So why is ICRA involved in a meeting if they are just a small website tool that makes tags? Who is paying the freight?

Alex

This is _THE_ critical question that we need to answer.

Who is the money behind Cambria?

Who is paying for this press? Who are these people? And why do they appear to be selling out the online sector?

What do they want, and what are they trying to protect by offering up the onliners as the scapegoat sacrifice for the neo-cons?

I guess I've only really started to ask these critical questions myself.

Who is the Adult Freedom Foundation? What is their history? Who is Cambria working for? How are they operating?

They are much more then a simple web site tool with their memberships going for companies like AOL, Verizon, ATT, etc going for 30k a pop.

Plus they are shooting to be "the" labelling system from what it says on their website.
That is why they are having the round table, and why the AFF wants to be there.

As I said in the other thread I am now using both the ICRA system and a PICS label with Safesurf marking my sites adult



It takes me less then a minute at both those organizations to obtain my label for a site, and less then 5 seconds to paste those two tags in my headers.
For my existing pages I create them with this tag on everyone of them so a search and replace I search for that and replace it with the 3 tags...the robots and the two labels.

Meatpounder - repeat that process for 1000 domains and tens if not hundreds of thousands of pages... and tell me why this is good for me again?

Alex

if you use apache and have mod_headers installed:

http://www.icra.org/systemspecification/ (look for section 5.2 Apache Server Configuration)

It is still once per domain, but, every html page doesn't even need to be touched. And, it properly handles images, videos, etc or content served to cell phones, ipods, etc.

1000 domains times what? Say 5 minutes each max, and that is high.

About 83 hrs total for that massive amount of sites if they are actually being used for porn. Very few if any have that many domains, and those that do would have a staff handling the mindboggling amount of labor entailed actually using those sites.

Well look at it this way...if just for example they get their way and create .xxx
1000 sites to purchase for god knows how much...1000 sites to move over, millions of links to change. Countless weeks of labor I would say, not 83 hrs. Much better to be pro-active and do a simple thing in my opinion. Of course you bring up those with 1000 sites, how many realistically if any have 1000 active porn sites that would be immediately impacted?

All this hemming and hawing rather then us just uniting and doing SOMETHING.
No wonder this is such an issue with the Feds. We cannot even agree that we as adult webmasters should even do anything to attempt to stop children from surfing porn.

They can create .xxx all the like... and then the US congress can send the troops out to invade Canada and enforce it.

Alex

Nope all they have to do is block in the us any adult content on a site that is not .xxx, or whatever else they come up with. ;)

...or simply mandate filtering at the ISP level.

Exactly ;)

Alex why are we arguing about how much labor it is and that we shouldn't have tags?
Why just in this thread alone you seem to have supported everything I said except the use of ICRA.
ICRA is not perfect, but the foundation is there...and if we got the search engines along using it then we could stand up proud and show we are being proactive in protecting children and what they surf.
How long did it take to add the meta tag to your pages as you said?
Add to that 2 minutes to fillout the ICRA form for both sites...and what 12 seconds max to upload an rdf file to each site.

This is a bit pessimistic.

Already, thru this discussuion in several threads, we've established that most of us are already using some type of relevant browser self-rating systems already.

Some use the meta "ratings" tags.

Some use the ICRA/PICS tags.

Some use both.

Any one of these choices seems perfectly suitable to me, altho I think that using the ICRA/PICS tags alone is the weakest, because it is not obvious to parents and politicians, and therefore is politically irrelevant.

So, really, that part of the discussion is complete, altho there may be some technical niceties to decide later, such as wether its possible to create a visible and obvious PICS tag that would be politically relevant.

So, self-rating methods are decided, what's the next step in the process?

ICRA apparently is an organization run by major ISPs and third parties not interested in our business, attempting to force a solution on the rest of us.

I am not arguing AGAINST tags, far from it. I am suggesting that putting up the wrong tags would be a waste of time, and giving in to the current half baked third party solution isn't going to help up to put forward things like simplifed tagging that would keep porn from being walled off from other adult materials (the current PICS / ICRA tags would allow companies like AOL to allow access to poker, example, or abortion information, but filter out and make porn non-existant to it's end users.

When we stand alone, seperated by mark from the rest of the world, we are and easy and simple target to filter and remove. Detailed page ratings will allow this to happen.

Meatpounder, I won't add much more to this discussion, I think I have made my points clear. I am for tagging, but not for complicated or detailed tagging that will (1) likely need to be replaced over and over again in time with better solutions, (2) is the solution at hand is supported by third party groups that don't really like porn, and (3) will allow sites of a sexual nature to easily be blocked at the ISP level so that surfers would have no chance to access the material, even if they wanted to.

Point 3 is important. What would happen if ISPs were required by law to block access to porn unless clients contact them and authorize access? Most people would not want to be marked as "perverts" so they wouldn't do it. They might not know how to unblock it. AOL, MSN, COX, and whatever adelphia is now suddenly all block porn. Can you imagine the effect on your business overnight?

Don't give people who would want to hinder free speech the chance to easily flag and remove us in a global fashion.

Alex

'Bout time somebody remembered this. Me too!

I agree with this but would only add that we should keep in mind that their focus by nature has to be on a VERY BIG playing field. It’s not easy nor cheap to deal with the entire government, lobbyists, law firms, PR efforts, the local activities they are involved in, do it on a shoestring and with a large volunteer effort. I’m hearing over and again (which I believe wholeheartedly) that they are interested and wanting of our participation. They know where the future is and as a whole, these are some pretty smart people. I’m feeling comfortable with trying to remember that everything can’t be in “internet time”. We just want to see some results and the platforms that are being worked out here are worthy.

If only 5000 new WM members signed up this year the results such a message would achieve could be immediate and overwhelmingly positive. Why any WM would be bitter over needing to become a member because of 2257 is insane. FSC had nothing to do with it. It’s the law and the ONLY way one could insure protection. If anyone thinks that the battle s) are over or been won, they are sadly mistaken.

WM REPRESENTATIVE
Remember that a representative would only have to really work on an interim basis and be advisory. This is because between now and the next elections I’m sure that we will have gotten a full slate of candidates up there for the board. This is just one more reason to flood the FSC with new memberships. Once you’ve got board presence, everything will be much, much easier and smoother.

This I would like to propose is a good thing. I really think that agreeing and doing the little, easy, simple things like metags now is something to be expected from a "good wm". Doing the code work just goes with the job. Lazy webmasters are on their own, just like spammers, and other unwanted stuff.
Repeat:
Step One: give the government a smaller target to go after. By setting our standard of self compliance.

So, maybe a poll on which tag is most popular is a good thing to explore as well. Mature, Adult, Restricted,

The way i see the government want us to play mom and to all the kids that can get on the net ... we all as webmaster should use the ratings" tags to help stop kids from looking at the porn biz but what it all come down to when does mom and dad step in and say what can I do to make sure my kids are not looking at this ...


I'm sure many of us feel the same as i do but want can we do but use the ratings" tags to help ..
hell i'm a dad and i dont let my kids see any of this stuff ..

You're right. All that we can do is label the sites and it is up to parents to do something using those labels. As a parent I know that if there aren't labels then there is no way to allow my daughter to use the Internet and still keep the nasties away.

That being said, as a parent I want a lot more labeled then just sexually explicit material. Guns, gambling, violence, religion, hate and most of Fox News is not the type of stuff for children.