Rating systems provide an impressive solution to the problem of
sexually explicit speech on the Net. Members of the Internet
community are rightly enthusiastic about the benefits filtering
software promises. Those benefits, though, come at a cost.
Sites may be stripped out of the filtered universe because of
deliberate political choices on the part of ratings service
administrators, and because of inaccuracies inherent in
the ratings process.
If a ratings service is to categorize a large number of sites, it
cannot simultaneously achieve consistency and nuance;
the techniques it must rely on to achieve
consistency make it more difficult to capture nuance, and make it less
likely that users will find the ratings useful.
The necessity of excluding unrated sites may disproportionately
bar speech that was not created by commercial providers for a mass audience.
These concerns are especially troubling because it seems likely
that many adults will reach the
Net through approaches monitored by filtering software.

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Jonathan Weinberg
Associate Prof. of Law
Wayne State University
weinberg@msen.com