Voluntary Porn Labeling As A Solution To The Obscenity Question?
from the it's-an-idea dept
Ed Felten is suggesting that a way to deal with the question of protecting children from seeing porn, a standardized, voluntary method of tagging content as "adult only" should be adopted. It's a simple idea. Basically add an <adultsonly> tag to HTML. It could block whole pages, or just sections of content. Browsers that don't recognize it would ignore it, but most browsers would probably add a simple filtering method. The incentive, Felten believes, is that adding that single tag would exempt sites from being charged with violating any laws related to letting children access porn. In some ways, this is similar, but much simpler, than the plan to set up a voluntary .xxx domain for porn. Legitimate porn sites would like it because it also would help people who are legitimately looking for porn find them. The adultsonly tag, beyond just being used to filter, could also be used as metadata for search engines trying to specifically find porn -- which would be a benefit for porn site operators.
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No Subject Given
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No Subject Given
Oh, wait, that's already been done.
The problem isn't the lack of a tag. The problem is that folks don't use it.
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Re: No Subject Given
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Re: No Subject Given
First, people don't use it when creating their Web sites. I tried it once for my site (which is not an adult site), and found it more complicated than I expected.
Second, not all browsers support it. I use Mozilla and don't see any options for content filtering. I assume Firefox doesn't support PICS, either. Does any browser other than IE support it?
It seems that PICS is now a dead issue. Even the PICS page linked to has several broken links, indicating that either it isn't maintained or the sites linked to no longer care about PICS.
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XXX Domain
A .xxx or .sex domain wouldn't require that, and would make it easier to find porn or exclude porn, I think.
The downside, of course, is that all adult sites would have to move domains, which is a hassle, especially if there are competing second-level names (sex.com and sex.net, for example). Existing sites could of course be grandfathered in, but that loses the benefit of being able to easily filter adult sites based on only the top-level domain name.
The other problem is that a sex-specific tag or TLD ignores other topics people may want to filter -- violence, hate speech, etc.
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exactly the opposite of what is wanted here
And trying to get every site with adult content to conform to such a system is naive. A system intended to protect children from adult content should be paranoid. It should assume that everything on the net is unsuitable except for those sites that have been certified. It should confine kids to a verifiably safe area, not ask (possibly unscrupulous) adults to confine themselves to a permitted unsafe area.
A .kids TLD is far more likely to be workable, technically and administratively (not to mention philosophically), than a .xxx TLD.
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Re: exactly the opposite of what is wanted here
First, it's pretty easy to enforce a .xxx domain. If you have adult material on another domain, you could get an ISP to enforce a take-down order or even get the registrar to kill the domain.
If pages are supposed to be tagged, as I mentioned earlier, there could be "mistakes". It's a lot easier to understand that somebody forgot to properly tag a page than it is to believe somebody "accidentally" uploaded adult content to a non-adult site.
Second, the vast majority of sites which are suitable for adults and kids but don't have a .kids domain would either have to acquire a .kids domain or risk being filtered out.
A related issue is that adults might not want to visit a .kids domain, thinking it was specifically intended for children.
Let's put the burden on the "problem" sites, not the majority of sites. In the physical world, we put the burden of enforcing minor laws (sales of cigarettes, alcohol, pornography, etc.) on the businesses selling those goods, not on the rest of the businesses in the community. Unscrupulous sellers subject themselves to sanctions, which seems to map reasonably onto the Internet.
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Re: exactly the opposite of what is wanted here
This is the part that's naive. You're going to enforce this by what legal means? How about in France, where they don't mind nudity as much? How about in the Sultinate of Kinakuta? You're going to endow what government agency with enough funds to sift for objectionable material on every home page and every message on every forum that's not on an .xxx domain?
If pages are supposed to be tagged, as I mentioned earlier, there could be "mistakes". It's a lot easier to understand that somebody forgot to properly tag a page than it is to believe somebody "accidentally" uploaded adult content to a non-adult site.
Again, naive. I have to be aware of this requirement, through whatever national and linguistic barriers may be present, understand the requirement and then actively adhere to it or I risk being in violation. Even if I'm not an 'adult' site, but just a blog where I say 'fuck' a lot. Already I'm in violation.
And as for 'mistakes', if I upload pictures of my butt to a non .xxx (in your example) then I may just be foolish or uninformed, because most likely my personal homepage is on a non .xxx domain and I just didn't know any better. On the other hand, if I upload the same pictures to a .kids domain (in my example) then this is unequivocal evidence that I'm engaging in punishable activity, because I had to go out of my way to state that my site was okay for children.
I'm thinking here, also, about sites like CNN. Not usually considered 'adult content', but really it is. I wouldn't want my (hypothetical) 10 year old to accidentally see Iraq torture photos.
Second, the vast majority of sites which are suitable for adults and kids but don't have a .kids domain would either have to acquire a .kids domain or risk being filtered out.
A perfectly reasonable burden. (It doesn't have to be a .kids domain, BTW, it could be a VeriSign based certification (for example), the difference is conceptual.) If my audience is children, or includes children, then I should be willing to spend a small ammount of effort to jump through this hoop. You're not being accidentally filtered out, you're being intentionally filtered in.
The point is not to attempt to accurately classify everything with regard to children, the point is to create an area of the web where parents can be reasonable sure that their kids are not going to accidentally find unpleasant things.
A related issue is that adults might not want to visit a .kids domain, thinking it was specifically intended for children.
It is trivial to have two domain names. Or (with the better technical solution) to have a neutral domain name which you have ask to be 'certified' and which you have stated in no uncertain terms is intended to be kid-friendly.
Let's put the burden on the "problem" sites, not the majority of sites. In the physical world, we put the burden of enforcing minor laws (sales of cigarettes, alcohol, pornography, etc.) on the businesses selling those goods, not on the rest of the businesses in the community. Unscrupulous sellers subject themselves to sanctions, which seems to map reasonably onto the Internet.
I disagree for several reasons.
You ARE putting the burden on the majority of sites. Every site is a problem site. Every site created by adults which is not expressly meant for the consumption of children might contain stuff that someone doesn't want their kids to be exposed to. Simply because the adults creating it have made the unstated assumption that their audience is made up exclusively of adults. As (for example) a random blog poster, I don't think the burden should fall on me to make sure I haven't spoken anything objectionable.
(And it occurs to me that, from some points of view, it's the kids that ARE the problem in that exposing them to bad things is the issue here.)
The analogy of the cigarette/alcohol/porn vendor is flawed. The internet can be so informal, I'm not a business, with a license and a storefront, I'm just a guy who's shooting his mouth off. It would be difficult to hold me culpable here under your system, though it would be easier to hold Mike responsible (sorry Mike! ;). And in the vendor example, the burden there really IS on those other businesses (and the general public) in that they are not allowed to sell these things without special dispensation. Unless you meant the burden of detecting whether someone is or is not an adult, but that's some tricky business, especially on the internet.
Even when you remove all of the Naked People to .xxx you still have such internet perennials as News of Horrible Things, Rancorous Political Speech, Frank Discussions of Intimate Situations and Outlandish Opinions on Controversial Issues. All of which are adult level conversations, and can be considered inappropriate for children. It's better to create a space where these things aren't let in than to waste time with the impossible task of creating a place where they aren't let out. Because you can't even begin to sanitize the general internet of these things. This is both a philosophical argument (free speech) and a technical one (search-space).
Instead of trying to bowdlerize an internet that is inevitably used by adults for adult discourse, let's create a new place, safe for kids.
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Re: exactly the opposite of what is wanted here
This has the advantage that the people who don't care or don't know about it aren't expected to do anything, and that abuse of it is self-evidently flagrant and cannot be construed as a simple mistake.
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Re: exactly the opposite of what is wanted here
You're also making two big assumptions that I never said. First, you're assuming there would be anybody patrolling Web sites. I would expect a more reactive situation, where complaints would be responded to, rather than a proactive situation (because the domain is too large).
Second, you're assuming that I'm expecting governments to enforce the domain restrictions. I would expect ISPs, domain registrars or ICANN to handle complaints without government involvement. This is similar to how WIPO handles trademark disputes.
Anyway, I don't see this as a black or white issue. Why not have both .xxx and .kids domains? One would be for the most objectionable material, one for the least objectionable material; current domains could fall somewhere in between. That would allow more control, which is a good thing.
Of course, a domain is a one-dimensional descriptor. Tagging allows multiple dimensions to be considered (sex, violence, language, hate speech, etc.). The problem is that all current browsers would just ignore new tags.
However, the original story only addressed sex, for which I think a .xxx TLD for porno sites is appropriate; it's not like they're also having headline news. I also think it will be a lot easier defining what should go on a .xxx domain than defining what is unacceptable on a .kids domain (of which the .xxx content is merely a subset).
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