Firms Unveil Rating Standard for the Internet

Seeking to quell parental fears of online sex and violence and head off government regulation, a group of leading technology companies Thursday unveiled a standard for voluntary rating systems on the Internet computer network.

The rating standard--which has been under development since last September by a consortium of 39 computer and software companies, including Microsoft, Netscape and America Online--will make it possible to implement a variety of different, privately developed content rating systems.

Parents, schools, businesses or other organizations would thus be able to choose, according to their own values and needs, what kinds of online material should be accessible via their computers.

The promotion of the industry ratings technology underscores the debate over whether the government should play a role in the new medium, or whether decisions on how to filter information on the Internet should be left to private groups and individuals.

The announcement came just a day before closing arguments were scheduled to begin in a landmark legal challenge to the 3-month-old Communications Decency Act, a controversial law governing speech in cyberspace. The act makes it a crime to transmit “indecent” material over the Internet without ensuring that children cannot see it, and violations of the law are punishable by up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

A three-judge panel in Philadelphia District Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the statute within a few weeks. The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit together with a group of businesses, trade associations and public interest groups, has vowed an appeal to the Supreme Court if it loses, as has the Justice Department.

Microsoft spokesman Greg Shaw said the company believed the new system made the law less relevant. “It’s our view that technology is moving so rapidly that this approach is really the approach that will empower parents and teachers,” Shaw said.

While ratings software is already available, the new standard will make it easier to develop and implement and cheaper for consumers. Many companies, including Microsoft and CompuServe, have said they will incorporate an industry-developed ratings system directly into their Internet software.

The existence of ratings systems and software that enables parents to block objectionable material have been a key piece of the legal challenge. A representative of SurfWatch, one ratings system already available in stores, guided the judges through a tour of the World Wide Web to show how the software blocked information such as pictures on the Playboy site.

And ACLU attorney Ann Beeson said the Thursday announcement could help the challenge.

But Colby May of the American Center for Law and Justice, who lobbied heavily for the CDA, said such software would not adequately protect children from pornography and violence that the Internet makes more easily accessible.

The consortium that developed the rating standard began formulating the system last year, shortly after Congress began drafting the statute.

Under the system announced Thursday, computer users will be able to block access to objectionable material on the Internet’s World Wide Web that has been voluntarily rated by content providers.

The standard, known as PICS, for the Platform for Internet Content Selection, is aimed at providing the underlying technology for a variety of rating systems. Using PICS--developed at the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--groups such as the Christian Coalition could develop their own systems which parents could choose to install.

The virtue of the standard is that all of the major Internet software will recognize any system based on PICS. Until now, parents had to separately purchase or download “blocking” software such as SurfWatch’s.

Earlier this year Microsoft endorsed a ratings system developed by the Recreational Software Advisory Council, which is based on the system developed to provide ratings for video games and computer software. Many companies are expected to use the RSAC ratings in their software.

RSAC asks Web site publishers to rank their sites on a scale of 1 to 5, representing increasing levels of sexual explicitness and violence. Parents can then set a control button to the level that they want their children to be able to access.

Another ratings system based on PICS that is already available is Safe Surf, a Los Angeles-based firm that has nine rankings, from “subtle innuendo” to “explicitly for adults.” Level three is reserved for “technical” references to sex such as medical references.

Safe Surf has so far ranked 30,000 of the half million or so sites on the Web.

Indeed, the release of the PICS standard may spark a rash of rating activity by value arbiters of all stripes. Whether one will emerge as the equivalent of the Motion Picture Assn. of America ratings remains to be seen, as will whether Internet information providers will respond to ranking questionnaires.

Says Jay Friedland of SurfWatch: “The big issue now is getting enough sites rated so you have a reasonable-size Web.”