By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Tuesday, June 25, 2002; 6:20 PM
New filtering software that relies on Web site operators to label their content has found favor with some of the Internet's most
popular portals, but developers of commercial filtering products question the value of the system's voluntary approach.
The nonprofit, industry-backed Internet Content Rating Association
(ICRA) today released ICRAfilter, a free software product that works
in conjunction with electronic "meta-tags" installed by Web site
operators.
At a press conference to unveil the product, executives from America
Online, Microsoft's MSN service and Yahoo announced that they had
labeled 93 percent of the sites under their control with
ICRAfilter-compatible tags.
"Since they are the most trafficked sites, anytime they show
leadership in an effort, it encourages others to participate," ICRA
North America director Mary Lou Kenny said. "When the leaders in any
segment label their sites and encourage others to do the same, it
begins a viral effect of labeling."
But sellers of Internet filtering products question the value of
self-labeling.
"The problem is getting the worldwide Internet to adapt to rating
their sites," said Mark Kanter, vice president of marketing for the
company that sells Cybersitter. "It hasn't been able to be done and
in our view it won't be able to be done."
Although ICRAfilter is new, Kanter points out that Web site operators
have had the option of labeling their sites by ICRA standards for
several years through ICRA's Platform for Internet Content Selection
(PICS) standard.
Susan Getgood, vice president of marketing for SurfControl Inc., added
that while "good guys" like AOL, MSN and Yahoo may willingly label
themselves, smaller online "bad guys" have no incentive to label
honestly, if at all.
"There will always be an inherent problem with self-labeling,"
Getgood said.
Kenny acknowledged some of the problems inherent in relying solely on
self-labeling and said that those concerns led ICRA to develop
"templates" that can be used in conjunction with ICRAfilter.
Templates are lists, developed by outside entities, of Web sites that
could offend certain sensibilities. The Anti-Defamation League has
developed one such template that lists known hate sites.
ICRAfilter users can download templates that suit their preferences
and block those sites as well as self-labeled sites that are outside
of their pre-approved criteria, Kenny said.
Kenny said that she does not see ICRA filter competing with
commercial filtering products. "There's enough room for everybody.
We're all doing the same thing. We're trying to give parents tools to
protect their children."
Some civil liberties advocates say that those tools could lay the
groundwork for further government censorship.
If ICRA achieves the "viral" labeling effect it seeks, "it would only
be a matter of time before some government somewhere decided to
criminalize the mislabeling of content," said Electronic Privacy
Information Center General Counsel David Sobel.
Kenny said that governments already leaning in the direction of
greater censorship wouldn't be helped or hindered by ICRA's software.
