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The Internet Content Rating Association announced October 23 the launch of the North American Campaign to Protect Children Online. An effort to encourage Web sites to allow ICRA to rate their content, the campaign already has the support of AOL Time Warner, Microsoft Network, and Yahoo!-all of whom have voluntarily added ICRA-defined meta tags to their sites.
A successor to the video-game ratings scheme of the Recreational Software Advisory Council, the ICRA system assigns meta tags based on content-providers' responses to an online questionnaire. In turn, end users who opt to screen the Internet through ICRA-based meta tags select categories on the organization's stop list to block URLs objectionable to them. The categories include sexuality; hate speech; promotion of drugs, alcohol, or tobacco; violence; gambling; and chat rooms.
ICRA North American Director Mary Lou Kenny touted "good corporate citizenship" as "a much better alternative than government regulation." Attorney Bob Corn-Revere of the Washington, D.C., law firm Hogan and Hartson agreed, declaring "labeling and filtering of Internet content that is truly voluntary [as] an approach that empowers parents and respects our fundamental commitment to free expression." However, the plan may become less than voluntary for...