# Re: Criticism of Kidcode (was Re: KidCode: Next steps )

Avi Harris Baumstein (avi@clas.ufl.edu)
Tue, 20 Jun 1995 14:08:58 -0400

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    Message-Id: <199506201809.OAA02990@cutter.clas.ufl.edu>

    To: sdw@lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)

    Subject: Re: Criticism of Kidcode (was Re: KidCode: Next steps )

    In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 20 Jun 1995 13:54:07 EDT."

                 <m0sO7V2-0009yNC@sdwsys>

    Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 14:08:58 -0400

    From: Avi Harris Baumstein <avi@clas.ufl.edu>

sdw@lig.net (Stephen D. Williams) writes:

>That is part of why I say that having user configured filtering at
>an ISP level proxy is a perfect way to introduce ratings/filtering/selecting

i've been thinking about a proxy-based system for a few weeks as a
replacement for the surfwatch type distributed list systems. instead,
an organization runs a proxy server programmed with their list of
either inclusive or exclusive URLs, and users simply proxy off of
<filter.pope.org> or <filter.aclu.org> or whatever organization the
user feels will serve their desires. browsers could have password
protection on the proxy field to prevent kids from changing it to
<proxy.playboy.com>.

the effort involved here is hacking a proxy daemon to check an access
control list before fetching a URL, and building these ACLs (the truly
hard part.) but in the absence of self-labeled material or suitable AI
to distinguish between "dirty" and "clean" content, ACLs will probably
be a fact of life.

this certainly involves less work than where the server recreates
direcotry trees and users fill out cgi-forms to determine what content
they want to recieve and so forth. i think we're talking about mostly the
same thing, but you seem to be heading towards something more
elaborate than i am. i'm looking for third parties to create
proxy-filters, and users to choose one based on whom they think most
matches their interests.

but i am convinced of the proxy-based solution as it solves other
problems. this system is pretty scalable, since people will naturally
choose many different proxy servers, the load is spread out. sites
that get heavy traffic can have several proxy machines serving
requests in round robin. one organization can have several levels of
filtering by having different proxy machines. the motion picture
association could have <x-rated.mpa.com> and
<g-rated.mpa.com>. services could charge for this proxy service,
probably by some sort of subscription, and deny all connections not
from subscribers.

this system allows for many many different viewpoints to be
accomodated, while providing a scalable, fundable, least effort
design without mucking with existing protocols or having to attach
additional information to existing documents.

comments?

-avi

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