GVPT333: Group Community
Kimberly Carter, Dave Dobin, Tim Hammond, Chris Rushing

The CDA: The Beginning of Community Standards?

The problems of the borderless nature of the Internet can only be resolved with a borderless solution. A method that is not based upon local, state, or national norms or standards is the most effective way to regulate the international character of Internet content. This method must allow for individuals to choose their own standards, thus avoiding the problem of infringement upon individual liberties.

A solution that follows these guidelines is the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS), created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's World Wide Web Consortium. This is how PICS works:

People can electronically distribute descriptions of digital works in a simple, computer-readable form. Computers can process these labels in the background, automatically shielding users from undesirable material or directing their attention to sites of particular interest.

This allows for people to personally filter material that comes onto their computer screens. The ultimate goal of PICS is "facilitate the development of technologies to give users of interactive media, such as the Internet, control over the kinds of material to which they and their children have access." The way that PICS will accomplish this goal is also described in its Statement of Principles:

In order to advance its goals, PICS will devise a set of standards that facilitate the following:
Self-rating:
Enable content providers to voluntarily label the content they create and distribute.
Third-party rating:
Enable multiple, independent labeling services to associate additional labels with content created and distributed by others. Services may devise their own labeling systems, and the same content may receive different labels from different services.
Ease-of-use:
Enable parents and teachers to use ratings and labels from a diversity of sources to control the information that children under their supervision receive.

This software allows Internet users to choose for their own selves what they want to see on the Internet. This is all possible without having to regulate what content is available on the Internet.

The PICS method of Internet content regulation has good implications for censorship and the continued free flow of information on the Web. Furthermore, the ability of individuals to control what they see and to control inadvertent viewing of obscene materials is important in protecting what people may perceive as obscene or dangerous information on the Internet.

To steer clear of the most obviously offensive, dangerous or just boring neighborhoods, users can employ some mechanical filtering techniques that identify easily definable risks… These labels can convey characteristics that require human judgment--whether the Web page is funny or offensive--as well as information not readily apparent from the words and graphics, such as the Web site's policies about the use or resale of personal data.

The important part of this quote is "users can employ some mechanical filtering techniques that identify easily definable risks." Under the PICS system, the user is in control of what he or she views on the Web. By plugging in what type of content he or she wishes to view or not view, then the user is making the ultimate choice as to what standards he or she wants to follow. The question of government regulation of content on the Internet becomes a moot point because the user is using the freedom of choice to determine what community standards apply to him or her. With this system, the amount and type of content on the Internet does not have to change, the question of the First Amendment can be avoided, and Internet communities can thrive.

PICS helps to bring offline community standards into the online arena through its third party labeling system. Members of communities that have their roots offline can bring their community standards into the realm of cyberspace using the PICS by creating a personal labels system. This allows those who subscribe to a particular community to implement the labels system on the filtering software that they are running, in order to bring the standards that they follow in their offline lives into the online world. An example of this type of third party labeling and self-imposed community content regulation is

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks the activities of neo-Nazi groups, could publish PICS labels that identify Web pages containing neo-Nazi propaganda. These labels would be stored on a separate server; not everyone who visits the neo-Nazi pages would see the Wiesenthal Center labels, but those who were interested could instruct their software to check automatically for the labels.

This example of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's content regulating label system clearly illustrates how offensive material does not have to be censored in order to stop people from viewing it. Someone who does not want to see this material, or does not want children to see this material can easily block it from being accessed simply by typing a code into the program. A member of this type of community that does not wish to view this material is then holding their own personal self to the same standard online as offline.

Like ratings that are used to categorize content of movies and television shows, any ratings system of the Internet will inevitably be the subject of government interest. This is a problem with the system that Dr. Resnick addresses as well:

The most obvious are the questions of who decides how to label sites and what labels are acceptable. Ideally, anyone could label a site, and everyone could establish individual filtering rules. But there is a concern that authorities could assign labels to sites or dictate criteria for sites to label themselves. In an example from a different medium, the television industry, under pressure from the U.S. government, has begun to rate its shows for age appropriateness.

This potential problem is important because the government may seek to provide its own standards to the Internet.

Another problem inherent with PICS is that people who do not have their own computers will not be able to create their own standards. Those who do not control their own access to the Internet, it is very difficult for that person to gain the benefits of PICS. However, assuming that the only place they may attain access is a public library, a system of creating preferences based upon the library card identification system is the only way to solve this problem. If each person in a community can gain access to the Internet and have the ability to determine his or her own standards, then the digital divide problem of the PICS system can be resolved.

"Rather than censoring what is distributed, as the Communications Decency Act and other legislative initiatives have tried to do, PICS enables users to control what they receive." When people get to choose for themselves what "quality" actually means to them, they are defining their own community. Because of the border-less nature of the Internet, a user-based decision-making approach to content regulations allows people to determine what community they wish to belong to. The self-regulation allows individuals to have the freedom to make their own choices as to what they want to view on the Web. While governments may try to standardize labels for types of web sites, the issue of where the material still remains. However, governments whose sovereignty is based on physical borders thus are not suited to make decisions for communities that cross borders. This means that until the entire world agrees on a standard of labels, which is highly unlikely, if not impossible, self-regulation is the best way to allow all members of communities, both on-line and off-line, to maintain their own standards of decency and their freedom. Thus, the PICS system is the best way to maintain community standards all across the globe while keeping the freedom of choice viable for all individuals.