PICS Interest Group - Charter

Introduction

Readers of this page are assumed to be familiar with the overal goals of W3C's Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS).  This group is a W3C interest group, and so subject to W3C process.

Purpose

The purpose of the PICS Interest Group is to discuss and promote the use of the PICS-1.1 specs, including the forthcoming PICSRules spec, for applications including but not limited to child protection.

Scope

The PICS interest group will not develop any new specs. It will be responsible for answering questions about the specs and other aspects of PICS (as posed to the pics-ask mailing list), for maintaining the PICS web site and the recently created Intellectual Freedom FAQ. The interest group may choose to generate other educational materials (including minor clarifications of specs) that make PICS more accessible to developers, users, and other organizations. The PICS interest group will not spawn new working groups to create new specs (that will be the province of the metadata coordination group). The interest group may provide input about requirements to the metadata coordination group and its working groups.

The interest group will also consider when, whether, and how to transition to new label formats or transmission methods, if such a transition appears advantageous at some future time.

Deliverables

A decisicion, to the Metatadata Coordination Group, on when a transition of PICS to RDF compatibility willbe made.

In general, education and dissemination of PICS technology and its implications.

Meetings

The PICS interest group will convene meetings, usually in conjunction with other events that interest group members are attending. Otherwise, communication will occur by email, using the pics-interest@w3.org mailing list.

Chair

Paul Resnick is the chair of this group.

Participation

The existing members of pics-developers will form the initial interest group membership and the group will continue to allow participation from non-W3C members, including new participants in the interest group.

Closedown

The metadata coordination group will be responsible for deciding when the PICS interest group is no longer needed.