and other types of adult material and only think about sex.

Unless the label specifically says "Adult Violence", "Adult Hate", "Adult Drugs", "Adult Etc...." the media will make out the label "Adult" to just be for sexual material. It makes for a much more interesting story and it also keeps them from having to label any content on their own websites.

I know it's for labeling many things but they will make it out to be for just sex and that means they don't have to label anything and the label for us won't go far enough.

Is anyone here thinking past the technology and into the negotiation stage of this proposal?

At the end of the day Moby, the idea is to keep children away from adult things. "adult hate" and "adult drugs" and "adult pony rides" are all adult. If you are over 18, you can drink, you can die in a war, you can look at hate material, and you can enjoy porn.

Adult is adult is adult, I think.

The idea is everyone has to label. Not just adult sites... ALL sites. If you have a website, you have to label, the same way all TV shows have to rate, even if they are childrens shows. It isn't to great a ghetto of adult sites and nothing else. If you don't do this sort of thing, people will just build adult sites without the rating and say "fuck it". Everyone has to forced in, and then it is all good.

Alex

Why are you debating me on a point where we both agree?

Think past this arguement and onto the stage of pushing it through congress. Why shouldn't they simply say that "Adult" is only about sexual material? If they do then it makes for a great news story, keeps them from ever having to label their own sites and gets the support of voters.

Stop arguing with me on the issue of all sites. It's a waste of energy since we both agree.

Please start thinking about the politicians, the media and Hollywood. They will all push for the rating system to only be used for sexual material so none of them have to label anything.

While I agree that dumbing down and mollycoddling isn't cool, the sad fact is that people are stupid, and to teach them how to do something for themselves isn't always as easy as you would expect. I could be wrong, I'm pretty jaded and cynical. The fact also remains that computers aren't all purchased by adults for themselves. Perhaps have an option for the parents to add a "kid safe default" when they are selecting all the gizmos to add to their computer they are buying at dell.com or something. That way if grandma technophobe wanted to buy little jimmy a computer for his birthday, it would be easy. It would already be kid safe. But, you are right. If you bought it you should have say.

Still, I'm not arguing with you, I don't like things being dumbed down. For instance, I don't think wearing seatbelts should be a law. And I also think that your insurance company shouldn't be responsible for injuries received from not wearing one. Same goes for motorcyle helmets, but that's just an example. I'm big on accountability for ones self, and for those you are responsible for. So, we are on the same page, to a degree.

But, as Sir Moby and Raw Alex are pointing out, the political nonsense that would surround establishing a standard is mind boggling. Considering the political climate in the US right now, nothing seems simple, straight forward, and sensible. It's very frustrating.

No, I think that the TV industry and movie industry have already blazed the path and set the standards. Hollywood and the other media also understand and have long since accepted (grudgingly, with issues) the current rating system. I would rather be part of that big whole, rather than being the oddballs on the corner.

Alex

Careful, remember the movie and the TV industry ARE NOT self rating. All movies and TV shows must be submitted to a "ratings board" where the rating is assigned to them. I'm sure no one wants to submit every page of HTML they create to a ratings board, and wait for that board to come back with the appropriate tag to be inserted into their code. Also news programming and sports on TV are not rated (because of the real time issue) which creates some more interesting scenerio's with the V-chip and rating system. Things like children can watch a boxing match where the violence is real but they can not watch a movie like "Raging Bull" where the violence is staged.|crazy|

The even bigger issue that we havent even begun to address is compliance. There is no way to force compliance without an international agreement and you think we all have a hard time agreeing.

I personally can see the headlines now....US outlaws all porn production and sales....In an unrelated story, Canadian immigration levels at record high....6 months later. US send cruise missiles in to destroy Canadian data centers. Most porn found in US coming from Canadian sources.:D

Walrus, if the requirement in law is "page must be rated, browsers may not display a page unless rated" compliance is about 100% by default. If no page can be seen without a rating, every page will have a rating. Pretty simple.

Yes, I know some people will be out there with ratings disabled browsers and whatnot, but the reality is MOST of the people we target for this sort of thing (parents with children surfing) would be the ones using it, only a few l33ts would bother to go around it, and that is pretty much unavoidable.

US cannot outlaw porn production, even the current AG has admitted that much of the current porn is protected free speech, it would be pretty hard to move back away from such a statement.

Alex

well thats very funny you say that about the rating, because thats how it works in holland, we dont have an Vchip in the telly, easy thinking we have porn on every channel at some time, what the netherlands did was getting an rating system for the movies for porn, violence, they put an age on every program and movie, only it are the parents who have to watch that, so if a movie is getting on telly we will see an mesage before what age is right to watch the movie, so all the responsability is at the parents, what i dont like is, that they say age 6 and i see sex scenes which are not for small people age of 6, holland use rating, all ages, 6 , 12 and 16 years old i believe,. damn a Vchip will never work here.

That was meant tongue in cheek to hopefully get a little laugh...and here I thought I was funny!

As far as compliance, the assumption you seem to be under is that the US is a large enough market and that the market will in fact force compliance. Perhaps it is.

In my mind, compliance is more along the lines of you rate your page as R when it is in fact X rated, technically if it is just a US law, there aint shit that can be done and I hear you LL owners bitch almost daily about submitters who cant seem to find the right category. Who's to agree, that what you think is adult, I think is restricted or vice versa. A self rating systems will never be acceptable to the US govt., IMHO. Especially since it actually works to industries benifit. With the system you all describe, we only get qualified traffic.

Despite how commonsensical (that's a word right?) a V-Chip may seem IMHO here's a few reasons why you just might as well take a deep breath and move on.

Some of you are old enough to remember just how long it took to get the V-Chip into hardware. It or some version of it was bandied about FOREVER (at least a decade). Hardware is made for an international market now. Imagine a government calling for an inclusion of the ability to have a V-Chip also block political material. Software solutions are always preferred to hardware ones. They're also quicker to implement. The biggest reason though is because everything wants to be smaller now. There is no room that any manuf. wants to give up to the space of a v-chip on their boards. They will fight it to their last dying breathe.

Get ahead of the curve and I’m thinking self regulated is better. By agreeing to a term of meta tag performance and definition one can give the government(s) a smaller target to narrow upon.

You know, after reading cd34's comments, I'm wondering why this has to be an either/or proposition.

What's wrong with a meta tag AND ICRA label? Double your money. We can say: Hey! Look how good we are. We've even got TWO different methods of keeping kids off our site. One's simple a simple big red flag, and the other is for people who want to be more specific about what content they're offering.

Because the PR aspect is MORE important than the actual action we take.

My opinion:

If we could get the SEs (primarily Google) to stop displaying results for keywords like "porn" that didn't have a "Restricted" Meta rating tag most of the world would fall into line in the space of a few months, and G would have even more ground to stand on when telling the DOJ to shove their subpeona up their asses. It would then be up to the browsers to start supporting filtering via the tag, and they'd start looking pretty bad since any move like this from Google would generate worldwide media attention.

Simple and clean.

If we're worried about kids finding porn on the internet, I'd be willing to bet that 99% of underage surfers looking for porn look to the SEs for it.

Hmmm, and I wonder if a Jerry Falwell rant about the dangers of porn would be blocked out by such a filter as well. If someone is searching for the 700 club view on porn, and porn is a keyword, and the meta isn't restricted... Ahhh, one can only dream, right?

Casualties of war :D

This is where I tend to believe we will end up, that is, using both.

The PICS/icra tag without the simple and obvious meta tag is too weak, because parents and politicians can't make any sense of the PICS tag.

We need the simple and obvious meta tag for political credibility.

If people want to add the PICS/icra tag too, what could be the harm?

Me? Well, folks, I make X-Rated porn pages, there is no ambiguity there, for me it's a simple ON/OFF proposition. No kids should ever be on my pages, and adults should only be on my pages if they want to see hard pornography.

So, I don't see any need to put the weaker PICS tag (PICS is the standard that the ICRA website uses to generate the code in it's registration process.) on my websites.

But if other people do want to make pages that qualify for the weaker PICS/icra ratings more power to them.

No doubt!

BULLETIN!

Hope you're not all getting wore out talking about this but here's something that might affect the dicussion.

I've found out that the official position of the FSC is to be against and fight ANY mandatory tagging standards.

WHY? Because mandatory tags could somewhere down the line allow the blocking of materials at the ISP level. Can you imagine a "Christian" or "Parents Network" ISP company starting up to address this perceived market need based on mandatory tagging?

Initially I was a bit skeptical of this but in the last twenty four hours I've completely changed my mind to be in agreement.

WHY? I know you've all heard on the news today that cable and phone companies are floating the idea of making Google/Yahoo et al pay for access to the subscribers. This is outrageous of course but take the possibilities to their logical conclusion and its not a pretty picture.

Things that make you go Hmmmmm!

This is kind of old news. Many Christian groups have been pushing cable for years to offer teired programing packages that include only family style programs. I think it was MSNBC that had one of their 10 minutes chats about extending this to ISPs a couple weeks ago.

The FSC expressed interest in promoting AVS. Anyone with 1/2 a brain can easily understand that AVS is not possible until all governments issue some type ID that's computer readable. Law forms with ties to free speech are trying to patent AVS technologies that won't work but they're telling congress they will.

If all content has to be labeled then I'm fine with it. Parents want to signup with a Christian ISP that blocks all adult content then I'm OK with that. If they don't want want adult material in their homes then I don't really want them on my sites any way. It will cut down on free loaders and not have a huge impact on sales.

60% of my sales come from over seas and that won't be effected at all.

States and cities won't be allowed to block all adult content as it is an infringment on Free Speech. If parent or school wishes to do that then that's their choice and I want to help them. They're not buying any way.

All moves to AVS systems will fail because nobody wants to be the regulating body of who is adult and who is not. The credit card companies have already said "it's not our job".

AVS systems that require burdensome paperwork or restictions that cannot be easily used by all. You cannot restrict it to require a driver's license, example, because there are adults without a drivers license. You cannot restrict it by SSN, as you can get an SSN number before you are 18.

Requiring an enabling action by a third party (asking your ISP to permit you access to adult material) would have the effect of limiting the permitted free speech (adult material) because many people would not ask to have it turned on because of embarrassment. It is the very heart of the reason why online porn is preferred by many over video rental places.

The whole AVS thing is a ruse that misleads the government into giving a long period of time for a system to be developed and implemented, and with the inherent legal battles that would come with it, is unlikely to come around the bend any time soon, IMHO.

AVS systems would also fail the "US versus the world" test, which would have the effect of moving porn offshore, where the AVS would not apply. The amount of free porn would not drop, just the country of origin. It doesn't come close to meeting the governments primary objective.

Alex

If AVS will actually keep minors out is not really the issue at hand.

The FSC has members that are pushing for an AVS. They made comments to the Senate about AVS. A very well respected free speech law firm is patenting an AVS technology.

http://birthdateverifier.com/
http://www.firstamendment.com/protecting_banner.php3

Currently only 2 technologies exist to keep minors away from porn. Labeling and AVS. We know that AVS will never work but we know that there's a huge amount of money in technology patents.

DJilla posted some concern about labeling. I was expressing that I'm OK with labeling and if we don't purpose something soon we may end up with an AVS because there will be big bucks in it.

We can argue about the issues with AVS all day long. While we're doing that we're not pushing a labeling system that will work and others are pushing forward with their AVS proposals.

No argument from me at all. However, if we feel that AVS isn't the best solution or that FSC is pushing a solution that we don't think is right, is it not our job to stand up and say "NO"?

Alex

and to yell, scream and stomp our feet if necessary. |thumb

...and that would be a bad thing? Why? As long as there is an available ISP in an area that does carry all content, I personally see no problem. That's what a free market is all about.

Second, this is a very bad sign and shows just how out of touch the FSC really is. They are trying to push us into a direction that I don't think anyone of us wants to go and thats with an AVS system.

Finally, let me say that I have lost all faith in the FSC as being someone to help us with this. According to Tom Hymes, he was going to ask for our input before anything went public.

Never going to happen. In fact, if the cable and phone companies push it, it could go just the opposite direction on them.

I'd like to hear that from the horses' mouth, though if it's true, then I'd be weary of backing the FSC on the site-labeling issue. If they prize freedom of speech above protecting kids, then they are way too liberal for my taste.

IMHO FSC is the only org that HAS been helping us and is our best bet for the future. I'm willing to check out other links to groups that are suggested though.

Absolutely true, still going to happen. My update post was based on merely historical research I've been doing on past positions and activity.

Actually this is what I thought re: Public funded WiFi networks too. But its happened all over the USA. If you don't know what I'm talking about:

http://www.networkworld.com/columnis...hnson.html?prl

I use tags and I do like the elegance of the solution (I'm not too scared by all the AVS hyperbole probably should be though) tags are still a great idea for filters and responsible WM's should use them. I think the position is more clearly stated that the government should not use ADULT as a platform for restricting speech. Let mom and dad do it.

I'm truly interested in this fight from a libertarian point of view not just because I happen to peddle porn. I am loathe to give governments the easy ability to filter expression. I am very admiring of Chinese dissidents who are doing hard time for posting a msg about political corruption. The web has to be free and protected from encroachment by power brokers and I can only be proud that "adult" is on the leading edge of this fight. All you WM's are REALLY important to this an should be proud too. No matter what country your from I'm thinking you have a better chance with a free internet than one which will be modified real time by politics or religion.

Personally, I'd like to see this go somewhere back to where it started with Tommy's thread. What I had hoped would be the start of a "grass roots" movement. I'd like to see "us" do many of the things that I think we're looking toward the FSC to do.

I've seen in Tommy's thread people volunteer domain names and hosting. I'd take that a step further and I'd volunteer to setup a CMS and get it looking good. Also, setup RSS feeds for the blog and news sections and make sure they get submitted to all the news services and regularly pinged. But, I'm graphicly challenged so someone would need to volunteer to develop a logo and some banners.

The question is are there people willing to post their stories on the blog? Are there people willing to create articles for the news sections? Are there people willing to rebutt things like this http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=28891 and the CNN report that came out saying don't surf porn when it was an e-mail attachment that spread the virus? Are there people willing to research where senators and congressmen in their home state stand on matters of importance to US and do write-ups that can be posted? Who's going to reach out on the other boards to get others involved? Is there someone who we trust to set up a fund for donations not only from webmasters but from surfers because in the end money is power?

I think we can go a long way to combatting a lot of the porn myth's if we are simply more visible. Put a human face to the "porn monger".

If we do some, or all of these things, then yes, we have some power. Otherwise, we can sit silent or help further the ambitions of the FSC who's stance to date, publicly is not in our best interest. I think we have the best chance of helping us!

But what the fuck do I know.

I will say that as mention here or elsewhere, it would be great to get PICS to support a short / limited tag "content = adult" or "content = restricted" or similar, along with their longer, more detailed tags. That would certainly give them a leg up on being the system of choice.

Finding a way to force the responsibility back onto the people providing access (illegally, I might add) to porn is important. Those people are the parents and other adults who allow children to access the net unmonitored and unfiltered. It is no different from buying penthouse magazines and then leaving them in your kid's lunchbox.

We as an industry can only do so much - the enablers need to take their responsilbity.

Alex

walrus, attempts to organize webmasters have always failed in the past. Perhaps it could happen now but that has yet to be proved.

There are advantages in allying with an existing organization.

The problem with trying to 'do it ourselves' is the same problem that, for the moment, delays the creation of a position document.

It's the problem of "Who Bell's The Cat?".

A position document is only as valuable as the number of people who can find it, read it, remember it, and take it seriously.

A position document hosted by unkown webmasters won't be found, read, remembered, and taken seriously. It would probably be excellent practice, tho, and we need all the practice we can get.

But, if you can figure out ways to get around that problem, who knows what might happen.

You're confusing PICS with ICRA.

PICS is merely a framework that is implemented with a policy definition language. ICRA is the one with the gazillion tags that uses the PICS framework.

Go to this page, create a label, they need an email address, so, make sure you have one that doesn't bounce. With that email, they send you an RDF file that includes your definitions.

http://www.icra.org/label/generator/

Then, in each page of HTML put:




If you have access to setting mod_headers, the following will tag ANY file requested from your site -- graphics, videos, etc even if they are hotlinked.

http://www.icra.org/systemspecification/

If you don't want to go through the pain of defining your own ICRA tags, I have attached labels.txt. Edit the one location that says domain.com and rename it labels.rdf and put it at the root of your website.

With those two changes, I believe that you can honestly say that you have made a best effort attempt to clearly label your sites as adult content.

It works now, its probably supported by the search engines, it is supported by the safesearch tools today. Pretty much a done issue.

Now we just have to get the word out.

I agree completely, though I'd expect the following response, and this has been discussed elsewhere:

1. We don't want to give control to a third party. ANSWER: Modify the rdf files and you can rid of any dependence on ICRA.org.
2. rdf file / label is too big. ANSWER: The meta tag is no longer than a keyword tag and the rdf file is no bigger than a 50x50 thumbnail image.
3. We don't want to register 10000 times to label our sites. ANSWER: One time registration, one RDF file.
4. We want a simple tag. ANSWER: Push for a simpler tag; in the meantime, use what already works.
5. Using what "already works" is an endorsement of a faulty labeling system and giving over control to a third-party organization

In other words, what Paul Cambria said recently before a US Senate committee is accurate.

Connor Young: What he should have explained to Senator Stevens is that most legitimate adult websites do in fact label their content, usually with the ICRA labeling system, and that if a parent makes use of existing browser controls in Internet Explorer, all of these labeled websites will be automatically blocked. Instead, and to my utter disbelief, Mr. Cambria told Senator Stevens that adult businesses do not label their websites, but that, gee whiz, perhaps they ought to start!

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:...s&ct=clnk&cd=1

Maybe we should write some letters and send some email to Paul Cambria?

I've always thought of Cambria as a video lawyer, but if he's gonna speak for the onliners maybe we onliners should send him something to speak about?

Halfdeck, please let me answer:

1 - RDF files are a patch on a kludge on a tack on. Doesn't matter what's in them, they are an extra step in what should be a simple system.
2 - There would be no simple system for checking (and rechecking) RFD files for every sites submitted to a link list. They could put up a "we are porn" tag today, and as soon as they are listed change it to "safe for kids". I don't think anyone wants to have to re-write bots to try to figure out what is in a seperate file.
3 - you have to re-register each domain (or modify the files) for each use. Registration is pointless if you register only one domain and never mention the rest.
4 - If you use what already works (not really) then you are endorsing it and making a simpler solution less likely.
5 - What Conner Young failed to do was look at the millions and millions of pages, galleries, free sites, paysites, and blogs out there with no tags and the thousands upon thousands of webmasters who have no intention of endorsing a system that creates hassle and extra administrion.

Some american webmasters still don't have valid 2257 information, or have the 2257 pointing to a mailboxes etc or a po box in an office building. That is with a major threat of jail and huge fines. Do you really think we can do better on a volunteer system that is just way more complicated than it needs to be?

Alex

I know all to well the difficulties of putting a organization together of independant people/thinkers. On the otherhand, I, personally, am not going to crawl in bed (or put my hopes in) an organization that to date all public positions go against what I believe is in my best interest and I know that's a very broad statement and that the FSC does do some very good things but their public position on the things we are discussing are not in line with my views.

Also, and maybe this is just me, but back when the "big 2257" scare happened, I personally felt blackmailed by the FSC's statement that only members would be covered. Perhaps that was even legally correct but the presentation, as I recieved it felt different.

A position paper on a website alone probably wouldn't do very much good but...something that was a)informative and timely on current affairs, b)historical and factual, and c) put a human touch to us that was updated by everyone and kept fresh would be valuable as it could be extremely easy to find, interesting and educational.

Maybe I'm kidding myself, but the shear volume of adult webmasters who could incorporate the feeds in any of the news reader services and / orplaces like my yahoo and mymsn on Google and AOL would draw some interest / attention.

ICRA is not really difficult with their wizard. Perhaps it is too granular, but, check all the boxes and make it generic and use it across all of your sites. They have gone through the headaches and hassles to work through integration and documented things very well on their site and created a pretty easy to use wizard. The major reason I think that ICRA tags should be supported is that the 3 major kidblocker software solutions all use ICRA (and even Microsoft's IE supports ICRA tags).

Whether the system is faulty or not, it exists today. It addresses the public opinion issue today. If you introduce a new system, everyone will take time to rationalize it, decide why it is better or worse, and finally start implementing it. Lets say that you're talking 18 months to get everyone to agree and implement. What legislation could be passed in 18 months if there is no forward progress? How long do you think it would take to come up with a simple tag that everyone agreed upon, convince the search engines to use it, convince the browsers to use it, convince the parents to use it? You have that already with the rating=restricted tag and yet, a quick scan of 2000 pages tells me that about 87% of the sites are not tagging. That tag has been in use since 97 or so.

I am certainly not a fan of Cambria and his stumbles in front of the senate certainly did more harm than good. But, perhaps as a group we can put something together as a recommendation that says:

We've looked at the issue, we've developed the following 'best practices' list which we would advise all sites, FSC members or not to follow. It is what we are going to follow because we've determined it to address the issues now rather than waiting for it to be legislated.

If the FSC receives something pointed like that, which has supporting documentation, recommendations, endorsements and even preliminary adoption of a solution that works today that cuts the time to implement any future decided system dramatically, I cannot see how they wouldn't pass that along as suggestions to the rest of their members.

Perhaps the FSC isn't operating in our best interest -- perhaps they don't know they aren't. Bill has the right idea -- someone needs to step up as a liason with them and hash out the issues. But, from where I am sitting right now, I still firmly believe that using a system today that some see as faulty is better than waiting to implement until the perfect solution is available.

RawAlex, ICRA does not keep a record of domains. All it does is generate WC3-compliant PIC files...and these file are identical except one line that mentions the domain name used in *registering* with ICRA.