While we believe it is the responsible thing to do to use this rating system, we don’t like it. We object to any self-rating system that makes it easier for censors to go after sexual content. While there is a lot of talk of protecting children, some people have an agenda that involves removing not just children’s, but also adult’s, access to sexually explicit content. We don’t want to make it any easier for them.

For example, there were advocates of a new domain extension, like .com and .org, that would be for sexual content. This new .sex extension was rejected by the standards board, and we strongly supported their rejection. How would you determine what sexual content would be relegated to this domain? Explicit porn? Softcore? Sex education? Birth control advice? It would also make it very easy for an ISP to simply block all .sex sites, providing a powerful censorship tool. We own many adult sites, but we would never consider moving them to a sex domain.

We are concerned that the government will try to enforce a ratings system that will make it easier to censor adult sexual content from everyone. That is why, in general, we would prefer a system that is different from the ICRA standard, where you must explicitly include what types of content you have. For example, our self-rating includes Erections or female genitals in detail, Male genitals, Female genitals, Female breasts, Bare buttocks, Explicit sexual acts, Obscured or implied sexual acts, Visible sexual touching, and Passionate kissing. Yes, you get it all here!

The rating system we would prefer is very simple. A browser would have two settings, one for adults, and one for children. With the child setting active, pages would be filtered based on only three options. One rating would be All, which means the page is uncontroversial and has material of a general nature. These pages would not include violence, hate speech, drugs/alcohol/tobacco, sexuality, or other elements commonly considered objectionable to children. The next rating would be AdultAdvisory. This would be for pages that might be appropriate for children depending upon the age and maturity of each individual child as determined by their parents. When a child accesses these pages, a parental permission window pops up, allowing a parent to preview the page and determine if they wish their child to view it. The final rating would be AdultOnly, used for any page or site that did not want children visiting, whether it is a porn site or an online store that simply does not want to waste bandwidth on children who would not be purchasers of their products. There would be no stigma attached to the AdultOnly rating, since it could be used by anyone who did not want children on their site for any reason. These sites would be completely blocked when the browser is in the child setting, with no option for adult override. All unrated sites would be blocked, but if it were a universal standard, Webmasters would rate their sites.

This system would put power both in the parent’s hands and in the Web owner’s hands to determine what children should see, and it could still be compatible with more sophisticated filtering software. Most importantly, it protects free speech by allowing Webmasters with content intended only for adults to protect themselves. Anyone allowing their children to access an AdultOnly site would be violating the User Agreement for that site, putting the responsibility on the parent where it belongs.

In the meantime, the next best thing is the proposed system from Cybersitter that uses four hidden tags: <!--XXXRATED-->, <!--MUSTBE18-->, <!--MUSTBE21-->, <!--ADULTSONLY-->. With three tags without any specific reference to sex, it comes closer to what we’d like to see. Unfortunately, it is not universally accepted and has not been built-in to browsers, so it is of limited use for Webmasters.