W3C Issues PICS as a Recommendation

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PICS Ready For Widespread Adoption; Enabling Users to Filter Internet Content Without Censorship

Testimonials | Fact Sheet

 

03 Dec 1996

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA -- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today endorsed the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) specifications as a W3C Recommendation. This Recommendation represents the W3C's highest "Stamp of Approval." It signifies that PICS specifications are stable, contribute to Web interoperability, and are supported for industry-wide adoption by all 156 W3C Member organizations.

PICS was spearheaded by the W3C as a practical alternative to global governmental censorship of the Internet. In particular, it was created as a way to allow parents to select information that they consider acceptable for their children.

PICS is a technical platform that offers a highly flexible tool for filtering of Internet content. It does not rate the content but empowers any individual, or organization to develop their own rating systems, distribute labels for Internet content and create standard label-reading software and services. PICS gives the user customized access to Internet content.

Microsoft, SurfWatch, CyberPatrol, and other software vendors have PICS-compatible products; Netscape is among the many other vendors who will be offering PICS-compatible products in their upcoming software releases . America Online, AT&T WorldNet, CompuServe, and Prodigy provide free blocking software that will be PICS-compliant by the end of 1996. RSACi and SafeSurf are offering their particular labeling vocabularies through on-line servers that produce PICS-formatted labels.

"PICS is a major step forward in the evolution of the Web and is another example of how the W3C is working to make the Web easier to navigate," said Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and creator of the World Wide Web. "PICS will allow Web users to find information they want and avoid information they would prefer not to see. PICS is also beneficial in a wide variety of applications ranging from security to privacy protection to searching digital libraries."

"PICS establishes Internet conventions for label formats and distribution methods, without dictating a labeling vocabulary," said Jim Miller, of the W3C, Co-Chair of the PICS Technical Committee. "It is analogous to specifying where on a package a label should appear, and in what font it should be printed, without specifying what it should say."

Approval by W3C Membership as a formal Recommendation means that the specifications have been adopted by the industry. Parents, educators and law makers around the world should feel confident that PICS is an effective alternative to governmental censorship of the Internet.

The PICS specifications were originally chartered by a group of 22 organizations including the World Wide Web Consortium. The evolution of the specifications is continuing under the newly formed PICS Working Group within the Consortium, chaired by Dr. Paul Resnick of AT&T Labs.

Please see attached fact sheet and testimonials document for additional information on PICS.

 


The World Wide Web Consortium

The W3C was created to develop common protocols that enhance the interoperability and promote the evolution of the World Wide Web. It is an industry consortium jointly run by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) in the USA, the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers and users; reference code implementations to embody and promote standards; and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new technology. To date 156 organizations are Members of the Consortium.

MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

Now in its third decade, MIT LCS is dedicated to the invention, development and understanding of information technologies expected to drive substantial technical and socio-economic change. The LCS has helped information technology grow from a mere curiosity to 10 percent of the industrial world's economies by its pioneering efforts in interactive computing, computer networking, distributed systems and public key cryptography. LCS members and alumni have started some thirty companies and have pioneered the Nubus, the X-Window System, the RSA algorithm, the Ethernet and spreadsheets.

Instiut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique

INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, is a public-sector scientific institute charged with conducting both fundemental and applied research, and with transferring research results to industry. INRIA is made up of five Research Units located at Rocquencourt (near Paris), Rennes, Sophia Antipolis, Nancy and Grenoble. Areas of current research include information processing, advanced high speed networking, structured documents, and scientific computation.

Keio University

Keio University is one of Japan's foremost computer science research centers and universities. It is one of the oldest private universities in Japan, and has five major campuses around Tokyo. Keio University has been promoting joint research projects in cooperation with industry, government and international organizations, and is now becoming one of the research leaders for the network and digital media technology.

Further information on the World Wide Web Consortium is available via the Web at http://www.w3.org/. For information on PICS in particular, see http://www.w3.org/PICS/.

 

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PICS Testimonials

 

"The PICS standard gives Australia and Australians the opportunity to develop a labelling scheme which incorporates the relevant criteria we would use to identify online content that is inappropriate. The task for all of us in the Asia-Pacific will now be to take the solid foundations provided for us by PICS (and by RSAC) and see whether we can build a structure to Internet labelling that will accommodate our values."

-- Peter Webb, Chairman, Australian Broadcast Authority

 

"BT Internet and Multimedia Services fully support the principle of self-rating of Internet content. We therefore congratulate the W3C on the successful development of PICS and are committed to spreading awareness of PICS and promoting its use by our content providers and customers alike. BT Internet is offering its customers a PICS compatible browser and has rated its own home pages in accordance with the RSACi rating system. Furthermore, all customers of BT Internet creating a personal home page, together with all customers of BT WebWorld, our business Web site management service, are encouraged to rate their sites using RSACi. Rating will become obligatory in the new year."

-- Janet Henderson, Rights Strategy Manager, BT Internet and Multimedia Services

 

"Hewlett-Packard recognizes that regulation of the Internet must be addressed with care. PICS builds on the unique strengths of this shared, international medium to permit content regulation through end-user controls rather than through centralized censorship."

-- Ira Goldstein, Internet Technology Officer, Hewlett-Packard

 

"IBM is pleased to see W3C issue PICS as a formal Recommendation. PICS labeling makes it easier for people to filter the huge diversity of information available on the Web -- ultimately putting more control into the hands of Web users. Content providers can use PICS labels to help people find appropriate material. As a show of support, IBM has put the PICS label on our home page."

-- John Patrick, Vice President, Internet Technology, IBM Corporation

 

"INTIAA, the Australian Internet Industry Association, believes that PICS, combined with self-regulation, forms an excellent framework for controlling access to content on the Internet. PICS enables content developers to empower users to apply their own values to net content. The PICS methodology is far more practical than and preferable to proposed legislative alternatives."

-- Patrick Fair, Deputy Chairman, Internet Industry Association of Australia; and Partner, Phillips Fox Lawyers

 

"PICS technology from the W3C makes it easy for parents and administrators to select levels of Web access to block Internet content they deem inappropriate. Internet Explorer 3.0 is the first Web browser to support this Web site ratings standard as part of Microsoft's continuing effort to make Internet access safer for all users."

-- Brad Chase, Vice President, Internet Platform and Tools Division, Microsoft Corporation

 

"T-Online believes that PICS represents an important step forward for the Internet. It allows users to select the content they will receive so that the Internet can continue to support a wide variety of user communities."

-- Dieter Engel, Director, Product Management, T-Online

PICS Fact Sheet

Overview

Based on over 15 months of work in both design and implementation, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently issued the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) specifications as a W3C Recommendation.

PICS is an infrastructure for associating labels with Internet content. It was originally designed to help parents and teachers control what children access on the Internet, but it also facilitates other uses for labels, including code signing, privacy, and intellectual property rights management.

Work began on PICS in May 1995 with the original charter, statement of principles, and scenarios. The first version of the specifications was released in November 1995, and the current versions have been stable since March 1996. Since then, the specifications have become more readable and have gained from developer experiences. Simultaneously, acceptance of PICS has grown, and a wide variety of browsers, filtering software, and proxies have appeared or are about to be released to the market. In addition, PICS has been a key component in the industry's efforts to work with governments around the world to make the Internet safe for children. The paper PICS: Internet Access Controls Without Censorship which appeared in the October, 1996, issue of the Communications of the ACM provides additional background, history, and suggestions for future directions.

Key Characteristics & Benefits

General Purpose and Values-Neutral

While the original goal of the PICS work was to help parents and teachers control what children access on the Internet, it also facilitates other uses for labels, including code signing, privacy, and intellectual property rights management. PICS is a general purpose system for creating, attaching, and transmitting labels to information on the Internet. PICS, unlike more familiar rating systems such as the different movie rating systems used world-wide, is completely values-neutral: it does not say anything about suitability for certain ages or particular purposes. PICS dictates neither a labeling vocabulary nor who should pay attention to which labels. It is analogous to specifying where on a package a label should appear, and in what font it should be printed, without specifying what it should say.

Automatically Generated User Interface

PICS consists of two independent but related specifications. The first, Rating Services and Rating Systems (and Their Machine Readable Descriptions), allows anyone who wishes to label content on the Internet to describe their labels. The description, which can be created using a simple text editor, allows end-user software to build an easy-to-use interface for manipulating the labels. For example, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (version 3.0 and higher) includes an interface that allows parents to configure the browser to block information based on the PICS labels it receives.

Label Format and Distribution Methods

The second specification, PICS Label Distribution, Label Syntax, and Communication Protocols, describes how the actual labels are formatted and how they are transmitted. By specifying the format, PICS ensures that labels can be created by software written independently of the software designed to read the labels. For example, both RSAC (the Recreational Software Advisory Council) and SafeSurf have Web sites that allow an author to rate their own web page by filling out a form and receiving a label formatted according to the PICS specification. The PICS specification also defines the three ways in which PICS labels can be transmitted:

  1. In an HTML document. The creator of a Web page or Web site can create a PICS label and put it inside of an HTML page to provide a label for that page, that site, or part of the site.
  2. In the headers used to transmit the document. In the case of HTTP, a client (browser, navigator, or communicator) can request that the server provide both a document and an appropriate set of PICS labels. A server that understand PICS can, for example, consult a database to locate the desired labels and deliver them along with the content.
  3. From a trusted third party. Before asking for the content of a document, a client can consult a Web server that obeys the PICS "label bureau protocol" and ask for labels associated with the document. It can then base its actions on the labels without ever retrieving the document itself.

Other Uses for Labels

New infrastructures are often used in unplanned ways, to meet latent needs. There will be many labeling vocabularies that are unrelated to access controls. The PICS specifications also plan for unplanned uses, by including extension mechanisms for adding new functionality. PICS is a new resource available to anyone who wishes to associate data with documents on the Internet, even documents that others control. Work both at W3C and elsewhere is exploring the use of PICS labels for protection of data and personal privacy, intellectual property protection, collaborative filtering, distributed indexing, and use in digital libraries.

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