Introduction from moderator: Remember our discussion of SurfWatch and Net Nanny several months ago, as a search for alternatives to government censorship? The next message promotes a related solution involving ratings. To get the background (how the whole system is supposed to work) visit the World Wide Web Consortium's page at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/. Andy @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Ron Warris, President, Internet Filtering Systems, Inc. phone: 1-403-258-5804, email: •••@••.••• Web: www.tenagra.com/ifsi DEMOCRATIC WORLD-WIDE WEB SELF-REGULATION ANNOUNCED CALGARY, ALBERTA, CANADA -- October 30, 1995 -- Internet Filtering Systems, Inc. (IFSI) today announced Net Shepherd, the first product designed to democratically rate and filter World Wide Web sites and selectively supervise access. Net Shepherd is the first PICS-compliant rating and filtering solution. Under the auspices of The World Wide Web Consortium, PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) is a cross-industry working group whose goal is to facilitate the development of technologies to give users control over the kinds of material to which they and their children have access. According to Ron Warris, president of IFSI, "There are a number of companies offering filtering solutions. What is really needed is a rating solution. How do you go about reviewing and rating 8.5 million volatile documents on the Internet? Our approach will allow the people who surf the Internet to be the people who rate the Internet. With Net Shepherd, parents, educators and other concerned organizations will be able to voluntarily participate in the rating process. Mr. Warris continues, "Net Shepherd will also provide parents with the ability to selectively filter documents viewed by their children. Parents can choose from a variety of rating databases that represent the accumulated ratings from others who hold similar views and philosophies. Organizations that wish to create rating databases for their subscribers will also be able to use Net Shepherd. You'll be able to subscribe to the Good Housekeeping database or the Lutheran Church database or the ACLU database. Take your pick. "The Internet has always been self-regulating and special-interest-group oriented. Now the World Wide Web can be as well." IFSI's mission is to become the preferred and premier provider of Internet rating systems and services for individual consumers, concerned groups and associations, as well as other filter software developers. A World-Wide Web site currently contains basic information about IFSI, and will evolve over the coming weeks into an extensive resource for those interested in Internet content filtering. It is located at URL http://www.tenagra.com/ifsi/. ### @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Pointer from moderator: I just noticed a new group called news.admin.censorship. Like most Usenet newsgroups, this one is so loaded with trivial postings and flames that it's hard to tell exactly what it was set up to discuss, but it seems to be about cancelations and other ways of dealing with posts that some people don't like. Andy ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~ Posted by Andrew Oram - •••@••.••• - Moderator: CYBER-RIGHTS (CPSR) You are encouraged to forward and cross-post messages for non-commercial use, pursuant to any redistribution restrictions included in individual messages. ~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~-~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=~
