Web Security and Commerce

RSACi

RSAC is the Recreational Software Advisory Council. The organization was formed in the mid 1990s in response to several moves within the U.S. Congress to regulate the content of children’s video games. Congress was moved to action after a number of video games were produced in which the goal of the game was to brutally murder live-action figures, some of whom were wearing only the scantiest of outfits. The entertainment industry successfully argued that it could police itself and offered to adopt a voluntary rating system that would let people purchasing a video game determine the levels of gore, violence, and sex that the program contained.

The World Wide Web consortium has worked to develop a modified version of the RSAC rating system called RSACi. Despite the fact that this rating system is the first practical system to use the PICS standard, it still reads like a rating system for video games and not for web sites. What does it mean to have a web site that “rewards injuring nonthreatening creatures?”

Table 17.1 shows the RSAC ratings that are implemented in the Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. Microsoft’s Internet Preferences panel is designed to allow parents to create “content advisors” that will prohibit the display of certain kinds of content. Figure 17.2 shows a window from the content advisor. In this case, the content advisor is loaded with the RSACi content rating system. The browser has been configured so that web pages containing any level of sexual activity ...