Netgem and the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) have announced an agreement to allow television portal operators to benefit from ICRA’s parental control system when using Netgem’s technology.
Stephen Balkam, chief executive officer of ICRA said: “This agreement with Netgem, a leading European supplier of open and DVB standard iTV technologies, provides ICRA with the unique opportunity to position our internet filtering and labelling system in the exciting new world of television web surfing. The issues of content filtering are also very important in the context of Internet via television as it addresses a very family-oriented audience.”
“We are confident the ICRA system will give parents a useful tool to help them overcome their concerns without interfering with content providers’ freedom of expression,” he says.
ICRA’s internet filtering and labelling system was developed in the US in 1996 with four categories – nudity, sex, language and violence. ICRA is now a global system with more categories of concern, including the promotion of drugs, alcohol, tobacco and weapons. Context variables are included to distinguish sites that have educational, artistic or medical content and there is also a new category that deals with chat rooms. Web site content providers rate their content using the ICRA scale, allowing the Netgem software to limit access to those pages given an acceptable rating, as set by parents.
Denis Lebot, Netgem’s vice president for marketing and communications added: “Providing parents with the tools needed to let their children enjoy the benefits of the Internet has been an important point for Netgem as our technology opens Internet access for the whole family via the television. We believe ICRA provides the best system of its kind in the field of Internet content parental control.”
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ICRA:
The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is an independent non-profit organisation with offices in Europe (UK) and the USA. ICRA’s mission is to protect children from potentially harmful material on the Internet, whilst protecting the content providers’ freedom of expression.
ICRA works in partnership with content providers toward the responsible development and growth of the Internet and is supported by AOL, Bell Canada, The Bertelsmann Foundation, BT, Cable & Wireless, Digimarc, Electronic Network Consortium (Japan), EuroISPA, IBM, Internet Watch Foundation, Microsoft Corp, Network Solutions Inc, Novell, Ondigital, PAGi (Singapore), Software and Information Industry Association, T-Online, Thus and UUNet.
ICRA is currently developing a new global system which will provide content providers with a tool to label their content objectively and parents with a device to filter content according to what they feel is appropriate for their children to view. The revised ICRA system will be launched in two parts – the labeling system for content providers is now available and the filtering systems for parents will be available in 2001.
As well as the ICRA labelling system, the organisation owns and operates the RSACi (Recreational Software Advisory Council on the Internet) rating and filtering system, which is integrated into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape’s Navigator. The RSACi system provides customers with information about the level of sex, nudity, violence, and offensive language in websites.