QuickLinks - Rating and filtering

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Issue no. 219 - 13 January 2002

• USA - Net filter use jumps in libraries (CNET News.com)
  The Library Journal, a national library publication, reported that 43 percent of libraries had filtering software on their Internet-connected computers in 2001, a jump from just 31 percent a year earlier. The increase coincides with the passage of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires federally funded schools and libraries to begin blocking Web material deemed inappropriate for minors or risk losing money.

Issue no. 218 - 6 January 2002

• Deutschland - Sperrung rechtsextremistischer Angebote im Internet (Pressemitteilung)
  Als konstruktives Ergebnis des bei der Bezirksregierung Düsseldorf stattfindenen Arbeitskreises wurde eine zeitlich begrenzte Pilotphase vereinbart, in der technische Möglichkeiten zur effektiven Ver- oder Behinderung der rechtsextremistischen Angebote praktisch getestet werden. Projektträger wird die Universität Dortmund zusammen mit den Firmen INTRANET, Webwasher und BOCATEL sein. siehe auch Pressemitteilung und Konzept für einen Internet-Filterdienst (IntraNet, webwasher.com und BOCATEL) und Internet-Zensur oder nicht -- Büssow diskutiert online (Heise).

Issue no. 215 - 2 December 2001

• USA - Resolution Applies Net Ratings System To Senate Web Sites (Newsbytes)
  U.S. Sen. Blanche Lambert Lincoln has introduced a resolution that would require senators to post a content rating label on their official Web sites. The resolution said that the labeling system should be "in a manner consistent with the labeling system utilized by the Internet Content Rating Association and other recognized voluntary Internet content filtering organizations."

Issue no. 214 - 23 November 2001

• Companies Compete to Provide Saudi Internet Veil (AP)
  Nearly a dozen software companies, most of them American, are competing for a contract to help Saudi Arabia block access to Web sites the Saudi government deems inappropriate for that nation's half- million Internet users.

• Deutschland - Sicherheitssystem filtert Internet-Inhalte für bayrische Schul-PCs (Heise)
  Mit einem neuen von der Telekom entwickelten Sicherheitssystem sollen bayerische Schüler vor jugendgefährdenden Inhalten im Internet geschützt werden. Die Technik soll problematische Inhalte ausfiltern und zugleich auch Hackerangriffe auf die Computer in den Schulen abwehren.

Issue no. 213 - 11 November 2001

• EarthLink to release child-friendly browser (CNET News.com)
  EarthLink is teaming with Internet technology company SurfMonkey on a new browser for children that incorporates porn filters, a move that takes aim at America Online by seeking to make its Internet service more attractive to families.

• Internet Filters - a Public Policy Report (NCAC)
  by Marjorie Heins & Christina Cho. In the spring and summer of 2001, the Free Expression Policy Project of the National Coalition Against Censorship surveyed all of the studies and tests that it was able to locate describing the actual operation of 19 products or software programs that are commonly used to filter out World Wide Web sites and other communications on the Internet. This report summarizes the results of that survey.

• Sites Blocked by Internet Filtering Programs (Berkman Center for Internet & Society)
  Work carried out by Ben Edelman to identify particular web sites that are blocked by Internet filtering programs, but which do not fit within the programs' self-defined categories for blocking, and to identify and describe the capabilities and flaws of widely-used Internet blocking systems.

• EU - Review of currently available filtering tools (Net Protect)
  This report presents the results of the analysis of 50 commercial filtering solutions currently available to parents and teachers. The 10 most popular filtering tools have been under a thorough review while the other 40 tools have been under a succinct review. Since the objective of NetProtect, a porject co-funded under the Safer Internet Action Plan, is to prototype a European filtering solution, specific attention has been paid to the evaluation of these tools with respect to their ability to deal with non-English languages. see also a href="http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/171674.html">Current Internet Filtering Tools Found Lacking - Study (Newsbytes).

• USA - Doctors Seek Universal Rating System for Media (HealthScoutNews)
  The nation's leading group of pediatricians, concerned about violence in all kinds of entertainment media, is calling for a universal ratings system that parents can understand. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also wants producers of movies, music and especially video games to cut down on violence. see Press Release and revised AAP policy on media violence.

• Software that puts porn in the trash (MSNBC)
  Can a computer be programmed to recognize pornographic images? Several firms are betting on new software that opens e-mail attachments, recognizes porn, and throws it in the trash before it even gets to you. The various programs are designed in part to clean up corporate e-mail, which they say often contains porn - one firm claims between 1 and 2 percent of all work e-mail can be described as pornographic.

Issue no. 212 - 27 October 2001

• AOL, Yahoo, MSN back filtering plan (AP)
  Top Internet companies announced their support for a Web site rating system to keep children away from Internet pornography and other controversial sites. The Internet leaders, which include AOL Time Warner, Yahoo and Microsoft Network, hope that the system will show lawmakers that self-regulation can work, heading off more laws restricting Internet content. With the ICRA plan, operators would rate their Web sites by filling out an online form listing types of objectionable material, such as drug promotion, gambling or particular forms of nudity. Using a free filtering program that will be available next spring, parents can block sites featuring any category of material they find objectionable. Parents can still block or allow specific sites, or permit borderline content for medical or educational purposes. see also Web giants support content ratings (CNET News.com), AOL, MSN, Yahoo To Label Sites For Questionable Content (Newsbytes) and Filter Plan Leaks Like a Sieve (Wired).

• Du porno à vocation médicale (transfert)
  Dans un grand élan confinant à la désinformation, le lobby international de la classification morale des sites web annonce une vaste campagne visant à protéger les enfants sur le Net. Une solution "win/win", comme ils disent. Pour qui ?

• USA - Net-porn law applies deadline pressure (CNET News.com)
  Schools and libraries have until Sunday to show they're taking adequate steps to block access to online pornography on public computers.

Issue no. 211 - 20 October 2001

• USA - News rating proposal rejected (CNET News.com)
  A prominent group of online news companies said they would not rate or apply a "news" label to their Web content to bypass software that censors violent or sexual Net sites during a closed meeting organized by the Internet Content Coalition in New York on 28 August 1997. [Ed: not topical, but of interest for those following the issue of content rating, and this item was hitherto missing from QuickLinks which only started on 14 October 1997].

• USA - Web Site Ratings Push Due From AOL, Microsoft, Others (Newsbytes)
  VeriSign, IBM, Verizon, AOL-Time Warner, and Microsoft are set to kick off an initiative encouraging Web site operators to adopt the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) system, which prompts participating Web site operators to rate their site based both on the content they contain and the context of that content.

Issue no. 210 - 14 October 2001

• Xbox to Offer Parental Controls (AP)
  Parents worried about the content of videogames designed for Microsoft's Xbox will have the option of restricting their children's access.

• France - Front14 inaccessible depuis la fac (transfert)
  Voulant interdire les connexions au site néonazi Front14, au centre d´un procès, le système Renater, qui connecte au Web les universités françaises, a fait disparaître des milliers de sites de son réseau. Avant de se reprendre. Dur, dur le filtrage...

• USA - San Francisco bans filters in libraries (CNET News.com)
  San Francisco officials have voted to ban Internet filters on computers in local public libraries, risking the loss of some $20,000 in federal funds. The board left it up to the Library Commission to decide whether to install filtering software in children's areas. The ordinance excludes terminals designated by the city to be used exclusively or primarily by individuals under the age of 13.

• Le tueur du tueur de pub en ligne débarque (Libération)
  Après l'invention d'un filtre antipub pour les internautes, un filtre antifiltre pour les sites.

Issue no. 209 - 1 October 2001

• EU - Commission will launch ratings study (Europa)
  The Commission intends to launch a study on the rating of films for cinema, television, DVD and videocassette in the EEA. The study will evaluate the reasons for, and the impact of differences between the national laws or self-regulatory measures for rrating of films on their subsequent marketing. It will also analyse whether such differences in rating create potential confusion amongst the persons responsible for minors. see Communication on certain legal aspects relating to cinematographic and other audiovisual works, COM(2001)534 of 26.09.2001. The adoption of this Communication was preceded by a public consultation based on a Commission staff working document.

• German Firm Battles Banner-Free Web Content (Newsbytes)
  A German Internet company is fighting back against Web surfers who demand free content and then add insult to injury by installing software on their PCs that blocks revenue-generating online advertising. MediaBEAM GmbH has developed Web server software that can detect whether a home browser is blocking banner ads or pop-ups.

• USA - Survey reveals that employers filter e-mail to avoid legal action (IDG)
  Wary of legal liability, employers are increasingly taking action to clean up employees' e-mail and root out "smoking guns," according to a new survey by the American Management Association, U.S. News and World Report, and The ePolicy Institute.

Issue no. 208 - 24 September 2001

• Freedom of speech: Rated 'R' for restricted (freedomforum.org)
  A few weeks ago, the British Board of Film Classification scissored a scene depicting the capture of a bird from the acclaimed movie "Before Night Falls." The board explained that the bird appeared to be "clearly distressed." We Americans probably should think twice before chortling at the quaintness of British sensitivities.

Issue no. 207 - 18 September 2001

• Filtrage des contenus sur Internet (IRIS)
  Interventions en qualité de « grand témoin » dans l'affaire du site portail « front14 » de Joël Boyer, secrétaire général de la CNIL (s'exprimant à titre personnel) et Meryem Marzouki, présidente d'IRIS. French to Ban Neo-Nazi Websites?

Issue no. 206 - 3 September 2001

• Game critics slam violent 'mods' (Wall Street Journal)
  "Mods," or software modifications, add features to computer games and are posted on the Web. Mods are a growing phenomenon that game producers encourage because good mods help build a fan base for a game. They also save development costs. Trouble is that many mods are for games rated "mature" by the industry. Similar to a movie rating, that means the industry considers the software inappropriate for people under 17 because they contain intensely violent or sexual scenes. But a number of mod writers are younger than 17.

• Voice of America considers anti-censorship tech (CNN)
  Voice of America is considering new technology, called Triangle Boy, to allow Chinese citizens access to Web sites now banned by their government. Currently, Chinese government firewalls block many Western Web sites, including some Voice of America sites.

• USA - Separating Students From Smut (Wired)
  Over the next year, schools will be in danger of losing precious technology funding unless they can certify they have a filtering system that blocks obscene websites. The Children's Internet Protection Act requires that by Oct. 28, schools must certify that they are either in compliance with filtering requirements, or are in the process of becoming compliant by evaluating blocking software.

• USA - Sony hauls R-rated trailer offline (CNET News.com)
  Sony Pictures Entertainment said it shut down a Web site featuring an R-rated trailer for "Not Another Teen Movie," reflecting the industry's move to prevent young children from viewing adult-themed material.

Issue no. 205 - 3 August 2001

• ACLU Says "Rating Entertainment Ratings" Issue for Concern (Press Release)
  Saying parents should have the ultimate control over what children are exposed to, the ACLU told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that its "rating of entertainment ratings" raises serious constitutional and practical questions. The ACLU's comments came in response to a hearing by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on the "voluntary" ratings scheme that the industry adopted five years ago.

• Group calls for voluntary return to TV 'family hour' (CNN)
  The Parents Television Council (PTC), a television watchdog group, announced a campaign to press broadcast networks to voluntarily create a "family-friendly" hour of viewing between 8 and 9 each night. In a report called The Sour Family Hourthe PTC said that foul language, violence and sex were getting worse on the networks, particularly between 8 and 9 p.m., an hour that traditionally has been viewed as the "family hour" when less objectionable material is aired.

• Jugendschutz-Filter im ISDN-Proxy (Heise)
  Die Liste indizierter Webinhalte der Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften wird erstmals in eine kommerzielle Internetsoftware integriert. Der Datenkommunikations-Spezialist AVM vertreibt die Filterliste zusammen mit seinem Programm KEN!, mit dessen Hilfe kleinere Netzwerke ein ISDN- oder ADSL-Modem gemeinsam nutzen können.

• USA - Net file-sharing exposes kids to porn (CNN)
  Congressional investigators released a report Napster-like computer file-sharing programs that have become popular with teens who use it -- often unwittingly -- to trade pornography. The origins of the pornography files are virtually untraceable for law enforcement and there is no technology that enables parents to filter it out before it arrives on their children's computer screens. see text of the report Pornography on the Internet (Committee on Government Reform, Minority Office). See also X-Rated Files Finding Child Audience (Washington Post), New online porn warning sounded (MSNBC) and File-Swapping Is New Route for Pornography on Internet (New York Times), Net Filtering No Substitute For Supervision - ACLU (Newsbytes) and ACLU Press Release.

Issue no. 204 - 27 July 2001

• TV Web Parental Control (Press Release)
  Netgem and the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) have announced an agreement to allow television portal operators to benefit from ICRA's parental control system when using Netgem's technology.

• USA - Parents make scant use of TV V-chip (AP)
  Parents rely more on television ratings and less on the high-tech V-chip to choose the shows their children watch, according to a new survey. While 40 percent of American families own a television set with a V-chip installed to block designated programs with sex or violence, only 17 percent of those parents use the device, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.

Issue no. 203 - 19 July 2001

• Cracking the Code of Online Censorship (New York Times)
  Seth Finkelstein is an activist who decrypts filtering programs, the software used by private companies, libraries and schools to block out undesirable sites.

• EasyEverything makes it hard to surf gay sites (ZDNet UK)
  The online gay community is launching an attack on the Internet cafe chain EasyEverything for blocking gay Web sites from its service using WebSense filtering software.

• L'Australie filtre comme une passoire (Libération)
  Pédophilie, violence, drogue... le système de blocage est fondé sur le volontariat.

• MessageLabs launches email porn filtering service (Register)
  MessageLabs has launched a service designed to provide firms with a more effective mechanism to scan incoming email for porn. The Image Composition Analysis Software (ICA) to be used by MessageLabs can detect faces in pictures and distinguish by texture between flesh-coloured backgrounds and naked skin in order to give better detection results than flesh tone analysis alone can produce.

• New Net ads vie for eyeballs (CNN)
  There's a fine line between innovative and obnoxious, and millions of Internet users are now making that distinction as they encounter a new wave of online advertising. See also How Annoying Can Online Ads Get? (Newsbytes), Browser Blocks Ads and More and What Pops Up Must Come Down (Wired) .

• 'Next generation' filtering technology introduced (MacWorld)
  BASCOM, a developer of e-curriculum filtering solutions, has announced the "next generation" filtering technology.

• Program helps make Web child-safe (Computer User)
  A program called ChildSafe 3.0 from Webroot Software of Boulder, Colo., is worth a look for concerned parents. The program is an indefatigable nanny and tireless snitch that allows parents to block any Web site. It also tracks all Internet and keyboard activity, takes periodic screen shots and will even e-mail the resulting logs to a parent at work.

• Sexual images & filtering (Net Family Newsletter)
  A new online-parenting and filtering challenge: a Napster-style ("peer-to-peer," or "P2P," file-sharing) service. The difference between Napster and Morpheus is that Napster is all music; Morpheus goes the next step to include image, video, and document file-sharing as well.

• Japan - Next-gen mobiles to get porn filter (Computer Buyer)
  The Japanese Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications have called in a number of mobile telephone companies to help them develop software that will block access to x-rated sites on mobile phones. The user will be able to decide whether or not to install the software and if installed, it would only allow access to a number of designated safe sites

Issue no. 202 - 5 July 2001

• L'Amérique fait la guerre aux lenteurs publicitaires (Libération)
  Des logiciels filtrent les annonces pour surfer sans ramer. Pour un jeune fondateur d'une maison d'édition, le «logiciel le plus dangereux du monde»: c'est la dernière version de WebWasher, le programme qui débarrasse instantanément les pages Web de leurs publicités et autres fenêtres de réclames envahissantes.

• Porn sneaks past search filters (CNET News.com)
  The shortcomings of porn filters were on display when Google launched a test version of a search engine for images with an optional filter for what it terms "inappropriate adult content." Even with the filter turned on, Google is serving a healthy dose of pornographic images, often for keywords with primarily nonsexual meanings.

• Yahoo trace ses visiteurs pour les besoins de la pub (Yahoo FR)
  Yahoo a signé un contrat avec le constructeur américain Akamai, portant sur la technologie de traçage géographique de ce dernier. Baptisée EdgeScape, elle permet de déterminer la ville ou le pays où se trouve un internaute. Avec ce type de repérage, Yahoo pourra envoyer au visiteur des publicités particulièrement ciblées sur son profil.

• Germany - Internet-Filter für bayerische Schulen (Heise)
  Die Hamburger Pan Amp AG bietet allen bayerischen Schulen ein System zur Filterung jugendgefährdender Internet-Inhalte an. Die 4300 Schulen des Freistaates, die über einen Internet-Zugang verfügen, können es kostenlos benutzen. Der Hersteller will das Pilotprojekt aufrechterhalten, solange eine "ausreichende" Anzahl von Schulen daran teilnimmt.

Issue no. 201 - 26 June 2001

• Censorship High (Salon)
  A 17-year-old takes a stand against a school Web-filtering system that screens out Planned Parenthood but not the Christian Coalition.

• Hollywood Ratings Under New Attack (Washington Post)
  A bipartisan duo in the House of Representatives is planning to introduce legislation that would give the Federal Trade Commission power to regulate the current ratings system. The legislation comes after a broad coalition of medical experts called on Congress and the entertainment industry to create a new ratings system that would encompass movies, television, music and video games and an independent oversight group to monitor it.

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