What internet content label do you think should be the standard and promoted as such?

[Bill]

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?

[RawAlex]

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

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Bill

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.

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.

[cd34]

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.

[Halfdeck]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

Registration is pointless if you register only one domain and never mention the rest.

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.

[RawAlex]

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

[Bill]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

Who is paying the freight?

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?

[MeatPounder]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

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

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.

What's Next For ICRA?
Due to the increasingly international nature of digital content and the plethora of media ratings schemes that exist, there is a growing requirement for a common labelling framework for digital content, which ICRA can provide. ICRA is uniquely positioned to be the common labelling framework that underlies a variety of age-based rating systems. ICRA will allow a content provider to label digital content once, and for that label to be mapped into whatever rating system is most appropriate for each distribution channel.

ICRA helps to address the growing phenomena of 'space-shifting', defined by industry leaders as: "moving content between devices". For instance:

Broadcast TV clips can be played on cell phones
Movies can be delivered via the internet and viewed on the PC
Streaming media from an internet site can be displayed on a TV set
The need for a universal content labelling scheme that can be mapped to existing national or device-based rating systems becomes of great importance.

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
<link rel="meta" href="http://www.meatybabes.com/labels.rdf" type="application/rdf+xml" title="ICRA labels" />
<meta http-equiv="PICS-Label" content='(PICS-1.1 "http://www.classify.org/safesurf/" L gen true for "http://www.meatybabes.com" r (SS~~000 9 SS~~001 7 SS~~002 6 SS~~003 6 SS~~004 6 SS~~005 1 SS~~009 6))'>

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 <META NAME="robots" CONTENT="ALL=INDEX,FOLLOW"> 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.

[RawAlex]

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

[cd34]

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.

[MeatPounder]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

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

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.

[RawAlex]

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

Alex

[MeatPounder]

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.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

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

Alex

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

[MeatPounder]

Originally Posted by walrus

...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.

Originally Posted by RawAlex

Simple tags are the best. No need to go back and retro fit millions of computers with some sort of chip. No need for a third party registry. Simple software can block it, and we can all do it in a very short amount of time.

Support the simple solution.

Alex

Originally Posted by RawAlex

Simple meta tag filtering can be implemented by nothing more serious than a windows update. If 75% of the people do the update, then you have 75% penetration on the first go. All new computers going forward would have the software installed, so it wouldn't be long to get to 80% or 90%. Installing a chip and waiting for a turnover in computers would lead to probably less than 25% penetration in the first year, which is way to slow a pace to really show change. To make that work today, we would have had to start putting them in PCs in maybe 2002 or 2003.

With windows update and other automated updating tools, putting a simple filter system in place is a piece of cake if you can get Microsoft, mozilla, and Apple on board, and there is little or no reason for them NOT to be on board.

Alex

Originally Posted by RawAlex

Findpics and link2x now have simple meta tags on all pages.

Alex

Originally Posted by RawAlex

of code and you are off to the races.

The government needs to pass simple rules: All web pages must be rated (General to Restricted / adult / XXX ) and all browsers must support a simple system to read these tags and block unwanted websites.

Done.

Sadly, the simple answers will never be simple.

Alex

Originally Posted by RawAlex

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

[Bill]

Originally Posted by MeatPounder

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.

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?

[RawAlex]

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

[DJilla]

Originally Posted by Wazza

.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.

'Bout time somebody remembered this. Me too!

Originally Posted by RawAlex

At this point, I think the FSC is running so fast that it doesn't have time to focus on finding it's focus and working to do what organizations need to do: Represent and listen to it's members..

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.

Originally Posted by RawAlex

it is about building a group that counts a large part (if not a majority) of the online adult community as it's members. A group cannot even pretend to speak for "us" if so few of us are members (except because many felt they were held for ransom in the 2257 process).

If there are 50,000 webmasters out there, the group would be a stunning success if 30,000 of them were members. An "us" group with no "us" is just a few people with nice suits and an agenda. .

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.

[DJilla]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

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

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,

[wishmaster]

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 ..

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by wishmaster

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.