ICRA - a webmaster's view
This page is intended for web authors and others who are directly responsible for the
content of one or more web sites. If you do not have a web site of your own but are
interested in using the ICRA system to filter web sites seen on your (or more likely,
your children's) computer, you should click here.
Before you label your site, you probably have several questions which we've tried to answer below:
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If you:
- Already know you want to label your site(s)
- Are comfortable with things like HTML, servers, headers, templates etc.
Please visit the Professional website labelling page.
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Introduction
ICRA's dual aims are to:
- protect children from potentially harmful material; and,
- to protect free speech on the internet.
In short, ICRA is about choice not censorship.
As a web author, we invite you to use our system to generate a label which you can then
apply to your site. The system is designed to be objective: ICRA makes no value judgements
at all about any site.
Users - principally parents of young children - then apply their own judgement in deciding which sites should and
should not be available in their homes or workplaces. This is done by means of the filtering software such as
ICRAfilter or the Content Advisor function in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, first included in version 3.0
(released in February 1996). ICRA continues to work with software companies, ISPs and other industry members
around the world to incorporate ICRA-based filtering into a variety of products.
So what do I have to do?
Labelling your site involves filling in a questionnaire and submitting it to ICRA. The form generates a label which
you add to your web site. This is not visible to users but is read by the filter if this feature has been enabled.
If you so choose, you may then add one of a choice of ICRA logo buttons or a text link to show that you have
labelled your site.
Is it difficult?
No. Absolutely not. If you can copy and paste in a word processor, you can add a label to your site. If you can't
copy and paste - we'll even show you how to do that as well!
For web professionals, we are able to offer advice on how to configure your servers to include ICRA labels in HTTP
headers. This is the efficient, elegant way of labelling web content. Please click here.
How much does it cost?
It's free!
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Why bother to label?
There are a number of compelling reasons why you should consider labelling your site with ICRA. Let's take four examples:
- If you run a commercial site or any other site with little or no objectionable material you don't want your
site to be blocked "by default." When a parent sets up the filter for their child, they will be offered an option
to allow or disallow access to "sites that have no rating" (i.e. unlabelled sites). As the ICRA
labelling system gathers momentum, more and more parents are likely to choose "disallow".
- If you run a site designed specifically for children, labelling your site will make a positive, machine-readable
statement that the site is "childsafe."
- If you run an "adults only" site, an ICRA label is a simple step you can take to help to avoid access
by children. As well as protecting children, it sends a clear signal to governments that the World Wide Web is
willing and able to self-regulate, rather than have the heavy hand of legislation decide what is or is not
acceptable.
- All other things being equal, a site carrying an ICRA label is more likely to be perceived as trustworthy than
one which is not.
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The ICRA Questionnaire
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Below is the list of "descriptors" in the ICRA questionnaire. You'll
be asked to indicate (by check box) whether each one is present on your site.
The descriptors fall into natural groups, some of which include "context
modifiers." Further explanation is given in Definitions.
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Nudity and Sexual Material [Definitions]
- Erections or female genitals in detail
- Male genitals
- Female genitals
- Female breasts
- Bare buttocks
- Explicit sexual acts
- Obscured or implied sexual acts
- Visible sexual touching
- Passionate kissing
- None of the above
Context - this material ... [Definitions]
- appears in a context intended to be artistic and is suitable for young children
- appears in a context intended to be educational and is suitable for young children
- appears in a context intended to be medical and is suitable for young children
Violence [Definitions]
- Sexual violence / rape
- Blood and gore, human beings
- Blood and gore, animals
- Blood and gore, fantasy characters (including animation)
- Killing of human beings
- Killing of animals
- Killing of fantasy characters (including animation)
- Deliberate injury to human beings
- Deliberate injury to animals
- Deliberate injury to fantasy characters (including animations)
- Deliberate damage to objects
- None of the above
Context - this material ...[Definitions]
- appears in a context intended to be artistic and is suitable for young children
- appears in a context intended to be educational and is suitable for young children
- appears in a context intended to be medical and is suitable for young children
- only appears in a sports related context
Language (No additional definition is felt necessary)
- Explicit sexual language
- Crude words or profanity
- Mild expletives
- None of the above
Other topics [Definitions]
- Promotion of tobacco use
- Promotion of alcohol use
- Promotion of drug use
- Gambling
- Promotion of weapon use
- Promotion of discrimination or harm against people
- Material that might be perceived as setting a bad example for young children
- Material that might disturb young children
- None of the above
Chat [Definitions]
- Chat
- Moderated chat suitable for children and teens
- Neither of the above
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Adding the label to your site and what happens next
There are two elements to an ICRA label:
- the actual piece of code that carries the information about your site (the label); and,
- either: one of a choice of "logo buttons" or a "Labelled with ICRA" text link you can
display on your site if you so choose.
(The glossary includes definitions for all the key terms used here).
Full details of how to physically add the two elements to your site are given in
FAQ 3.1 on the support page. As well as basic instructions, a complete
"walk-through" is provided along with plenty of extra information to cover a range of situations. There's
a separate set of instructions for professional webmasters responsible for large complex sites.
About a week after you rate your site (or a week after a date you give as the
predicted publication date) the ICRA system will check whether the label is in
place. If so, all well and good. If not, we'll contact you and see whether
you need any further help. Ultimately however, sites not carrying the label more than
30 days after its issue will be deleted from the database.
Displaying an ICRA logo button or "Labelled with ICRA" text link without carrying the
label is a breach of our terms and conditions, full details of which are available
here.
ICRA makes both automated and manual checks on sites to verify that labels are in
place and that they are applied appropriately.
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Protecting Kids with Digimarc™
As well as using the ICRA system to label your web site, if appropriate, you can also
label your individual images as having "adult content." The Protecting
Kids with Digimarc™ scheme allows you to add a persistent watermark-like flag to your
images which will stay with the images wherever they go on the internet. For full details
of this free service, please click here.
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Further help
The support pages include detailed answers to all our most frequently asked questions. These
cover everything from the basic steps needed to add an ICRA label through to more detailed answers for web authors
responsible for large sites or whole networks of sites. In the event that the FAQs don't have your answer, an e-mail
address is provided.
The glossary below may also help to clear up some confusion!
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Glossary of terms used on this site
The IT industry has given us more new words than most, so here's a guide to what we mean
by some of the key words and phrases used on this site.
- Content: The words, pictures, movies and sounds on your web site.
- HTML: Hyper Text Markup
Language, the basic computer language used to encode all web pages for
display in browsers. There are other languages, such as JavaScript and Macromedia Flash,
but all web pages have at least some HTML.
- ICRA Label: This is the general term we use to describe the
meta tag and the logo button or Labelled with ICRA text link (if
included). Although "Meta Tag" is perhaps more accurate in technical terms,
by adding a tag to your site you are labelling it as having xyz content.
So we call it a label!
- Logo button: Once you have rated your site, you have the option of
adding an ICRA logo to your site. It's a logo because... it carries the ICRA logo. It's
a button because we ask you to link it back to this site. Since we can't decide whether
to call it a logo or a button... we call it a logo button!
- Meta Tag: As well as the actual content of
your web site, HTML allows you to send additional information to the user's browser
which the user won't see. This includes things like the character set used on the site
and keywords which some search engines will pick up on when indexing your site. An ICRA
label is an example of a Meta Tag.
- Rating your site: The process of filling in the ICRA questionnaire,
identifying which elements (if any) in the questionnaire you should check as being present
on your site. NB This action is carried out by you not
ICRA. The Internet Content Rating Association does not rate internet content!
ICRA does maintain a database of all sites rated with us, which includes personal
information such as e-mail addresses. This Private data is NEVER disclosed or sold and
is used purely to verify the authenticity of anyone making an enquiry about a particular
site. See our Privacy Policy for details
- Users: people who use (surf) the internet
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