Internet Content Rating Association
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Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) was an international
Its mission was to help users find the content they want, to trust what they find and to filter out what they do not want for themselves or for their children. ICRA also acted as a forum through which both political and technical infrastructure are defined to help shape the way that the
Methods
ICRA created a content description system which allowed webmasters and digital content creators to self-label their content in categories such as nudity, sex, language (profanity etc.), violence, other potentially undesired material and online interactivity such as social networking and chat. There are context variables such as art, medicine and news—for example, a piece of content or site can be described as having depictions of nudes, but they are in an artistic context. A key point is that ICRA does not rate internet content, nor do it make value judgements about sites – the content providers self-label, and then parents and other concerned adults make a value judgement as to what is or is not appropriate content.
The labelling was done using a web-based questionnaire. The content creators checked which of the elements in the questionnaire are present or absent from their Web sites, and a small file is automatically generated using the RDF format, which is then linked to the content on one or more domains. Formerly, the system was based on PICS.
Users could then use
The content descriptions were revised in 2005 to enable easier application to a wide range of digital content, not just websites.
The ICRA also intended to launch a service to verify the accuracy of ICRA labels and to provide this information to third-party tools and services, such as
Alternative labelling projects include Quatro, an EU-funded project which integrates content labels with quality and trust marks, and its successor, QuatroPlus.
Members
ICRA's corporate members included:
Discontinuation
As of October 2010, the ICRA labeling engine has been discontinued by FOSI. Additionally, FOSI has withdrawn all support for the ICRA rating system and taken down all documentation for labeling websites with ICRA ratings.[1] The reason is that the ICRA label failed to gain widespread acceptance.[4]
See also
- Entertainment Software Rating Board
- Family Online Safety Institute
- RSACi
- Mobile software content rating system
References
- ^ a b "About ICRA". Archived from the original on 2007-07-24. Retrieved 2007-07-23.
- ^ "TELMEX and ICRA Unite to Promote Internet Safety in Latin America" (PDF). TELMEX. December 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 19, 2022. Retrieved February 19, 2022.
- ^ a b "Protecting children online" (PDF). PDF. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 25, 2015. Retrieved February 19, 2022.
- ^ "ICRAfail – A Lesson For the Future" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2012-03-24. Retrieved 2012-06-09.