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
The Web, for better or worse, has arguably become the equivalent of a massive public agency. It is the repository for consumer information and services of the most sensitive and important nature, ranging from medical records to financial investments.
Web-based services are supplanting traditional desktop software at a blinding pace, taking over terabytes of personal data in the process. Unlimited e-mail storage and Web 2.0-style start-ups will accelerate that trend even more.
Yet access to those massive and indispensable resources is generally
PICS works by comparing PICS information from an HTML META tag or HTTP header with a rating file installed in the browser. Typically, the rating file is provided by a Rating Service, who also provide a script to generate PICS headers suitable for inclusion in a document.
PICS for Users (Parents and Educators)
PICS for Content Providers
Tools for Content Providers
PICS for Users
While PICS is vendor and platform-independant, the major browser currently with PICS support is Internet Explorer.
In Internet Explorer, the PICS settings are
RSS/XML