ipernity workshop: content rating and filtering system / Discussions

So, I am German, too, and I left Flickr especially on the grounds of their introduction of censorship - which Yahoo even tried to justify with false arguments.
Indeed a German institution concerned with the protection of minors stated that Flickr only had to remove illegal content when notified because they are to be considered a host provider - not in advance.
I cannot judge as to how French law differs here.

On the aspect of age:

1. people accessing Ipernity are customers of an access provider thus they are of full age. If they are not, their parents are responsible for what they do using _their_ internet access.
The same is especially true for Ipernity members with a Pro account - they must also be of full age.
2. How are you planning to verify the age of your members?
Without a verification the whole filtering system is totally useless.
If you are going to request e. g. identification via ID card - which is just as unsafe, since every kid could copy his father's - I will immediately terminate my membership since I am very concerned about privacy and am not willing to reveal my "true" identity for an online photo community. The possibility of using Ipernity in a pseudonimic way to me is of a much higher value than questionable "protection" of minors from "dangerous" content.


On the aspect of reliability:
First off a platitude: Filtering System Do NOT Work
Unfortunately I believe this platitude is true.

How do you think such a system can be reliable? It is up to every individual to mark his content appropriately. You have tried to show what content should be considered as "not suitable" etc., but still opinions will differ on this.

An example:
Potentially harmful activities

* Glamorisation of crime
We have: an artistic shot of a staged mafia situation with the boss and his men at a table, guns on it, etc.
Is this art or is this "harmful"?
* Depiction of illegal drugs use
We have: a b/w photo of an addict lying in a corner, needle etc. beside him. The picture represents a dull reality in an artistic manner.
Is this "harmful"?


You can already see, that marking content will be - no matter how you try to define the boundaries - unreliable.

These are my first thoughts on this, let's see what others have to say and how you are going to deal with this.

One final question: did you come up with the "need" for this filtering systems yourselves or did some institution approach you?

[original post from
www.ipernity.com/blog/11832/34972/comment/1214733#comment1214733]