RESPONSE TO: . E.U. Green Paper on the protection of minors in audiovisual services
to: European Commission, Directorate Generale X, Mr Paulger, Unit X.D.3, rue de la loi 102, Room 5/23, B-1049, Brussels. gregory-paulger@dg10.cec.be. cc: David Kerr, Internet Watch Foundation, East View, 5 Coles Lane, Oakington, Cambridge. CB4 5BA http://www.internetwatch.org.uk Tel: 01223 237700 postmaster@internetwatch.co.uk FAX: 01223 235870
FOR: West Midlands NCCL group. Dave@xemu.demon.co.uk DRAFT -- NOT YET AUTHORISED for: Liberty/the National Council for Civil Liberties, 21 Tabard St, London, SE1 4LA. ENGLAND. +44 171 403 3888 tfn 407 5354 tfx liberty@gn.apc.org
Q1. WHAT SHOULD BE THE LIABILITY OF DIFFERENT OPERATORS? 1.1 What types of unlawful or distasteful material are involved? The original communiqu=E9 classified unlawful & distasteful material 1.2 Liability lies in the sender not the carrier Terms are identified for common carrier status of access providers 1.3 What liability is incurred and where? Liability for deliberate storing etc occurs where the act does. 1.4 Material unlawful in civil law. The defendant is not at fault until proved so & needs protections 1.5 Material illegal in criminal law Steps for removal can be by analogous to the civil law case 1.6 Going beyond the law [blocking access] Clearly it is a bad idea to block Telecomms, jam radio stations, &c. Q2. TRANSPARENCY -- no separate response. Q3. WHAT IS THE STATUS OF ANONYMOUS ARTICLES? 3.1 There is a right to anonymous free speech If you cannot speak without fear of attack there is not free speech 3.2 Should there be any regulation of anonymity? Three options of decreasingly less respect for rights are stated
page 03 of 16
PART 'B' -- Rating of DISTASTEFUL MATERIAL
Q4. SHOULD PARENTAL CONTROL SYSTEMS BE SUPPLIED? 4.1 Scope of discussion. This part of the debate deals with material lawful to distribute 4.2 The purpose of restriction... ...is to prevent under-18s seeing material their parents dislike. 4.3 Factual basis Before taking measures which might be disproportionate, the commission should first check how many children have access to the net and whether there is any factual evidence of harm. 4.4 To what other media is the Internet comparable? It most resembles not film & games but magazines & newsletters. 4.5 ''Ratings'' ARE a restriction on free speech. Ratings should not go beyond those for print, & not become blocking. Q5. SHOULD RATINGS BE COMPULSORY? 5.1 Is there any NEED to compel a ratings mark on all material? This is disproportiante as not needed to keep material from under18s 5.2 Requiring a mark in unnecessary cases has an oppressive effect It will cause protest & administative hassle for no good reason 5.3 What if there are few rated pages? Rating can't compel children's material--use other ways to encourage it Q6. CAN LABELLING BE DECENTRALISED ACROSS NATIONAL BOUNDARIES? 6.1 General consideration of ratings. A simple, voluntary system is needed--various categories are analysed. 6.2 Technical means. The system should have one acceptance mark [plus possible a 'PG' mark] Pages change rapidly, so the tag can only indicate rating applied for Accountaibility should be at the server to act on verified complaints. An annual change of key would remove the backlog of bad tags. 6.3 International co-operation The categories should be set internationally, criteria for each locally 6.4 factual material is different There is disproportion in treating factual material as if it were film drama, which may require some adjustment. (SUMMARY).
1.2 Liability lies in the sender not the carrier
Member states should enact that Internet Service Providers who are only
engaged in the transmission of material without being involved in its
content are giving it ''innocent passage'' and are, provided they are
willing to carry everyone's traffic equally, a common carrier not liable
for what they carry. They should however be liable to forward civil or
criminal complaints, and to remove material where there is a specific
order or warrant of the court to do so.
Specifically, an access provider:
(a) must respond concerning harassment sent directly to an individual,
and may make restrictions on the repetition or sheer bulk of material
which are independent of its content, but
(b) must otherwise carry all lawful content to or from their users
irrespective of content, especially of political or religious opinion
and of any rating on its suitability for minors---and must offer safe
passage to material in transit from a second country to a third
country---if they which to be free of any liability for content. To the
extent they provide or edit/select material at all, they become liable
for that material.
Therefore the sender has ownership of material he has sent which is
lawful and accords with his contract with the carrier, and the recipient
also has an interest in it.
1.3 What liability is incurred and where?
It is essential to clarify what the liability is, and where it occurs,
so that extra-territorial claims are not attempted. The liability when a
reader deliberately --- views a message should be the same as for
viewing a foreign TV broadcast and occur where the viewing occurs;
takes into possession a permanent copy outside the Internet program, the
same as possessing the information and occur where the copy is made;
redistributes a copy as his own utterance into other media, the same as
for distributing the information and occur where the distribution occurs. The question of placing a message onto the Internet is more complicated but most logically occurs (i) for a permanent site such as worldwide web, where the site is located...and (ii) for transient information such as NewsNet, where the sender sits and types it in. There is otherwise a minefield where every nation claims jurisdiction over what everyone in every other nation is doing. Co-operation should be extended on the same basis as for extradition, i.e. that the act is a serious offence in both jurisdictions and is not political.
1.4 Material unlawful in Civil Law.
If the monitoring authority receives a complaint with prima facie
evidence of a case to answer in civil law, they should arrange for a
''cease and desist'' letter to be sent via the access provider. To
escape liability the access provider must undertake to forward it to the
user, and to return his reply; failing which they assume responsibility
themselves and presumably delete the material. The warning should be
phrased to include anyone publishing the identified material, and will
presumably threaten to ask for increased penalties if it is not removed.
It should be shareable internationally, provided that the same basis
exists on other country's law [translation of such bureaucratic text
into the local language is fairly easily automated]. Issuing such a
warning has no real risk for the complainant.
What happens if the complainant wants to force removal of material should his letter be ignored? Considerations of freedom of expression apply, because the defendant should not be presumed at fault without trial, and the normal state of affairs is that the complainant should get a Court Order before the carrier is legally obliged to remove material. This would require them to show that (a) they were likely to prevail and, (b) there was a substantial and increasing harm caused unless the material was removed from circulation. The order would be on the carrier to remove the material and the user not to further publish it, but need not at this stage involve disclosing the users name to the complainant. It would presumably apply to all network publication of that information in the country, and as such is quite draconian in civil liberties terms.
Such orders have been repeatedly abused in the UK by people getting orders with no intent to go to trial e.g. thousands of people were cheated out of their pensions by newspaper owner Robert Maxwell because he could repeatedly use writs to suppress publication of material about his crooked dealings. We therefore propose that any such order require the complainant to indemnify the defendant that if the defendant does not concede then he guarantees to apply within three months for a jury trial, and to pay damages should he not prevail. The lesser alternative is that damages would be awarded if the action was not brought or by the jury if the action was ''unreasonably brought, without a reasonable chance of success'' BUT the complainant was responsible for all losses consequent on the order if it failed. So that such orders cannot simply be ''bought'', the court should have a duty to consider whether orders on related persons and/or materials have failed before. Similar provisions could be used to get new orders rapidly in new countries,
so long as similar laws apply. None of this would stop action against obvious claims on copyrights of published works, but they would deter many abuses by creating a risk for any complainant falsely or mischievously seeking to remove material.
1.5 Material illegal in Criminal Law.
This could be handled in a parallel way to civil law complaints. The
police or prosecutors could have a ''cease and desist'' letter sent
threatening that penalties were likely to increase if the material was
not removed. The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty; to
force removal of material should require a criminal warrant, based on a
strong prospect of success and a substantial and increasing criminal
mischief if the material is not removed. In the UK there have been
regular misuse of, in particular, the obscenity laws without jury trial.
Therefore there should be a similar guarantee of a jury trial with
damages if it fails to convict, or with the lesser alternative as for
civil law. If there were similar laws in neighbouring countries, the
monitoring agency could facilitate the move to obtain like warrants in
neighbouring countries.
1.6 Going beyond the law [blocking access]
The original communique suggested that it might be possible to go beyond
the law and block access into, and even through, a country which does
not like its neighbours' information; and the example was given of the
attack on XS4ALL's connectivity over a leftwing website. Experience
suggests it has become increasingly impossible to make a particular
piece of information become ''unavailable'' again. This progresses from
the attempts to cut stories out of continental newspapers at the border
which mentioned Edward VII's affair with Mrs Simpson, through to the
attempt to block the book ''Spycatcher'' which hinted at a rightwing
coup attempt in Britain from being sent in down the fax-lines. The
increased speed and facility by which anyone can individually transmit
or store whole books makes such attempts a lost cause: at best the
state can act (a) to stop private information leaking by keeping it
securely encrypted, and (b) to punish unauthorised publication after the
fact. In contemplating such attempts, governments should consider
whether they would do the same as regards jamming their neighbours
broadcast stations, or cutting their telecommunications links.
The effect of such attacks on the 'Net is that connectivity can be damaged to some extent, and individuals can be attacked and have their lives ruined. However, large numbers of new people then spring up to defend them and the information generally gets through....if the reputation of the law is staked on this, then the law is discredited by being circumvented. Disruptive governments such as Singapore are regarded with the same extreme loathing as individual vandals trying to disrupt the 'Net. And law enforcement works best with the consent of the community involved; who are, after all, just as much against paedophilia or heroin importing as any other population group. It is best to work with this goodwill rather than dissipate it.
QUESTION 2. TRANSPARENCY -- No response.
QUESTION 3.
How can the right balance be achieved between the protection of privacy (including allowing users to operate anonymously on networks) and the need to attribute blame for illegal behaviour?
3.1 There is a right to anonymous free speech.
If there is any free speech at all, then it means free speech where one
is not in unreasonable penalty for speaking out. This includes holding a
political or religious viewpoint of any stripe which may put you at risk
of discrimination if your identity is disclosed: at worst, the threat is
that certain aggressive religious groups will try to kill or ruin
dissenters. It also includes situations of conflict with employers,
where the risk for the public is that people will be ruined or severely
injured by the keeping of improper secrets, and that the informant may
lose their income for life if revealed. Anonymous free speech is
therefore vital to any true free speech right, and such speakers must
not be made vulnerable to attack by outside interference.
Nobody will trust encryption where any stranger has the key; nor remailing where anyone keeps the message origins, or pseudonyms where there is any forwarding information that can be decrypted locally. The only trustworthy remailer is one where there is no accessible record of origins or identities which could be attacked in the first place. If this is made impossible locally, the likelihood is that it will be offered elsewhere in the world, probably for a small annual fee to join.
3.2 Should there be any regulation of anonymity?
We have three suggestions on this subject:
(a) True anonymity is essential to free speech, and there is no real substitute. The right either exists or it does not, just as there is no right to life if it can be abridged for trivial reasons. The value of individual liberty is greater than that gained by abridging it.
(b) If you do not accept the human rights case, then identities should only be revealed by the highest courts of each country and for extreme reason. Normally this would be, where there is a strong probability that the person concerned would be convicted and sentenced to more than five years imprisonment. It would be wiser to exclude commercial (civil) causes altogether; or if not to place a barrier of a proven high financial loss say œ20,000 and further protections.
(c) There should at any rate be strong protections against wrongful
disclosure. The order to disclose should never be made ex-parte but
only with reasonable notice for the anonymous person to put a defence,
if necessary in writing or by representative. There are two broad
grounds on which orders should be refused:
[i] If the material concerned is a religious or political dispute, or
protecting the safety or interests of the public, or a disclosure of
serious crimes or wrongs by the complainant; and
[ii] If there are grounds to believe the defendant will suffer unlawful harm or loss at the hands of the complainant, which should be absolute grounds for refusing the request, or that they will suffer harm or loss and this is disproportionate to the need served by disclosing their name.
A similar model should then apply as for orders to remove material. A jury trial should have been applied for already against an ''unknown'' defendant. Should the trial not materialise or not find for the complainant, the defendant should receive damages...or in the weaker model damages should be awarded if the trial is not proceeded with or if the jury find it was ''unreasonably brought, without a reasonable chance of justifying disclosure and prevailing against the person exposed'', but with liability for all losses consequent on a failed trial or on a disclosure where the harm can be shown ''disproportionate'' to the need served, for the defendant (or their surviving relatives!).
Data protection law should lay down a nominal penalty for any person disclosing such confidential names without authority, and also make such a person suable for all losses consequent on disclosure of identity.
4.1 Scope of discussion.
This section deals with material which is considered distasteful, in
particular that which is not unlawful to distribute at all, as it
applies to the Internet. This is principally material considered to be
obscene [although to some extent it also includes hatespeech]. It is
discussed mainly from a UK viewpoint, where there are three gradations
as regards print material: child pornography is illegal to posses
whatever the motive for possession; material considered obscene is
illegal to distribute for profit; and some other lawful materials are
not for sale to minors (in print the latter is almost entirely
pornographic pictures).
The discussion should make a clear distinction between these levels.
Measures on unlawful material are dealt with earlier in this response.
4.2 Purpose of restriction.
The aim of such restriction is, objectively expressed, to prevent
under-18s from accessing material of which their parents disapprove.
This is need is met when such access is blocked to such material,
whether that leaves much or little (or no) material to which they do
have access. It is unreasonable to demand that everyone write some or
all of their material for a given, underage, audience unless they
volunteer and are paid to; put this way, such a concept is evidently
ridiculous.
4.3 Factual basis.
Before engaging in measures which severely affect the lawful speech of
its citizens, the commission should satisfy itself of two factual
questions:
(i) How many children in each age-group under 18 have unsupervised
access to Internet accounts? Since minors do not have the credit cards
normally used to pay for such accounts it is likely they will not have
their own. How many parents allow minors to have unsupervised use of the
parents computer equipment---cannot they put a lock on the study door?
The number may be quite small, and therefore measures putting
constraints or burdens on free speech and economic activity may be
disproportionate.
(ii) If lawful material bordering on obscenity is ''harmful'' by a
specific real mechanism, then an increasing number of studies would make
that particular mechanism clearer and clearer on closer examination [if,
on the other hand, people had made up results through poor methodology
to back their existing beliefs, one would expect the studies to be
inconsistent and contradictory in the mechanism of what is supposed to
be happening]. The commission should review such evidence whether or not
there is real harm before taking disproportionate action or making
factual statements of ''harm'': the UK Cumberbatch report, and earlier
US congressional enquiries would be a good starting point.
Nevertheless, parents wish on their own belief to control minors'
viewing.
4.4 To what other media is the Internet comparable?
The various Internet media, principally worldwide web, comprise mainly
a text message supported by images and layout, like the pages of a
magazine. Sound, and especially video clips, are greedy of bandwidth and
unlikely to become the dominant part of it. The material conveyed is
therefore not fictional drama or dramatised documentary, and only a
little of it conveys gameplaying. It is generally news, factual, hobby
and ''chat'' material, most resembling a spread of newspapers and
magazines---in fact it resembles a much wider spread of small
personal/organisational newsletters, and particular ''channels'' are
consumed entirely by choice where one adult usually has strong control
of the receiving ''set''. If it resembles anything else it would be
individual phone & fax conversations (although it is the published
aspect which causes most concerns). Film, and particularly computer
games, are a very poor model for the Internet and bear little
resemblance to it.
Our attitude to distasteful e.g. violent or sexual material is always conditioned by the context in which it appears, and whether we perceive it as ''inherently necessary'' to the communication. Newspapers should be able to carry reports of a sexual murder, and citizens to discuss e.g. whether the right person has been caught---if they are prevented, we find this unreasonable and causing political censorship. We do make a distinction between factual reporting and whether exactly the same circumstances have been added by choice to a drama or a computer game purely to titillate and increase sales. This raises serious questions as to whether the film-- or games-- based idea of ratings can be transferred to factual material at all.
4.5 ''Ratings'' ARE a restriction on free speech.
Any requirement that authors go through extra work to ''rate'' their
material before it can be published has a chilling effect on free
speech. It usually involves compelling them to make pejorative
statements about their own work according to someone else's standards in
categories which someone else considers important. Historically, the
effect has almost invariably been to harm distribution of higher rated
material in ways which make it harder for adults to access it hence
beyond the stated aim of merely keeping it from minors. Ratings have
frequently been converted into censorship e.g. in Britain there is a
body untruthfully described as a film ''classification'' board: the
''classifications'' are in fact censorship, they can withhold even the
highest rating and thereby forbid screening [they can also demand cuts
to get various ratings, hence it becomes a process of censoring by
deletion]. For these reasons:--
(a) Any rating of the Internet should not go beyond that for ''other''
newspaper and magazine material. Any such rating is only acceptable if
it is ***ALSO*** applied, or already exist, for newspapers and
magazines. This will help people keep a sense of proportion. The likely
standard would therefore be to mark particular material as ''not for
distribution to minors''; in Internet terms it makes more sense to
actually have an acceptance mark ''this material is suitable for
minors'', and withhold it from that material which is unsuitable. At the
worst extreme, there might also need to be one ''parental guidance''
band---but no further than that.
(b) This should be accompanied by explicit guarantees that the rating will not be used for censorship. The quid pro quo should be that access providers become common carriers guaranteeing to carry all material irrespective of content; member states should guarantee to give common carrier, and not to make extra restrictions based on the rating system.
5.1 Is there any NEED to compel a ratings mark on all material?
The purpose of the system is that parents can prevent under-18s from
seeing material of which the parents disapprove, whether this leaves
much or little or zero approved material. A rating system cannot of
itself produce more material for minors. Since an acceptance mark
serves the need of excluding unacceptable material, it would be
unreasonable and disproportionate to put authors to any inconvenience
beyond that. Newspapers and magazines are not required to carry an
acceptance mark showing what age they are suitable for---even though
some of them would carry interviews with film directors who swear,
or pictures of seminaked women, or of course news reports of rape and
murder cases. To do so would be disproportionate; both because of their
factual nature, and because we accept that they are an adult discourse
never intended for children: although it is not unlawful to sell them
to children, in practice they are bought by adults and adults control
children's access to them. There is no need to put children's ratings
on material never intended for children [given the technical nature
of the system blocks access to all unrated material anyway].
5.2 Requiring a mark in cases where unnecessary has an oppressive
effect.
Requiring a ratings mark where it is not needed, on material
never intended for minors, would be a considerable extra burden on
authors with a chilling effect on free speech. It is unnecessary and
disproportionate, since it goes beyond what is needed to stop minors
seeing adult material. It would also rouse considerable annoyance and
opposition---people would no doubt misrate their pages in protest, take
their sites abroad to civilised countries, protest by continually
phoning the rating authority and demonstrating outside its premises
about a perceived attack on their rights, and none of this trouble is
necessary since the desired end can be achieved without causing it.
In addition, having an acceptance mark only on material intended for
minors actually makes the technical administration of the system easier.
(i) It eases bottle-necks at all levels. There will not be a rush for
everyone to get ratings by a closing date even when those ratings make
no practical difference [it makes no difference whether a page is
blocked from minors by being high rated or unrated]. The same arguments
apply to bottlenecks in checking ratings while in use, merely to
distinguish between two forms of inaccessibility identical in effect.
(ii) It eases enforcing ratings, and dealing with misratings: the stakes
are not so high and less argument is caused, but exactly the same effect
i.e. blocking access is achieved, if removal of a rating merely makes
the page accessible to minors.
(iii) Goodwill enhances co-operation at all levels. Many people would
be violently opposed to the system purely because there was an
[unnecessary and disproportionate] element of compulsion. On the other
hand, many more people would volunteer to rate if the system were
voluntary.
5.3 What if there are only few rated pages?
The purpose of the system is to prevent under-18s from seeing material
which their parents disapprove, whether this leaves much or no material
which is suitable for them. It cannot produce more material for
under18s whether unsuitability is marked by high rating or no rating. It
cannot compel authors to produce a certain quota of their material for
minors without being paid to. It would be sensible if the system were
accompanied by measures aimed at generating some level of rated
material, but compulsion is not the best means to do so. We like to
have public children's playgrounds----but we do not do so by compelling
every business, and every house with a large garden, to build one. The
following sources should prove helpful:
(a) Websites for commercial magazines, products and services are
generally aimed at the widest possible audience. They try to produce
bland material suitable for the whole family and give no offence to
anyone, because such would harm rather than promote their sales.
Naturally they would not want to be excluded from ''whole family''
situation, and would be the first to seek ratings. Their material is
also likely to have smart, expensive technical presentation like their
print advertisements.
(b) If the system were presented in terms of cooperation rather than
compulsion, then large numbers of individuals whose pages do not
generally carry anything unsuitable would be encouraged to take part
in a positive spirit --- ISP's could write to their customers, and use
their announcements and magazines, to encourage participation.
(c) Schools, colleges and other services for under18s could be
encouraged, by grants from government and by donations of equipment or
technical help from ISPs, to play their own role in forming a positive
subNet ''safe'' for minors. This could include participation in
moderated newsgroups for schools and minors, such as already exist in
some countries.
6.1 General consideration of ratings.
Ratings do have an oppressive effect on free speech, and should not be
applied in a way which is disproportionate to the need to keep under-18s
from seeing material their parents disapprove of. Given that the
Internet most resembles many small newspapers and magazines, any ratings
applied to them should be applied to (or already exist for) newspapers
and magazines. This probably means a single acceptance mark saying that
material bearing it is acceptable for minors. Since the aim of blocking
can be achieved by the lack of such a positive mark, it is
disproportionate to ask all other material to carry a mark saying they
are unsuitable. Most blocked material will be unmarked pages from
abroad anyway, since it is likely that such schemes compelling speech
will be ruled unconstitutional in the USA which provides a large part of
the Internet.
Schemes can be classified in various ways different from those in
2.2.2b of the Green Paper:
(i) is the scheme a blacklist i.e exclusive of known bad material giving
most material but most risk, or a whitelist i.e. inclusive only of known
good material giving less material but minimum risk;
(ii) does it have gradations, and does it have individual categories of
offensiveness. This may not necessarily be an advantage, because it
merely puts a disproportionate burden on authors to mess around with a
more complex system;
(iii) is it humanly checked allowing control of images as well as text,
and is it self-rated by authors according to set criteria [those
criteria being an imposition according to someone else's values which
they may disagree with]. Employing authors to be unpaid censors of
their own work, as a condition of being allowed to publish at their own
expense, has a totalitarian ring and is far from just ''neutral
labelling''.
The indexing system known as PICS can be the technical means for
carrying a variety of information about webpages, including
censorship/ratings information of this type.
6.2 Technical means.
The most sensible and proportionate means, given the above, would be a
single mark without elaborate categories. It should be explainable on
one printed sheet of A4. A single mark of acceptability for minors is
preferred. At most, it should be white [suitable for all ages], grey
[parental guidance needed] or black == unrated [adult discourse claiming
no suitability for children]. Earlier systems based on films or
computer games lack the concept that both personal and organisational
websites are subject to rapid--sometimes almost daily--update; the
rating should therefore cover the maximum distasteful material intended
for the site, and changing the site above its rating should be a breach
of ratings. By definition it is impossible to over-rate, as this
supposes foreknowledge of all material which might ever be put on the
page.
The most likely arrangement is as follows. The user establishes a page and emails the ratings body, which will probably be an autoresponder, simply giving the URL and the requested rating. It returns a tag including the URL and rating, and a statement ''This tag was issued by XXX authority and may be withdrawn if this material does not meet the published criteria.'' This would bear an MD5 checksum, ''signed'' by RSA encryption using a trusted public key. Since pages change very rapidly and are sometimes even created on ''on the fly'', it is impracticable for it to sign the code of the page or still less the resultant display it will produce (which may change dynamically); it simply records an undertaking by the author to keep to that rating. The users web-browser program would check the signature by the public key, and possibly also check against a published list of ''de-rated'' sites. It is probably technically impracticable that it should check with the central list each time it changes between pages, causing long delays and bottlenecks.
The most practical kind of accountability is as follows. The owner of any server wishing to carry rated pages should undertake with a rating organisation that he will ensure compliance of tagged pages with the published standard. The user merely receives a ''signed'' statement that the rating is granted conditional on the published terms. If the rating organisation verified complaints of misrating, it would contact the server owner. The most likely measure would be to ''break'' the tag, making the page unrated. If the tag were improperly replaced the next step might be to ''break'' the update password, and negotiate the with the user either to resume acting within the terms of service or go elsewhere (this is easiest if the tag is voluntary for pages wanting to reach minors, where adult pages are simply unrated). A published blacklist of ''bad tag'' URLs could be used as a last resort, but this would chiefly deal with server owners who failed to comply.
Finally, we suggest that a new public key be issued in the 9th month of each rating year, running alongside the old key until newyear, and replacement tags be sent out at the same time --- except, of course, to those who were in violation. This would stop clutter building up on the bad-tags list, as it would be effectively purged every twelve months.
6.3 International cooperation.
The best method is that the whole of the system follow a common standard
i.e. that the categories are called SUITABLE or PARENTAL GUIDANCE or
Unrated [adult], and all of the technical means for implementation
standardised between EU countries. The definition of what went in each
category would, however, be written by a rating organisation in each
country according to particular local tastes. It is hoped that
countries would as far as possible accept each other's tags to promote
transparency and free movement of services; but it could perhaps be
left to each user what rating authorities they would accept tags from.
6.4 Factual material is different.
There is no proof that obscene material is factually harmful, as opposed
to distasteful (4.3 supra). However, there are a number of cases where
restricting material may cause harm. If, for example, this were the
minor's only likely source of advice on sexual abuse, and it were hidden
from the because the parent was their abuser or was too immature to
discuss sexual matters openly, this might lead to continued to abuse.
If the minor were homosexual and denied reasonable advice, this might be
harmful to their development. And if minors were denied access to AIDS
information this again might be very dangerous to them. We accordingly
suggest measures to down-rate such material, to ''Parental Guidance'' at
most, in the interest of the minors concerned.
Part of the reason why ratings may be altogether disproportionate when applied to newspapers and magazines or their webpage equivalent is that we feel differently about factual news accounts of sex & violence to when it is added by choice to ''spice up'' a game or entertainment [this may mean that entertainment-type ratings are inappropriate altogether to newstype media]. We do not favour multiple categories such as Violence, sWearing and seX.... but, if this approach were to be adopted, we would strongly recommend a further optional category Basis. This would be white/universal for factual and academic discussion, grey/parental guidance if the material is inherently central to the progress of a fiction or drama, and black/unrated if material is a chosen addition. Users would not be obliged to heed such a rating if used, but it would give them an extra axis of choice. Possibly the chosen level of ''Basis'' could be set, if selected, to drop the other rating levels by one step.
--DAVE BIRD,
12/12/1996
DISTASTEFUL MATERIALS
The purpose of rating lawful materials is so that under-18s can be stopped from seeing what their parents dislike (p9). This must be backed by factual investigations of just how many under18s access the ineternet, and whether any factual harm is done, before launching into disproportionate measures upon authors. The internet is most comparable not to games or films but to magazines and newsletters: it should not be subjected to restrictions beond the ones applying to them (i.e one mark suitable / unsuitable for minors), and such rating should not be abused to become full-blown censorship.
In order to achieve this, there is no need to compel an explicit mark on material which is unrated i.e. unsuitable for minors(p11) --- it would therefore be disproportionate to do so and would cause, unnecessaily, all sorts of protests and administrative problems if it was done. Such rating is only to block unsuitable material, and of course cannot compel people to write for minors willy-nilly: however it would be sensible to take various steps by encouragement rather than threat to promote prosecuction of such material.
A rating system based on this analysis is proposed(p13). It should be a single measure saying suitable, parental guidance, or unrated/adult. The signed tag is issued to the author on condition they have rated according to the published criteria. The server owner is responsible for dealing with misrated materials on his server; a yearly change of keys would weed out noncomplying tags. International cooperation could be ensured by definig the technical means and names of rating levels in common (p14), but setting the exact criteria for each level according to local tase. There is a problem in treating factual identically with entertainment materials, and certain adjustments would be needed to deal with this.
---DB, Dec 1996.
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