Re: What is the PICS labels for a site targeting to people over 16 years old?

We cannot deny that RDF is a innovative and very useful technology (or
so should be theoretically). But PICS can also be a very easy and
practical solution to solve security problems in web content ("Not
always the most complex is the best").

I believe that web standards should be provided to all. Not only the
big companies, the giants of the web (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.).
The small developers also must comply with them, too; to make a
quality web content and responsible (which is the central topic that I
wanted to expose: "safe content for child").

I'm from Latin America, as you should know, here we have a serious
economic and technological backwardness. Here the content web
providers not meet the minimum standards W3C (most do not even know
that exist they). So, implement technologies RDF (which imply
taxonomies and other complex things for us) is very difficult.

I have not done a website with adult content. When I took the project
"Circus Divas" first thing I did was thinking how to solve the problem
of child safety, thus met and inquire about the PICS "standard". To me
this seemed a proper and easy solution, because the adult content not
is on the text only in some images:
http://www.circusdivas.com/images-photo-gallery/
Thereby I was planning serve dynamically the images with appropriate
headers of PICS labels. I hoped that the browsers and search engines
would take PICS labels, showing or hiding the images, depending of the
context (users ages, parental control, custom search settings, etc.).
Now I discover disappointed that this will not work, We must investing
time and money to implement RDF technologies (time and money that no
we have). Sorry, but for a while there will be one more irresponsible
website (until I can dominate and implement the RDF standards).

This post not is a complaint, is a thought, an invitation to believe
that the web does not belong to a few, this is a powerful tool that
already belongs to all mankind. Ue cannot accept that useful
standards, made by brilliant people, be boycotted by the stingy
interests of those that are fighting to dominate the web. Let us
demand and give responsibility in the web content; otherwise, everyone
lose all control.

Thanks to all!!!... See you on RDF mailing list.

Eduardo

2011/2/10 Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>:
> On 10 February 2011 13:13, Brian Kelly <b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk> wrote:
>> I must admit I had forgotten that I was still on this list - or that it
>> still existed.
>>
>> Anyway I'm interested in what can be learnt from standards which have failed
>> to take off. I don't know if W3C carry out such reflective activities but it
>> does strike me that unless one learns from history one will be condemned to
>> repeat mistakes.
>
> Certainly I think such evaluations are worthwhile. But in the case of
> PICS, I don't think it was a simple failure. PICS succeeded by showing
> that a decentralist, pluralist approach could address social concerns;
> and by providing the seed that grew into RDF, the Semantic Web project
> and Linked Data.
>
> Firstly - in 1995/1996, with the Web exploding from nowhere into every
> day use, there was some serious risk of ill-judged legislation from
> governments. By showing that it was at least possible to have some
> technically-facilitated mechanisms, perhaps some risk of draconian
> crude censorship was offset.
>
> PICS showed that it was possible to build a system in which (a)
> decisions about filtering were highly contextualised --- to a
> particular browser installation or household or network or time of day
> (b) were based on plurality of descriptions: self labels and those
> from a marketplace of other suppliers (c) were expressed in a variety
> of schemas/models, capturing different policy concerns, worldviews and
> policies. W3C's Metadata Activity of that era also imho did a fine job
> of demonstrating that these issues are better addressed within a
> framework for describing things which addressed a variety of different
> scenarios --- resource discovery, general document metadata and
> structured data exchange.
>
> Secondly - PICS is not dead; it simply evolved. The "Linked Data"
> shared by scientists, libraries, museums, governments and social
> networks; the RDFa markup used by Yahoo, Google, Facebook; the huge
> datasets from Wikipedia, Open Directory, or the Web-scale 'Social
> Graph API' from Google's FOAF indexing, ... these are direct
> successors to the PICS initiative and the original W3C Metadata
> Activity.
>
> Personally I have never been particularly persuaded by the child
> "protection" use case; but then I don't have children, so should
> perhaps avoid comment. I don't believe these techologies do a lot in
> terms of "safety", however they are relevant to a range of legitimate
> needs including avoiding upset, embarrassment, and awkwardness and
> perhaps distress. There are lots of reasons to describe e.g. adult
> content; to find it, to not find it, to avoid it popping up in the
> wrong context, etc. W3C has never made a big fuss about RDF's PICS
> heritage (perhaps to avoid inheriting the associated controversy -
> some saw it as a censorship tool). So I am not particularly surprised
> that people aren't using it for PICS' original use cases, even if it
> might be quite applicable to them.
>
> The lack of direct browser support for consulting *RDF* services is a
> related issue, and I think that is also worth some introspection.
> Beyond the early Annotea prototypes and Netscape's "What's Related"
> service, the practice of browsers live fetching supporting metadata
> hasn't really caught on. There is a lot of RDF data out there, it's
> just not typically being sent to browsers in real-time as we explore
> the Web. Microsoft's early lack of enthusiasm for RDF is probably also
> an ingredient here; and Netscape's PR claims in
> http://web.archive.org/web/20020606203701/http://wp.netscape.com/columns/techvision/innovators_rg.html
> probably didn't help the situation on that front.
>
> One issue I heard re 'What's related' was that Netscape were getting
> lawsuits from sites. And there are definitely business model questions
> about how high quality metadata services are paid for, especially when
> there's no obvious 'slot' for advertisements.
>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>
> ps. view-source: on http://www.mademan.com/chickipedia/gillian-anderson/
>
> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rdf+xml" title="gillian
> anderson" href="http://www.mademan.com/chickipedia/Special:ExportRDF/gillian_anderson?xmlmime=rdf"
> />
>
> ->
>
>                <attribute:Hip
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">34</attribute:Hip>
>                <attribute:Bust
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">36</attribute:Bust>
>                <attribute:Height
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">5'3</attribute:Height>
>                <attribute:Birth_Year
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">1968</attribute:Birth_Year>
>                <attribute:Birth_Month
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">8</attribute:Birth_Month>
>                <attribute:Birth_Day
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">9</attribute:Birth_Day>
>                <attribute:Waist
> rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">24</attribute:Waist>
>
> ...perhaps this use shows some of RDF's PICS heritage, however
> tastelessly or inadvertently? But it does make the point that the same
> piece of descriptive information can have many uses; something long
> ago realised at W3C.
>
>
>> is this an area, in which, as Phil suggests, standards aren't needed?  Was
>> the failure due to software vendors not being interested in providing
>> support (in this case Microsoft did seem to have provided support)?  Is it
>> because PICS didn't use XML?  Or other reasons?
>>
>> Some thoughts - but no answers, at [1]
>>
>> I'm interested is this area not because on any interest in content labelling
>> as such, but in spotting standards which fail to be adopted -  see [2].
>>
>> Brian Kelly,
>> ------------------------------------------------
>> UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, UK, BA2 87AY
>> Blog: htp://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
>>
>> 1
>> http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/remember-pics-learning-from-standards-which-fail/
>> 2
>>  http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/feedback-invited-on-draft-copy-of-briefing-paper-on-selection-and-use-of-open-standards/
>>
>>
>> On 9 Feb 2011, at 22:05, Phil Archer wrote:
>>
>>> Dan,
>>>
>>> Thanks for answering this so comprehensively and for including me. I can't
>>> add anything useful to it at all.
>>>
>>> Eduardo - there really isn't any advantage in adding labels, whether in
>>> PICS or POWDER, for child protection purposes. All the filters that people
>>> actually use work well without using labels at all. It's an idea that has
>>> long had its day. If interested, see [1, 2]
>>>
>>> Everyone - I do worry that POWDER is always associated with this. I tried
>>> so hard for it not to be. I'm hoping a paper that one of the guys at NCSR
>>> Demokritos wrote (that I added just enough to to add my name to as well)
>>> will be accepted for ESWC. It talks about how they've used POWDER to
>>> significantly increase query performance in Sesame. That's more like a
>>> proper, long-term use for it in my view!
>>>
>>> Phil
>>>
>>> [1] http://philarcher.org/diary/html5-pc/
>>> [2] http://philarcher.org/icra/ICRAfail.pdf
>>>
>>> On 09/02/2011 10:50, Dan Brickley wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 9 February 2011 09:20, Eduardo Lima Martinez
>>>> <eduardolima@codecweb.com>  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hello!
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm building a website for people over 16 years of age. This not is a
>>>>> porn site, but shows raw images ("curcus pretty girls doing ugly
>>>>> things") not suitable for kids...
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.circusdivas.com/
>>>>>
>>>>> What are the correct PICS labels for this site?. I do not read/write
>>>>> correctly the english language.
>>>>>
>>>>> I do not understand the terms of HTTP headers "Protocol: {...}" and
>>>>> "PICS-Label: (...)"
>>>>>
>>>>> Can you guide me? Can you show me a sample site that has the correct
>>>>> PICS labels?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you very much !!!
>>>>
>>>> In 2011 PICS is largely obsolete technology.
>>>>
>>>> Most of the core functionality of PICS has been rebuilt around RDF
>>>> (see http://www.w3.org/RDF/ ) ...
>>>>
>>>> 1. Roughly PICS label schemes are now RDF Schemas (or more powerfully,
>>>> OWL Ontologies)
>>>> 2. PICS Label Bureaus are replaced by Web services that speak W3C's
>>>> SPARQL language for querying RDF - see
>>>> http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/
>>>> 3. PICS' ability to make labels for all pages sharing a common URL
>>>> pattern is addressed by POWDER - see
>>>> http://www.w3.org/2007/powder/
>>>>
>>>> However, these RDF technologies are not (yet?) widely used for PICS
>>>> original use case.
>>>>
>>>> In the PICS world, RSACi ( see
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_Software_Advisory_Council )
>>>> became ICRA ( see
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Content_Rating_Association ) who
>>>> became part of FOSI (http://www.fosi.org/icra/) and who no longer have
>>>> any activities in this technology area, or support for their older
>>>> work. So there is no direct modern successor to the RSACi/ICRA PICS
>>>> work to recommend to you.
>>>>
>>>> That said, perhaps eg. Internet Explorer still supports the old 1990s
>>>> work. Perhaps others can comment further?
>>>>
>>>> Hope this helps,
>>>>
>>>> Dan
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>

Received on Wednesday, 16 February 2011 03:05:56 UTC