Toward better content rating

The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) has a new system that makes it more convenient for Web publishers to indicate whether or not their sites are appropriate for children, VNUNET reports. Using technology developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, the system allows, for example, "clearer differentiation between medical and pornography sites and includes shortcuts to generate labels for pornography and gambling sites." The development is good for online families because 1) more Web sites are likely to be labeled (so, for example, porn can be detected and blocked by filters), 2) new parts of the Internet (such as blogs and RSS feeds) will be covered, and 3) the RDF technology in ICRA's system takes content rating into the future - it "forms a significant part of the Semantic Web being developed by [Web creator] Tim Berners-Lee." [RDF stands for "Resource Description Framework".] Here's ICRA's press release and more at UK.Builder.com.