 The
Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is an
international, non-profit organization of internet leaders
working to make the internet safer for children, while
respecting the rights of content providers. ICRA has long
believed the best approach to protecting children online is
through "user empowerment" - giving families the tools to
control their online experience. When used voluntarily,
tools like ICRA's empower families to match their online
experience with their values, without compromising free
expression or undermining other users' access to
information.
 The
centrepiece of the organization is the descriptive
vocabulary, often referred to as "the ICRA questionnaire."
Content providers check which of the 45 elements in the
questionnaire are present or absent from their websites.
This then generates a short piece of computer code known as
an ICRA label that the webmaster then adds to his/her site.
Users, especially parents of young children, can then use
filtering software to allow or disallow access to web sites
based on the information declared in the label. A key point
is that the Internet Content Rating Association does not
rate internet content - the content providers do that, using
the ICRA labelling system. ICRA makes no value judgement
about sites.
The descriptive vocabulary was drawn up by an international
panel and designed to be as neutral and objective as
possible. Most of the items in the questionnaire allow the
content provider to declare simply that a particular
element, such as bare breasts, gambling or chat facilities,
is present or absent. The subjective decision about whether
to allow access to that content is then made by the parent.
The broad topics covered are:
- The presence or absence of nudity
- The presence or absence of sexual content
- The depiction of violence
- The language used
- The presence or absence of user-generated content and
whether this is moderated
- The depiction of other potentially harmful content such
as gambling, drugs and alcohol
- Within each broad category the web author is asked more
detailed questions about whether a specific item or feature
is present or absent from the site.
We believe that all users of the world wide web should be
able to surf safely and if they choose to use selective
surfing aids or browsers, sites should be accurately
labelled or "tagged" to ensure that they only see content of
a standard that they have selected. Many browsers and other
products allow users to filter out sites with nudity,
violence and offensive language but what good are they if
websites do not accurately describe their content in an
easily accessible way ?
As the Web continues to grow the amount of material that is
unsuitable for children (or those who do not wish to see
images or text likely to offend) continues to find it's way
into search engines and the risk of stumbling across pages
that are not suitable increases. The ICRA's self labelling
standard requires a little time and attention to correctly
describe a websites pages but we believe that this is the
only way that visitors to our site can be assured that the
content within is suitable for their consumption.
Dreamlink.Net is tagged and we are keen to support the ICRA
in their work so that the web can be enjoyed as a safe and
valuable resource not feared by parents and therefore barred
to children.
Visit the
ICRA
website for more information.
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