Feature:Content rating/maturity level tag.

Hi!

Great job with HTML5, good to see you all working hard on the drafts.

I not a HTML developer, but this idea just dropped by.

How about a new tag (or maybe use an existing tag) which specifies the
nature of the content of the page with aspect of the maturity level?

For e.g. if the author thinks the page has sexually explicit content, then
it'll contain 'sexually explicit', or if it's too violent, it'll be
'violence', or the author may thing the page may disturb the viewer, then
it'll have 'warning' etc... etc... etc... The type of content will be
pre-defined into the standards.

That way the client software can warn or block if the content is not
apporpiate for the user; the user may configure the software to state what
kind of content is ok for the user, for e.g. 'warning' and 'sexually
explicit' may be ok, but not 'violence' then the client software will
warn/block if a page with 'violence' tag is encountered.

This's supposed to provide outstanding parental control also, and bring an
end to propitiatory viruses in a standardized way which do the same kind of
stuff in a platform specific way.

Of course there're loopholes, like

1) The author may not comply -- However he may be forced to comply by the
government where the government wants the end user to just get warned about
the content; that way instead of blocking the whole website at ISP level,
only this tag change will be made, blocking the page from the wrong
audience, making the government and the webmaster happy.
Not complying is not an issue, propitiatory browsers often have their own
extensions, features and ways.

2) Mechanism may be bypassed -- By viewing the page through a proxy which
modifies or strips this tag. This's a concern to parents; but maybe you can
overcome this problem by asymmetric encryption <think think think!!!>;
however there's no need to do that. If your child is THAT smart, he's
smarter to remove any kind of parental protection.

But point was to warn to user about the harsh content, and this tag will
always do that.

Apart from the content type ('sexually explicit', 'violence', 'warning'
etc... etc... etc...), there may also be a level (0 to 10) of warning, for
e.g. if the page contains a little bit of nudity which may not be family
friendly, then it'll be like --

content="sexually explicit";level=0

And porn sites will have level=10

All this will allow warning the user at page level, instead of website
level.

I suggest this specification must require the client software to warn for
some of the content initially, otherwise these tags won't have any effect.