Is It Just Me, Or...?

I'm still exploring the rampant misconceptions in the ACLU's "Fahrenheit 451.2: Is Cyberspace Burning?" white paper; the quoted sections in this series come from there. As promised last week, I'm about to tackle their alleged....

Six Reasons Why Self-Rating Schemes Are Wrong for the Internet

To begin with, the notion that citizens should "self-rate" their speech is contrary to the entire history of free speech in America. A proposal that we rate our online speech is no less offensive to the First Amendment than a proposal that publishers of books and magazines rate each and every article or story, or a proposal that everyone engaged in a street corner conversation rate his or her comments. But that is exactly what will happen to books, magazines, and any kind of speech that appears online under a self-rating scheme.

Um, guys? That's exactly what happens now. Or do you expect me to believe that a newspaper or magazine columnist is free to say "fuck" whenever he so desires (like I just did) without getting it rewritten by his editor? Am I supposed to pretend that those copies of Playboy at the local bookstore aren't wrapped in plastic and put out of the reach of children? Books, okay, there's much less rating on those...just as there's no current rating system which covers downloadable files.

In order to illustrate the very practical consequences of these schemes, consider the following six reasons, and their accompanying examples, illustrating why the ACLU is against self-rating:

Reason #1: Self-Rating Schemes Will Cause Controversial Speech To Be Censored.

Kiyoshi Kuromiya, founder and sole operator of Critical Path Aids Project, has a web site that includes safer sex information written in street language with explicit diagrams, in order to reach the widest possible audience. Kuromiya doesn't want to apply the rating "crude" or "explicit" to his speech, but if he doesn't, his site will be blocked as an unrated site.

Only if the individual enables the "block unrated site" option on the software. Wait, last time I heard, America Online also offers the ability to automatically block unrated sites....

If he does rate, his speech will be lumped in with "pornography" and blocked from view. Under either choice, Kuromiya has been effectively blocked from reaching a large portion of his intended audience - teenage Internet users - as well as adults.

False - adults will probably not be using filtering software, and if the parents of some teens want to shield them from street language and explicit depictions of sex, then those parents would probably consider his site something that they don't want their kids to see. Ratings address content, not intent.

As this example shows, the consequences of rating are far from neutral. The ratings themselves are all pejorative by definition, and they result in certain speech being blocked.

Absolute baloney. A perjorative term imparts a value judgement; the RSACi rating system makes no such judgement. All it does is measure the content. If a page contains full-frontal nudity, it deserves the RSACi rating of n4 - whether the image in question is a classic nude painting, an artistic nude photo, or a Playboy centerfold. No value judgement is given, and to infer one from the fact that a rating exists is baloney...or should I say it's bullshit?

The White House has compared Internet ratings to "food labels" - but that analogy is simply wrong. Food labels provide objective, scientifically verifiable information to help the consumer make choices about what to buy, e.g. the percentage of fat in a food product like milk.

So does the RSACi system. If nudity appears, it is rated as nudity. The ACLU would apparently rather see the contents of a package hidden from the consumer if the truth of those contents would make the consumer less likely to buy the product, from the structure of their argument.

Internet ratings are subjective value judgments that result in certain speech being blocked to many viewers. Further, food labels are placed on products that are readily available to consumers - unlike Internet labels, which would place certain kinds of speech out of reach of Internet users.

What is most critical to this issue is that speech like Kuromiya's is entitled to the highest degree of Constitutional protection. This is why ratings requirements have never been imposed on those who speak via the printed word. Kuromiya could distribute the same material in print form on any street corner or in any bookstore without worrying about having to rate it.

Are they really saying that I could distribute nude photos to children on a street corner without getting in trouble? The only difference here is that the Internet criteria are explicit and flexible, while the real-world restraints are inflexible and often vague.

In fact, a number of Supreme Court cases have established that the First Amendment does not allow government to compel speakers to say something they don't want to say - and that includes pejorative ratings. There is simply no justification for treating the Internet any differently.

So why do they want to treat the Internet differently? As a provider of often-inflammatory content, I have no problem with the RSACi rating system.

Reason #2: Self-Rating Is Burdensome, Unwieldy, and Costly.

Okay, now that's simply hogwash. I regularly post four to five pages a week on GOTC - the front page and three or four articles. You know how hard it is to include ratings? As Two-Face said in Batman Forever, it's dirt-simple. Here's the actual ratings tags from one of my pages:

This is the specific tag (as denoted by "gen false" - ie. "not generic") that applies specifically to this page. The actual ratings are clear: the "(n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0)" string describes this content as having no nudity, no sex, no violence, and no objectionable language.

That's the generic tag that applies to the overall site. This is optional, but comes in handy if you have pictures or other downloadable content which should be rated. Since there's no way to rate non-HTML files, the generic tag describes unrated material in the same directory (in case it's accessed directly).

It takes me maybe a few seconds to rate a page as I'm coding the HTML - any author familiar with the system can easily include a rating.

Art on the Net is a large, non-profit web site that hosts online "studios" where hundreds of artists display their work. The vast majority of the artwork has no sexual content, although there's an occasional Rubenesque painting. The ratings systems don't make sense when applied to art.

Sure they do. If the painting depicts nudity, sex, or violence, the rating system fits it. (I know of few paintings which depict language at all.) If not, it scores a zero on all axes and is rated just that easily.

Yet Art on the Net would still have to review and apply a rating to the more than 26,000 pages on its site, which would require time and staff that they just don't have.

Nope. Just edit the front page to include a generic rating; that covers the entire site instantly. Pages which deserve different ratings could then be rated differently by the authors of those pages. (One practice is to set the generic rating to the highest rating on the site, then let the authors of "lesser" content attach more appropriate specific ratings to their pages.)

Or, they would have to require the artists themselves to self-rate, an option they find objectionable.

For heaven's sake, why?!? What's objectionable about looking at the Venus de Milo and saying "this statue depicts nudity"? It's a statement of fact. Perhaps they believe kids see a difference between artistic nudity and sexually suggestive nudity...a belief which any parent who's raised a boy should know to be false. If a boy's going to look through National Geographic to see topless natives, he's going to look at a nude painting in the same way.

If they decline to rate, they will blocked as an unrated site even though most Internet users would hardly object to the art reaching minors, let alone adults.

Back to the same refrain again. I'm not even going to address it this time; I'm getting sick of repeating myself. However, I will say that one of my main reasons for rating my own site was so I could properly describe my content and increase my audience.

As the Supreme Court noted in Reno v. ACLU, one of the virtues of the Internet is that it provides "relatively unlimited, low-cost capacity for communication of all kinds." In striking down the CDA, the Court held that imposing age-verification costs on Internet speakers would be "prohibitively expensive for noncommercial - as well as some commercial - speakers." Similarly, the burdensome requirement of self-rating thousands of pages of information would effectively shut most noncommercial speakers out of the Internet marketplace.

Well, it might if the requirement was indeed "burdensome". Taking a couple of minutes to change the front page and upload the new version is hardly burdensome, yet that's all that's required to set a generic rating on any site...no matter how huge.

The technology of embedding the rating is also far from trivial. In a winning ACLU case that challenged a New York state online censorship statute, ALA v. Pataki, one long-time Internet expert testified that he tried to embed an RSACi label in his online newsletter site but finally gave up after several hours.

Pure bullshit. I showed you the actual tags above; anyone who can't figure 'em out doesn't have the brainpower to qualify as an "expert" (long-time or otherwise) in any technological field, let alone the Internet. Here's the generic one again:

There are exactly four parts of this tag that change at all. First, there's the generic flag: "gen true" if it's a generic tag, "gen false" if it's not. Next up, the email address of the person who rated the page. Next, and least important, the time-stamp of the rating. Finally, there's the rating itself.

Furthermore, if you can't construct the tag yourself, you can visit RSAC and go through a series of questions which will determine the rating...and they'll even email the finished tag to you, along with instructions on where to put it! (It goes between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags, incidentally. Doesn't matter where between them, except that the specific rating tag needs to come before the generic tag if you include both in a page.)

In addition, the ratings systems are simply unequipped to deal with the diversity of content now available on the Internet. There is perhaps nothing as subjective as a viewer's reaction to art. As history has shown again and again, one woman's masterpiece is another woman's pornography.

Side note here: why does the ACLU apparently think that only women are capable of discerning art from pornography? This is an interesting example of politically correct "reverse" sexism; since it insults men, it's okay, but if it were to insult women....

How can ratings such as "explicit" or "crude" be used to categorize art?

They can't. I guess it's a good thing RSACi doesn't rely on such vague ratings, isn't it? The Nudity axis simply measures the amount of exposure, from none (0) and "revealing attire" (1) through full nudity (4). (By way of comparison, the famed Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue would score about an N1 rating - perhaps an N2, depending on certain images.) As I've said before - content, not intent.

Even ratings systems that try to take artistic value into account will be inherently subjective, especially when applied by artists themselves, who will naturally consider their own work to have merit.

Of course, this conveniently ignores the fact that the RSACi system relies on objective benchmarks which anyone can apply consistently. ("Are her breasts exposed or not?" Simple question, with only one right answer.)

The variety of news-related sites on the Web will be equally difficult to rate. Should explicit war footage be labeled "violent" and blocked from view to teenagers?

Boy, talk about your no-brainers. The RSACi system makes no distinction between war movie violence and true war footage violence. (Although, curiously, it does make an exception for "sports violence". Perhaps we could call war a sport?)

If along [sic] news article has one curse word, is the curse word rated individually, or is the entire story rated and then blocked?

PICS ratings apply on a "per-page" basis - one web page, one specific rating. Nothing more specific is possible with current technology and standards. That the ACLU even has to ASK this question shows their complete ignorance of the actual workings of the self-rating system.

Even those who propose that "legitimate" news organizations should not be required to rate their sites stumble over the question of who will decide what is legitimate news.

Nobody can be forced to rate their sites - and if CNN or MSNBC decides not to rate, well, who needs a search engine to find them anyway?

Reason #3: Conversation Can't Be Rated.

That's right, conversation does not take place on a Web page, so PICS ratings cannot be applied to it.

You are in a chat room or a discussion group - one of the thousands of conversational areas of the Net. A victim of sexual abuse has posted a plea for help, and you want to respond. You've heard about a variety of ratings systems, but you've never used one. You read the RSACi web page, but you can't figure out how to rate the discussion of sex and violence in your response.

Then you're an idiot; RSACi ratings are used on Web pages, not in chat rooms. More smoke from the ACLU's idiot department....

A rating requirement for these areas of the Internet would be analogous to requiring all of us to rate our telephone or streetcorner or dinner party or water cooler conversations.

I guess we're lucky the PICS tag setup is a method for rating only Web pages, then. This entire "reason" is a red herring.

Reason #4: Self-Rating Will Create "Fortress America" on the Internet.

Only if software manufacturers execute a complete 180-degree reversal in their implementation of filtering. Furthermore, browsers don't just get sold in the US; Netscape and Microsoft sell to customers around the world. It appears that the ACLU's own America-centric view is coming forth.

You are a native of Papua, New Guinea, and as an anthropologist you have published several papers about your native culture. You create a web site and post electronic versions of your papers, in order to share them with colleagues and other interested people around the world. You haven't heard about the move in America to rate Internet content. You don't know it, but since your site is unrated none of your colleagues in America will be able to access it.

Unless, of course, your colleagues mention the rating concept to you, (what true colleague wouldn't?) or you see one of those green RSACi buttons and find out about it yourself. (And what anthropologist is going to feel the need to shield themselves from the potential sight of a bare breast or "the f-word" by enabling filtering to begin with?)

People from all corners of the globe - people who might otherwise never connect because of their vast geographical differences - can now communicate on the Internet both easily and cheaply. One of the most dangerous aspects of ratings systems is their potential to build borders around American- and foreign-created speech. It is important to remember that today, nearly half of all Internet speech originates from outside the United States.

And such a large segment of the Internet is somehow going to remain utterly ignorant of the notion of ratings? Puh-leeze.

Even if powerful American industry leaders coerced other countries into adopting American ratings systems, how would these ratings make any sense to a New Guinean?

It's this simple: are her breasts bare or covered? How hard is that to understand?

Imagine that one of the anthropology papers explicitly describes a ritual in which teenage boys engage in self-mutilation as part of a rite of passage in achieving manhood. Would you look at it through the eyes of an American and rate it "torture," or would you rate it "appropriate for minors" for the New Guinea audience?

Neither, as neither setting is a factor in the RSACi system. You rate the paper according to what it contains, and if other people aren't comfortable viewing such an explicit description of self-mutilation, they won't see it!

Since the ACLU is apparently completely clueless about what the RSACi system actually describes, I'm providing links here to the RSACi ratings overview, as well as its definitions for the nudity, sex, violence, and language categories. Follow and learn. [Note: These URLs have changed since this article was written. Unfortunately, the new pages now depend on the frameset that RSAC uses to organize its content; the pages are still available, but a script error will now pop up when accessing those pages individually, due to those pages' attempts to refer to things defined elsewhere in the frameset. Hopefully, RSAC will make non-framed versions available again soon.]

Reason #5: Self-Ratings Will Only Encourage, Not Prevent, Government Regulation.

The webmaster for Betty's Smut Shack, a web site that sells sexually explicit photos, learns that many people won't get to his site if he either rates his site "sexually explicit" or fails to rate at all.

Does anyone out there know what the top ten search terms are on major search engines? "Sex" is either at the top or close to it. Do I need to say anything more about this example?

He rates his entire web site "okay for minors." A powerful Congressman from the Midwest learns that the site is now available to minors. He is outraged, and quickly introduces a bill imposing criminal penalties for mis-rated sites.

Well, as much as I'd like to say otherwise, the ACLU does have a point here; honesty is indeed the key to self-rating. The trouble with their scenario is that they assume the market would not provide an answer for such a "dilemma". Adult search engines already exist; if I'm looking for adult content, why on Earth would I use a search engine that filters out the exact content I'm looking for? Doesn't make sense. Similarly, if I'm providing adult content, why would I falsify my ratings to attract a crowd that doesn't want to see my content? Again, it doesn't make sense.

Without a penalty system for mis-rating, the entire concept of a self-ratings system breaks down.

True enough. Luckily, it wouldn't take much to put such penalties in the hands of the viewers and not the government. Note that the email address of the rater is included in the rating tag; the possibility of emailed comments to the individual or their ISP would be a most effective deterrent. (In fact, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see ISPs and hosting services tuck a clause into their Terms and Conditions to address precisely the issue of falsely rating content.)

In fact, as noted earlier, a senator from Washington state - home of Industry giant Microsoft, among others - has already proposed a law that creates criminal penalties for mis-rating. Not to be outdone, the filtering software company Safe Surf has proposed the introduction of a virtually identical federal law, including a provision that allows parents to sue speakers for damages if they "negligently" mis-rate their speech.

One could make an excellent case that false ratings constitute advertising fraud...which is already illegal and which I don't believe quite counts as protected speech.

Reason #6: Self-Ratings Schemes Will Turn the Internet into a Homogenized Medium Dominated by Commercial Speakers.

Huge entertainment conglomerates, such as the Disney Corporation or Time Warner, consult their platoons of lawyers who advise that their web sites must berated to reach the widest possible audience. They then hire and train staff to rate all of their web pages. Everybody in the world will have access to their speech.

There is no question that there may be some speakers on the Internet for whom the ratings systems will impose only minimal burdens: the large, powerful corporate speakers with the money to hire legal counsel and staff to apply the necessary ratings.

Again I must use myself as an example. GOTC is not exactly a "huge entertainment conglomerate". (I wish!) I don't have a legal staff at all, and I usually either pick up articles from my authors at their workplaces or receive 'em through email. Face it, I'm a small fish in the big sea of entertainment. Yet I can correctly rate five pages a week, every week, with no hassle - in addition to my duties outside of maintaining GOTC.

To me, ratings are a "minimal burden" - I barely give 'em a second thought. In fact, I usually handle ratings as I'm putting the HTML around the article and checking the spelling - if I see a curse word, I note its level of severity and modify the rating appropriately. If an author refers to a sexual act, that also gets noted. I rarely have to deal with nudity or violence, but if those come up, I rate them as well. By the time I'm finished formatting the article, I've got a correct rating for the page.

Is It Just Me, Or...?

by Rev. Bob

Minister of Contempt

Rating Cyberspace

Part Two of Three