🚀 go-pugleaf

Lots has been written about the problems of the ill conceived legislation.
However the government believes it has both the authority and public support
to censor the Internet.
While it may be worth some effort to try and convince them otherwise, given the current 
pedophilia ruckus in the media it is almost a certainty that they will do something !

Consequently I believe we should give them something sensible to do !

I suggest all interested parties read the "Platform for Internet Content Selection" 
<http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/>
[ Also the list of commercial supporters - it includes Netscape, Microsoft, DEC and AT&T ] 

I believe the following approach is feasible, appropriate and even desirable(1):

Requirement 1:
That all authors of general distribution documents (ie not private email) are required to 
include a content descriptor, which amoungst other attributes includes a government defined 
'rating'.
Requirement 2:
That all publishers (ie everybody running a server) of general distribution documents are 
required to add a special 'rating' of UNRATED to pre-existing material.

Caveat:
I am not a lawyer (did you guess ? :-) so the above needs to be rephrased and provision for a 
grace period provided until PICS aware applications are available.

Modifying news, web and list servers to automatically rate (or reject) unrated material should 
be easy, handling gopher and ftp servers is more complex.

comments ? offers to help the government draft something sensible ? ...

- JonT

1) PICS can be used for more useful rating systems (ie Dewey or US Congress cataloging ) so 
encouraging the use of PICS should improve the general cataloging of Internet publications and 
hence the usefulness of the Internet.


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