Internet has been providing the spaces for new
opportunities and challenges to lots of people as
the voluntary and creative space as well as the
international information network. However, the
obscene and violent information has been rapidly
increasing due to the anonymity and commerciality
of Internet in the flip side to the positive aspect.
Nevertheless, no safety measures or orders are settled
in reality.
This can provide very confusing values to adolescents
using Internet and sometimes may cause very dangerous
consequences.
The efforts to protect adolescents from those
negative impacts are the international trend and
have been unanimously recognized as the social responsibilities
of content providers. Therefore, various solutions
such as blocking softwares, kids zone and constitution
of relevant laws are attempted.
Internet content rating service, one of the efforts
to protect adolescents and to secure the rights
of content users to select information makes the
content providers to fulfill their social responsibilities
as strengthening the reliability of information.
This service has been also recognized in the world
as providing the protection tools for adolescents
to the information users.
This system is one of methods
that the entire society requests the responsibility
for online services to content providers and
the content providers themeselves can abide
by these responsibilities. Meanwhile, making
reliable online services is also meaningful
to content providers. When online spaces are
recognized as healthy and reliable spaces,
these spaces can be the places to contribute
to the quality of human's life.
Internet content rating service makes the
content providers voluntarily rate contents
and the information users filter unwanted
information by applying the appropriate level.
Development of PICS(Platform for Internet Content
Selection) technology that is the standard technology
for
....
Internet content classification on the basis of W3C(World
Wide Web Consortium) in 1995.
The discussion
on how to apply PICS as the technology for rating
was firstly proposed by IHPEG(Information
....
Highway Parental Empowerment Group) in 1996.
As unwholesome
information on Internet was raised as the social
issues such as Cyberporn debate on the
....
Times in 1996 and the Communication Decency Act in 1996
to 1997, Internet content rating service using PICS
....
was emerged as the reasonable measure.
Rating
services such as RSACi(Recreational Software
Advisory Council on the Internet) and SafeSurf
that
....
proposed the rating criteria using PICS and then embodied
them as the method for content control were
....
presented.
PICS related technologies were accepted as the
method of "Internet Access Control without
Censorship".
Main advanced
informatization countries including America, Japan
and EU member countries executed or will
....
execute independent rating services.
America : Diverse rating services such as ICRA, SafeSurf,
etc. are executed(Self-regulation type led by
..................
private companies)
Japan : "Safety Online", independent rating
service, was implemented with the initiative
of ENC(Electronic
...............
Network Consortium) under the supervision of the Ministry
of International Trade and Industry, and
...............
NMDA(New Media Development Association) executed Internet
content rating service using the
...............
standards of Safety Online.
EU : EC established long-term plans and combined
them with the efforts of self regulation by
private sectors.
............
Information Society Project Office of EC executed the
quadrennial plan(1999~2002) for the implementation
...........
of the safe Internet environment(compromise between
the governmental regulation and self regulation)
Singapore
and Australia emphasize the joint regulation of
the government, companies and citizens.
For the safety on Internet, parents' and teachers'
concerns as well as the institutional supports and
content providers' responsibilities are more important
than anything else. We recommend to use Internet
content rating service or useful filtering software.
As one of these efforts, Korea Communications Standards Commission proposes 'SafeNet' as the criteria
for Internet content service.
'SafeNet' was made to fit to our situation on
the basis of international standards. The present
classification standard consists of 5 levels(from
level 0 to level 4) in 5 categories. 'SafeNet' was
designed as considering the compatibility with the
rating standards of RSACi, ICRA and ENC that have
been internationally executed. Therefore, the application
of filtering software for Internet content rating
service will secure this compatibility.
The Korea Communications Standards Commission
will make every effort for the early settlement
and development of Internet content rating
service and for more reliable and safer service.