Support for the Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC)’s internet content advisory system, RSACi, will be included as part of Netscape Communications Corp’s NetWatch. Netscape says the agreement gives parents a new tool to monitor the content that is offered to their kids via the world wide web. Based on the W3C’s Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS), RSACi rates internet sites based on the results of a voluntary questionnaire which webmasters must fill out by visiting the RSAC home page (http://www.rsac.org/). The questionnaire measures the level, nature and intensity of sex, nudity, violence and offensive language in the web content under review, which should make for exciting reading. RSAC is one of several organizations to have grown out of the overturning of the USA’s Communications Decency Act (CDA) a year ago this month. The collapse of the CDA led to industry calls for self-regulation, which bodies like RSAC have tried to implement. However RSAC’s opt-in model foundered after it attempted to force online news providers into a ratings system which they feared would compromise their right to free speech. Perhaps as a result, RSAC never filled more than about 70,000 of its questionnaires. Netscape is a latecomer to RSAC ratings in more ways than one. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has supported RSACi since version 3.0.
