PICS Terminology

Label

The carrier for a bundle of metadata; describes one or more properties of the labeled object according to exactly one schema.

Rating

The portion of a Label containing just the properties and their respective values.

Rating System

A definition of a set of named properties and their semantics; a metadata schema.

Rating Service

A producer of Labels; an entity who encodes Ratings following a particular Rating Service.

Label Bureau

A distributor of Labels.