Washington, the European Union, and others have called for it in order to ease public and political worries over porn and other "harmful" material getting to children by way of the Internet - and some major Net companies just might accept a global rating system next week.
CNET is reporting that this would mark "the most aggressive push so far toward a system to filter nudity, hate speech, vulgar language, and other material online."
But if you think that's going to be that, think again. Civil libertarians fear any single rating system adopted broadly would make it easier - technologically and legally - for governments to mandate ratings or filter use, if not to ban controversial Web sites outright. And in the past, such news organizations as the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, CNN, and others, have said they would refuse to comply with ratings.
A memorandum outlining a twelve-step plan for crafting a ratings system, a memo obtained by CNET, suggests Web sites develop codes of conduct, that Internet service providers remove illegal sites upon notification, and that governments and industry groups set up hot lines for Net users and others to report questionable online content.
CNET says members of the new Internet Content Rating Association plan to meet next week in Munich to advance ratings use through their own very powerful market influence - the association membership includes Microsoft, America Online Europe, IBM, British Telecom, and the Bertelsmann Foundation. And over a year ago, Netscape said it, too, supported Net ratings.
Until now, several different ratings systems made a uniform system difficult if not impossible to implement on the Net. Computer users also don't utilize them in great numbers, CNET says, adding that the Internet's global nature means more governments and organizations need to be represented - which is probably what civil libertarians don't exactly want to hear.
ICRA, though, wants a policy to support voluntary ratings. Their Internet Content Summit is set for 9-11 September, with some 300 executives, government officials, legal scholars, and consumer advocates expected to be there.
The focus is likely to be a twelve-point plan, crafted under Bertelsmann sponsorship in hand with a panel including the American Civil Liberties Union, former White House advisor Ira Magaziner, Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin, and international law enforcement.
CNET obtained a copy of the twelve-step memorandum, which says in part: "Mechanisms have to be developed to deal with illegal content and to protect children online. But they also have to protect free speech."
Indeed, the censorship risk through broad support is just what bothers civil libertarians. They say ratings are prone to regulators looking to stifle expression or to online providers marginalizing Web sites that refuse to adopt the ratings system - including, potentially, the aforementioned news organizations.
When Netscape rolled out Communicator 4.5 last year, some analysts feared its "smart browsing" tools at its Netcenter portal and other sources would bolster other controls that could inadvertently lead to freshened censorship attempts.
Like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Communicator has, starting with 4.5, supported the Platform for Internet Content Selection - allowing organizations to set up Net site labeling or ratings systems. Internet Explorer has supported it since version 3.0. Like Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has supported PICS since version 3.0, 4.5 and subsequent Communicator versions let online users screen out adult language, violence, and nudity, using two PICS-compliant rating systems.
But when Netscape joined up to PICS, free speech advocates worried about lawmakers becoming more encouraged to mandate Net rating systems or criminalize "misrating" - an idea which had, in fact, been raised earlier.
Indeed, the Electronic Privacy Information Center argues that ratings systems for the Internet would destroy one of the crucial traits which makes the Internet so attractive in the first place - few or no intermediaries. EPIC's David Sobel said, when Communicator 4.5 rolled out, that more widespread Net ratings capacity could mean another round for civil libertarians similar to that over the Communications Decency Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court shot down in 1996 - prompting the Clinton Administration and lawmakers alike to push for technological obstructions to keep children out of adult Net sites.
And, indeed, the White House held a summit not long after the CDA was struck down at which Net ratings systems compatible to PICS were endorsed. Supporters of those and other "parental empowerment" tools say, in line with the White House positions, that wide adoption of Net ratings ideas would actually hold off regulation of Net expression. Others say ratings are less undesirable than filtering.
