PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection)

PICS is a pair of Protocols, allowing labels to be applied to WWW content. These Protocols empower any individual or organization to design and distribute labels reflecting their views about the content. PICS was pioneered by W3C as a practical alternative to global governmental censorship of the Internet. In addition, the same technology facilitates searching the WWW and provides a foundation for establishing trust in information on the WWW. PICS labels are rather limited in their expressiveness. A new version of PICS will be based on RDF, facilitating more complex labeling of resources.

Lists of PICS-compatible products and services

Technology Inventory [broken link as of July 2005]. Lorrie Cranor and Paul Resnick. This inventory was first distributed at the December 1997 Internet On-line summit: Focus on Children. The on-line version was updated until the summer of 1999. It also lists some products and services that are not PICS-compatible.

The following resource lists are being maintained by members of the PICS developers’ community. Contact the maintainer of each individual list with additional links.

• Client software [broken link as of July 2005] that reads PICS labels.
• HTTP servers that distribute labels along with documents.
• Proxy servers [broken link as of July 2005] that perform filtering based on PICSRules.
• Label bureaus: HTTP servers that distribute third-party PICS labels through the PICS label bureau query protocol.
• Rating services
• Search engine that can use PICS labels in its selection criteria

Innovative Uses of PICS Labels

The most common uses of PICS labels have been in filtering products that block access to certain materials based on labels associated with those materials. The technology inventory, however, identifies a range of other actions that can be taken based on labels: suggest, search, inform, monitor/log, and warn.

Source: W3C